In response to a charge from the library administration, the Circulation Committee of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University designed and implemented a thorough assessment of circulation policies. Using multiple assessment methods including surveys, focus groups, and statistical analysis, the committee determined that the…

This article analyzes quantitative adequacy gap scores and coded qualitative comments from LibQual surveys at the University of Mississippi from 2001 to 2010, looking for relationships between library policy changes and LibQual results and any other trends that emerged. Analysis found no relationship between changes in policy and survey results…

Twelve scholarly papers and eighteen abstracts comprise the content of the nineteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of…

This article explores recent developments in national policy for academic libraries. It considers the shift from traditional to managerial academic librarianship; the move to "social space" and multi-use systems; changes in the balance between meeting teaching and research needs and in public funding priorities; the difficulty of making…

This bibliographic essay examines the difficulties associated with the selection, licensing, acquisition, and management of e-books in academic libraries. The potential advantages of e-book technology are likely to be realized only to the extent that they advance the economic goals of e-book suppliers and are consistent with the legal framework…

This article presents a digest of LISTSERVS of interest to access services for the period of April to June 2011. It presents questions and answers from Interlibrary Loan (ILL) people, CIRCPLUS, and OFFCAMP.

This article is a study of the policies that govern the use of the university library by external users at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and 12 peer institutions used by IUPUI for comparative purposes. A search of each institution's Web site was conducted as well as interviews with circulation librarians and managers.…

Support for intellectual freedom, a concept codified in the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and Code of Ethics, is one of the core tenets of modern librarianship. According to the most recent interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, academic librarians are encouraged to incorporate the principles of intellectual freedom…

Collection development librarians have long struggled to meet user demands for new titles. Too often, required resources are not purchased, whereas some purchased resources do not circulate. E-books selected through patron-driven plans are a solution but present new challenges for both selectors and catalogers. Radical changes to traditional…

One of the biggest challenges confronting university students with print disabilities, such as blindness, is accessing the written word. In the past it was necessary to read text books onto cassette tape or turn them to Braille so these students could access the text books. Technological advances are making university life increasingly accessible…

Differing from those of their liberal arts and Association of Research Libraries counterparts, today's comprehensive universities face a variety of unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to assessing their collections. This article looks at the different needs and interests of comprehensive universities and focuses on the challenges…

Books are traditionally set aside at the request of teachers from the main, normal loan collection to be put on reserve temporarily for checking out for a much shorter loan period to ensure that, at the expense of convenient, long-term loans for other users, all the students enrolled in a course have an opportunity to use them. Many studies have…

This article addresses concerns raised by members of the local Muslim community regarding copies of the Qur'an in the circulating collections at Milner Library, Illinois State University. The librarians conducted an analysis of the collection of holy books and investigated the rules and traditions of the Islamic faith that govern the care and…

This article updates a previous article published in 1992 that described the role of the access services manager in policy formation. Since that time, the access services department and mission has matured and evolved to a prominent position within the library organization. Technological changes and innovation in the marketplace of wired and…

In this paper the author compares the use of digital materials that have been deposited in The Ohio State University (OSU) Knowledge Bank (KB). Comparisons are made for content considered in scope of the university archives and those considered out of scope, for materials originating from different campus sources, and for different types of…