Includes eight articles that address issues related to library design and function in Australia. Highlights include renovations and redevelopments; public libraries' expansions for changing needs, including a youthspace; a joint-use university and public library; the new Australian War Memorial research center; and a new university library. (LRW)

Discusses the uses of micrographics in higher education, based on a 25-year period at Wake Forest University's (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) Library. Discusses acquisition of scholarly collections in microform on a subscription plan; the trend away from microopaques to microfiche and the advent of the reader-printer; improved access to microform…

The emerging field of knowledge management offers academic libraries the opportunity to improve effectiveness, both for themselves and their parent institutions. This article summarizes knowledge management theory. Current applications in academic libraries and higher education are described. Similarities and difficulties between knowledge…

Identifies attributes that directors of the academic libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) need. Present-day directors must possess a wide variety of attributes and are less likely to remain in the same position for as long as their predecessors did. With the aging population of academic librarians, matching the right individual…

Peking University Library initiated position restructuring in response to the University's requirements and to increasing expectations of users. Goals were to reduce unwanted positions and enhance responsibilities of selection positions. The restructuring promised to improve library services and staff morale. Describes steps in the restructuring…

Developing a library collection is one of the most important pursuits in medical librarianship. A library's collection is its foundation, and the collection is the central information resource upon which most library activities rely. Today's vision of the medical or health sciences collection must incorporate a broader range of materials,…

Over the past 20 years, academic collection development specialists have dealt with changes, brought about by decreasing purchasing power and the growing importance of electronic resources. Throughout, collection managers have rethought their efforts and revised criteria for selection of materials in new formats while maintaining traditional…

Storing and curating authentic academic literature and making it accessible for the long term has been a time-honoured task of national libraries. By guarding existing knowledge and facilitating its use to produce new insights, national and university libraries have formed an integral part of the research environment, complementing the roles of…

The University of York is among the top universities in the United Kingdom, yet has not adopted all manner of electronic media. The University Library attempts to meet the demands placed upon it by its academic and student users for electronic media of all kinds, while working within a sometimes frame work that does not encourage exploitation of…

The Association of Christian Librarians is an interdenominational organization of 300 members made up of Christian librarians sharing interests in library service in Christian higher education. From its birth at a 1957 conference of 17 librarians, the association has grown to over 300 members. The association strives to promote, develop, and…

This issue contains nine articles written by Indiana librarians involved in bibliographic instruction: (1) "Information Management Education--Beyond BI (Bibliographic Instruction)" (Gillian S. Gremmels); (2) "Dealing with the New Technology: An Instructional Primer" (Patrick Max); (3) "Librarian/Teacher Partnerships for…

This paper describes the experiences of a recent change process that focused on the delivery of reference services at the University of Western Australia (UWA). UWA reference librarians felt that they could not fulfill all of their duties while working from the reference desk for a significant period of time each day; they wanted time away from…

Relatively diminishing financial resources and increasing user expectations are combining to create a new emphasis for the traditional research library. This paper reports on the development of a pilot project at a large research library that explored the relationship between evaluation and assessment to determine how both the institution and the…

The appearance of revolutionary information technologies must elicit equivalent responses from the library profession. Creating local online databases--information dropshipping--is an activity that public and academic libraries can implement. Through technology, libraries can create a new domain on the production side of knowledge and information.…

An experiment at the College of Charleston (South Carolina) library examined whether using Blackwell's Library of Congress Machine Readable Cataloging with books without the CIP upgrading would be worthwhile in terms of cataloging productivity and efficiency; it also looked at additional costs involved with the CIP upgrading. (AEF)