Purpose: Online information vendors currently offer a variety of additional services; among these are alert services which present requested information on recent publications to registered users. This paper aims to investigate a variety of alert services provided by four online information vendors. Design/methodology/approach: A comparison of the…

This article presents the results of the latest "SLJ" survey of school expenditures and collections for 2009-2010. The survey reveals that librarians have used a variety of coping techniques to weather this economic storm, whether it is servicing more than one school, using additional volunteers, taking on more tasks, or seeking outside funding.…

This study explores the extent to which undergraduate and graduate students in China differ in their digital library use. Unlike the factors promoting digital library use, non-use factors, perceived influences, and degree of satisfaction are quite different between undergraduate and graduate students due to their differing emphases and…

Social tagging enables librarians to partner with users to provide enhanced subject access. This paper quantifies and compares LC subject headings from each of 31 different subject divisions with user tags from Amazon.com and LibraryThing assigned to the same titles. The intersection and integration of these schemas is described and evaluated.…

When improving a web presence, today's libraries have a choice: using a free Web 2.0 application, opting for open source, buying a product, or building a web application. This article discusses how to make an informed decision for one's library. The authors stress that deciding whether to use a free Web 2.0 application, to choose open source, to…

This article compares three self-developed subject guides and one commercial online subject guide (LibGuides) to provide information to other institutions which have a plan or are in the process of developing a plan to implement similar services to support online, distance and traditional education. This is a comparison of the current subject…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess costs in the National and University Library of Croatia for processing Croatian web resources and the maintenance and development of the service, and to analyse the present organisation and workflow of their processing, and to propose improvements. Design/methodology/approach: The assessment period…

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) have both recently launched new standards. These are known as the "AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" and "The National Educational Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation" (NETS). The standards from each…

In the fall of 2007, ebrary surveyed 906 faculty from around the world, asking them how they used electronic resources. This article, focusing on the responses of faculty to a few survey questions, finds some expected and surprising attitudes that faculty have about electronic resources for their own and students' research. (Contains 2 notes.)

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…

This study examines the influence of culture on digital libraries of the first wave. The local cultures of innovation of five European national libraries (Biblioteca nacional de Portugal, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, the National Library of Scotland, and the British Library) are reconstructed in case histories from…

This comparison of the most recent edition of the American Library Association's "Guide to Reference Books" with earlier editions discusses (1) purpose; (2) organization; (3) bibliographic description; (4) annotation style; (5) attempts to select major titles; (6) balance in subject disciplines; and (7) media sources and databases. (MES)

Academic librarians are challenged with development and maintenance of collections of research materials in various formats. Although it is assumed that they are monitoring the needs of their constituencies as a part of the collection management decision-making process, the literature reflects only a few studies that focus on direct solicitation…

Discusses ways microcomputers can be used to create the single machine-readable record that will be used by an automated library system. The options described include in-house conversion, part in-house and part service bureau, and service bureau. Specific vendors' services are listed and pros and cons of various options are explained. (EM)

Two companion studies addressing the information needs of the aging are discussed. Participants in the first study were 93 specialists in aging in four groups--library/information specialists who had achieved a reputation of working with the aging, educators/researchers in gerontology, policy-level administrators who were part of the governmental…