A new electronic bibliography, the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalog, currently contains title and location information for 315,000 English-language books, monographs, and ephemera printed during the eighteenth century. The database is available to scholars on the Research Libraries Information Network and the British Library Automated…

Presents a sampling of available ERIC documents and journal articles about Islam. Includes brief descriptions of each of the 10 items and an explanation of how to find the materials. (DK)

A hypertext-based thesaurus is proposed as a navigational aid to the subject domain of a bibliographic database. Implementation of a hypertext version of the "Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors" with database linking strategies is discussed. (44 references) (EA)

This comparison of three menu systems for end-users considers user-friendliness, cost, databases offered, hours of availability, and search options. The differences are shown to indicate that they are intended for users with different amounts of knowledge and training. The conclusion reached is that each system is unique. (five references) (EAM)

Explores the 1988 "Books in Print Plus" (BIP Plus) CD-ROM database to determine broad characteristics of material currently in print in U.S. book trade in terms of publication year; price; language; and audience, grade level, and illustration. Accuracy and potential of BIP Plus as a tool for generating data and testing hypotheses…

Examines the cooperative efforts of the Western Library Network (WLN) and its members to maintain authority control over its central bibliographic database. The first section describes authority maintenance activities performed by WLN centrally, and the second describes the contribution of an individual member library--the Washington State…

Describes a prototype system--GeoMatch--that allows users to interactively define geographic areas of interest on a background map and to define, qualitatively or quantitatively, the relationship between the user-defined area and the map coverage. The knowledge discovery in database (KDD) factor is analyzed in the retrieval process. The MARC…

This paper examines how future metadata capabilities could enable academic libraries to exploit information on the emerging Semantic Web in their library catalogues. Whereas current metadata architectures treat the Web as a simple means of interchanging bibliographic data that have been created by libraries, this paper suggests that academic…

The internal motivation to learn sets adult learners apart from children. Self-directed learning is associated with adult learners with the maturity to realize what they need to know and the internal motivation to learn it. This article provides sites to learn more about adult learning and resources to help support one's own informal,…

REDUC is a cooperative network of some 23 associated centers in 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The REDUC coordinating center is located in Santiago, Chile. REDUC produces a bibliographic database containing analytical summaries (approximately 800 items annually) of the most important research studies and project descriptions in the…

This paper begins with an overview of ERIC that provides background on the system's decentralized structure, the bibliographic database, document availability, and ERIC publications. The historical development of ERIC from the early 1960s is described and illustrated with a chronology of selected major ERIC events from 1965 to 1991 and a table…

This digest discusses advantages and disadvantages of CD-ROM use in libraries and information centers and lists features of three CD-ROM versions of the ERIC database--Dialog OnDisc ERIC, OCLC Search CD450, and SilverPlatter ERIC. Brief descriptions of these products focus on the differences among them, including equipment requirements, search…

This digest discusses advantages and disadvantages of CD-ROM use in libraries and information centers and lists features of three CD-ROM versions of the ERIC database--Dialog OnDisc ERIC, OCLC Search CD450, and SilverPlatter ERIC. Brief descriptions of these products focus on the differences among them, including equipment requirements, search…

This report presents statistics on how Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries spend money on electronic resources. This report indicates that expenditures for electronic resources account for 25%, on average, of ARL institutions' library materials budgets. ARL libraries reported spending more than $228 million on electronic…

Data quality and speed in data processing profoundly affect service provided to the Educational Resources Information Center's (ERIC's) broad audiences. With these factors in mind, a new technology infrastructure for processing records has been acquired and is scheduled for implementation. The story of how the ERIC database is being constructed is…