Nowadays, blended learning represents a combination of both e-learning and Face-to-Face learning approaches, which has been considered as an emerging concept of modern education. It has been regarded as a prominent alternative learning approach compared to the conventional e-learning approach. The degree of satisfaction of students with blended…

"Fable Writer" is an online reading, writing and research tool designed to facilitate synchronous, collaborative writing tool that enables learners to read and copy text and images from teacher-curated books and Web-based resources in the "Fable Reader" digital library. The "Fable Writer" project addressed two…

The faculty of a large southeastern university were brought together to form a "community of faculty." With support from a federal grant we set out to build what came to be called the Faculty Toolbox. This website serves as a public repository that brought together the faculty to share and contribute to its library of shared resources.…

In an era of exploding online enrollment and tight budgets, Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) struggles to meet the needs of online students. CPCC librarians went one step towards solving that problem in 2009-2010 by launching an embedded librarian program. CPCC's program became so successful that it struggled to meet demand. In 2013, CPCC…

The contributions in this volume represent a decade of OCLC's user behavior research findings that articulate the need for the design of future library services to be all about the user. Highlights include: (1) People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services; (2) People…

This paper covers material presented at the 15th Annual Off-Campus conference (formerly known as the Off Campus Library Services Conference) in Memphis, Tennessee. During the course of this presentation, participants learned how both chat and instant messaging reference are being conducted and evaluated at a major online learning university. This…

As technology continues to advance, libraries in Europe and America continue to improve upon their virtual reference services by employing new Web technologies and applying them to existing services. West African academic libraries have begun providing resources electronically to their users but still typically lag behind in the services they…

This article explores the geography of virtual questioning by using geographic information systems to study activity within the Florida Electronic Library "Ask a Librarian" collaborative chat service. Researchers mapped participating libraries throughout the state of Florida that served as virtual "entry portals" for users as…

Gathering qualitative information about usage behavior of library Web sites is a time-consuming process requiring the active participation of patron communities. Libraries that collect virtual reference transcripts, however, hold valuable data regarding how the library Web site is used that could benefit Web designers. An analysis of virtual…

With virtual library services increasing, public services librarians may find themselves with questions such as: What instant messaging services (IM) are available? Which IM service would best suit my patrons' needs? Which IM service best suits my library's technology profile? This column describes the features and functionality of major instant…

Ask Here PA is Pennsylvania's new statewide live chat reference and information service. This article discusses the key strategies utilized by Ask Here PA administrators to recruit participating libraries to contribute staff time to the service, the importance of centralized staff training, the main aspects of staff training, and activating the…

Soon after AskALibrarian, Florida's Statewide Virtual Reference Desk, began to offer Chat Reference to the public in 2003, a Quality Assurance Workgroup was established to ensure that the service patrons received would be friendly, accurate, and adequate. To make certain that best practices were used in answering the real time questions, two…

The nature of collaborative learning involves intensive interactions among collaborators, such as articulating knowledge into written, verbal or symbolic forms, authoring articles or posting messages to this community's discussion forum, responding or adding comments to messages or articles posted by others, etc. Knowledge collaborators'…