College students are accessing virtual libraries whether they are on campus or learning from a distance. Academic institutions serving virtual patrons must remain focused on meeting the needs of those library users by continually examining their preferences, their searching behavior, and the information they seek. The purpose of this research was…

A survey of community college librarians in California reveals that the nature of reference service required of them, limitations on budget, staffing, technical support, resources, decision-making ability, and professional development opportunities, affect their professional attitudes. Librarians see reference service as primarily a teaching role.…

Technostress--the challenge of keeping up with changing technology--has been one of the few constants in professional lives for the past 30 or more years. In this paper, the author addresses what constitutes "best practices" for keeping up with rapidly changing technology.

Explains the on-line search services of the library at Northern Virginia Community College's Annandale Campus. Describes a statewide conference for librarians held at the college, a campus professional development workshop for faculty and staff, a classroom instruction program on information retrieval, and a one-credit library research skills…

Traces the development of Lima Community College's computer literacy program, which uses the library as the site of ongoing computer education. Explores such factors in program development as funding, hardware choice, and implementation steps. Responds to several myths about computers, e.g., microcomputers take up little space and reduce staffing…

Describes plans for the Integrated High Technology Library (IHTL) at the Maricopa County Community College District's new Estrella Mountain campus, covering collaborative planning, the IHTL's design, and guidelines for the new center and campus (e.g., establishing computing/information-access across the curriculum; developing lifelong learners;…

This guide provides basic instruction on how to search the ERIC database on the SilverPlatter CD-ROM, which is the computerized equivalent to Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) and Resources in Education (RIE). The entire database is available on three discs, from 1966 to the present. Included in this guide is a description of the ERIC…

This study examined the experiences of 59 novice end users with a multifile, full-text information retrieval system. A regression model was developed of the relative contributions of computer, system, and subject knowledge to search success as measured by user judgments of the relevance of retrieved documents. Results indicated all three variables…

Technological advances have changed our definitions of literacy and our ways of preparing academically literate individuals. Over four years, formal evaluation of a Cornell University (New York) library-based information literacy instruction program and experiments using different instructional models has increased understanding of the concept and…

Describes the concept behind the Technology Toolbox, a method being explored at Augustana College to build a foundation of basic information technology skills among students and faculty members. The materials and potential applications are examined and several issues related to this new form of instruction are discussed. (Author/KRN)

This report presents the results of a study which explored how patron perceptions and demographics related to keyword/Boolean searching on Indiana State University's (ISU) Library User Information System (LUIS), the online public access catalog (OPAC). Two general theses guide the study: (1) whether the use or non-use of keyword searching on LUIS…

This Digest reviews ERIC documents and journal articles on the roles currently being played by two-year college learning resources centers (LRCs) in instruction and instructional development. After acknowledging that community college students have different needs for bibliographic instruction than their counterparts at four-year institutions, the…

This study investigated the relationship of the effects of library staff attitudes toward computer technology on their level of participation in a library computer literacy program. A series of in-service computer workshops at the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries provided the opportunity to investigate computer anxiety among library…

Resource-based learning and information literacy skills play important roles in the Minnesota State University System's efforts to improve undergraduate educational quality, and the library is seen as both the locus and the agent for acquiring those skills. A blue ribbon commission's 1991 report describes the academic library of the future.…

Addressed to individuals in higher education who are concerned about the application of information and data processing technologies to problems in college and university administration, instruction, and research, the 43 papers in the collection are concerned with such topics as the nature of new information technology; the use of information…