This paper is a practical and personal perspective on the challenges faced by special collections in an increasingly digital environment, and the strategies employed to promote their unique resources to the academic and wider communities, including the value of promoting heritage through reconstructing collections and the place of expertise in the…

At the end of 2006 the UNSW Library restructured its five special libraries into a new division called the Information Services Department. It was a radical restructure and provides a new model through which the Library delivers services in both the physical and online environments in a flexible and proactive manner. A pivotal role within this new…

While the National Library of Medicine created the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) as a network to provide medical and health information, historically few nonmedical academic libraries have participated. University medical libraries and hospital libraries have been the major focus of the Network. Recently, the NNLM has…

This article presents a case study of the intranet implementation and adoption process of a SharePoint intranet at a small academic library and investigates why the many Web 2.0 tools of the library intranet are currently underused. Staff interviews showed that common goals for an intranet, such as information dissemination, knowledge sharing,…

In the journal "The Chronicle of Higher Education," an article by Geoffrey Nunberg criticizes Google's Book Search (GBS), emphasizing that disturbing errors are endemic. He recognizes that for mainstream "googling" purposes, "they don't really care about metadata provided by a library catalog." In perhaps his most discouraging point, linguistics…

The social work library at USC provides a case study of an academic library's transition to an information center service model. Analysis of the collection, user community, Web 2.0 applications, and Web usage data demonstrates how the changes facilitated library services and information literacy instruction. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)

Successful disaster response is an exercise in managing human resources under very difficult conditions. Catastrophic disasters can disrupt both the physical communication networks and the social networks critical to efficient response and recovery. While a well-designed disaster plan serves as a framework, it often requires communication and…

This case study from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, University Libraries, which has one main library, three branches, and more than 110 staff, illustrates one approach to using new technologies as additional methods for internal communication. At large academic libraries, communication within the organization can be challenging. The…

Library intranets require flexibility and efficiency and enhance the internal communication and collaborative nature of creating and organizing the institution's information. At the University of Houston Libraries, the focus was on public services, so little attention was given to the intranet--the tool every department relied on for quick access…

When the electronic resource management system (ERM) at Kansas State University Libraries suffered a horrible data loss, the "contract db" presented a challenge for the librarians responsible for electronic resources. It was a decent data repository, but it had no ability to manage the tangled process of licensing, acquiring, activating,…

In September 2007, Yale University Library (YUL) and Microsoft agreed to partner in a large-scale project to digitize 100,000 books from the YUL collections--an ambitious effort that would substantially increase the library's digitized holdings, particularly in the area of its own text collections. YUL has been digitizing materials from its…

Montana State University (MSU) Libraries (where the authors serve as web services librarian and digital initiatives librarian, respectively) is perhaps unique because it has no current periodicals room due to lack of space. As a result, finding current journals for research is difficult for its patrons, who do not always know how or where to…

Oregon State University (OSU) libraries, where the author serves as lead programmer, have developed a tool to make it easier for librarians to build and maintain interactive course assignment pages (ICAPs) and subject research guides (SRGs). That tool, Library a la Carte, enables librarians with minimal technical expertise to create dynamic…

iTunes University is a free service offered by Apple iTunes to educational institutions. It serves as a platform for the management and distribution of educational, instructional, and informational resources through both audio and video podcasts. Participation in the service among colleges and universities continues to grow since its official…

At the end of 2007, SirsiDynix introduced the first version of Symphony, its new flagship Integrated Library System (ILS). This article begins with a look at the evolution of Symphony, user reactions to Symphony, and Symphony's design and functionality. The authors, along with a team of librarians from various functional areas, have completed…