This paper provides a historical literature review of the subject librarian position. The subject librarian position was originally created to support patrons in specific subjects. Since the position's creation, a subject librarian's foundational duties have consisted of collection development, reference, instruction, and liaison. Though liaison…

Download rates of academic journals have joined citation counts as commonly used indicators of the value of journal subscriptions. While citations reflect worldwide influence, the value of a journal subscription to a single library is more reliably measured by the rate at which it is downloaded by local users. If reported download rates accurately…

In 2005, the authors reviewed citation help in databases and found an error rate of 4.4 errors per citation. This article describes a follow-up study that revealed a modest improvement in the error rate to 3.4 errors per citation, still unacceptably high. The most problematic area was retrieval statements. The authors conclude that librarians…

Student and faculty frustrations with traditional higher education textbook models continue to escalate. These frustrations present an opportunity for academic libraries to forge partnerships with teaching faculty and vendors to repurpose existing library resources. Library and teaching faculty at Southern New Hampshire University collaborated to…

It has been a decade since the first aggregator journal packages began to become available at academic and public libraries throughout the United States of America. During these 10 years, the library and information science community has published numerous articles on the pros and cons of this method of delivery and these collections, more than…

Includes four articles that discuss LibQUAL+[TM], a collaborative effort of the Association of Research Libraries and Texas A&M University responding to the need for greater accountability in measuring the delivery of library services to research library users. Discusses the reliability of LibQUAL+[TM] scores in measuring perceived library…

Explored user perceptions of dependability and accuracy of Texas A&M library services through focus groups. Reports user difficulties in locating materials, inaccurate catalog and circulation records, inadequate signage, searching the online catalog, and late notification of interlibrary loan arrivals; and discusses the library's efforts to…

Investigated the psychometric integrity of scores from the LibQUAL+ evaluation of perceived library service quality conducted by ARL (Association of Research Libraries). Examines score structure, score reliability, score correlation and concurrent validity coefficients, scale means, and scale standardized norms, and considers the potential of the…

With the ever growing interest that libraries have in the Internet, the potentials of other computer resources may be overlooked or under-utilized. One such resource is the campus local area network (LAN). For libraries, a campus LAN presents possibilities ranging from simple library promotion to networked databases. The Internet provides…