21-year-old Aaron Swartz is attempting to turn the library world upside down. He is taking on the subscription-based WorldCat, the largest bibliographic database on the planet, by building a free online book catalog that anyone can update. Many academic librarians are wary of Mr. Swartz's project because it will allow nonlibrarians, who may be…

The new "International Handbook of Universities" is now 2-volumes and includes single-user access to World Higher Education Database Online. This "Twenty-second Edition" is the most comprehensive guide to university-level education worldwide, providing detailed information on higher education institutions that offer at least a post-graduate degree…

This study critically reviews the recently published scientific literature on the design and impact of adaptive and intelligent systems for collaborative learning support (AICLS) systems. The focus is threefold: 1) analyze critical design issues of AICLS systems and organize them under a unifying classification scheme, 2) present research evidence…

The Anatolian University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS) was created in 2001 with only a few members subscribed to nine e-journal collections and bibliographic databases. This Turkish library consortium had developed from one state and three private universities joining together for the purchase of two databases in 1999. Over time, the numbers of…

Skin cancer is an increasing problem in Europe, America and Australasia, although largely preventable by avoiding excessive ultraviolet (UV) exposure. This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of qualitative research about the prevention of skin cancer attributable to UV exposure. The aim is to understand elements that may contribute…

Purpose: This paper aims to establish how the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model, which holds a lot of potential in theory, works in practice. It also aims to identify, and if possible, give solutions to problems found in two of the existing prototypes. Design/methodology/approach: An independent evaluation…

There is a growing interest in making available and making sense of the data on the Web and trapped in databases. Rather than a web of unstructured documents, full of information understandable only to humans, there is a movement whose intention is to make these data structured, reusable, machine-readable, and interrelated. This approach to Web…

This paper traces library instructional programs available to graduate students in academic institutions in North America from the late 1950s to the present. Three chronological perspectives provide the framework for this analysis. The first includes programs from 1958 to 1989 that offered traditional bibliographic instruction of print resources…

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of Google Scholar and 11 other bibliographic databases (Academic Search Elite, AgeLine, ArticleFirst, EconLit, GEOBASE, MEDLINE, PAIS International, POPLINE, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, and SocINDEX), focusing on search performance within the multidisciplinary field of…

This article reports on a study of first-year applied science students at the University of New England in 2007 to determine whether the addition of structured library assistance to an online unit improved the use of journal articles in student assignments. It was found that students using the search strategies provided were more likely to cite…

The focus of this paper is to examine the current library practice of processing and delivering information and to introduce alternative scenarios that may keep librarians relevant in the technological era. In the scenarios presented here, the authors will attempt to challenge basic assumptions about the usefulness of and need for OPAC systems,…

This study surveyed the literature on peace and global education in secondary schools to explore the position of peace education within the global education field. To create a database from Canada, the United States, and Britain, this article includes secondary studies from professional and peer-reviewed periodicals, articles in published…

In this article, the authors compared the MLA International Bibliography database (MLAIB) across five vendor platforms to determine how and why seemingly comparable searches produced varying results. A number of tests were conducted using a variety of fields, terms, and parameters, and examples of results are provided. The authors' findings are…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the key project learning points and outcomes as a guideline for the future quality management of demand-led learning and development. Design/methodology/approach: The research methodology was based upon a corporate university blueprint architecture and browser toolkit developed by a member of the…

Agroforestry (AF)/forestry is no longer an isolated field, with so many developmental activities having links with this sector, and thus the information required to be handled by the researchers all over the world has increased exponentially. This article discusses a website that was developed by the National Research Centre for Agroforestry…