Technology-savvy instructors often require students to create Web pages or videos, tasks that require finding materials such as images, music, or text on the Web, reusing them, and then republishing them in a technique that author Howard Pitler calls "remixing." However, this requires both the student and the instructor to deal with often thorny…

This article reports a small-scale study into the functions of the plenary session. It offers information about the ways that plenary sessions are being understood and implemented in one school, and offers an example of the usefulness of small-scale, school-based projects for enhancing reflectiveness and sharing perspectives among a staff group.…

Over five years ago the author began his "TechTrends" column, then titled "E-Learning by Design," with a self interview. In that first column he interviewed himself on how he came to develop the Study Guides and Strategies (SGS) Website www.studygs.net. This educational public service and resource now contains 120 topics (200 English webpages) in…

In the spring of 2005, the University of Denver's Penrose Library conducted a survey of its users to determine their degree of awareness of electronic books, how and why they use them, and their level of satisfaction with the format. It is clear from vendor-supplied usage statistics that electronic books are used, but it is not clear how or why…

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-created sensory experience that allows a participant to believe and barely distinguish a "virtual" experience from a real one using computer graphics, sounds, and images to reproduce electronic versions of real-life situations. This digest describes how VR works and discusses applications of VR in…

A survey of the reference departments of public libraries in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah was conducted to determine whether CD-ROM products are being used in routine reference work. Previous literature on CD-ROM had primarily been concerned with the response to and acceptance of the technology by patrons. A stratified sample of public…

Using Ehrenberg's application of mathematical models to the analysis and prediction of repeated buying patterns of consumers, this study focuses on the concept of library use as a form of consumer behavior. The following hypotheses were tested: designated library user groups will tend to exhibit stable behavioral patterns with respect to the…

This study systematically examines the reading habits and in-house library use of a group of survey respondents in the Independent Living complex at a retirement community located in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The residents responded to an anonymous questionnaire requesting information about their reading habits and their preferences…

Recently the Peru State College Library (Nebraska) had an opportunity to use a special acquisitions grant to study the effects of removing librarian bias in one area of its collection. This study considers the use of the items selected for this grant by humanities faculty and compares their use with other items selected by both librarians and…

A study replicated a 1994 study, "College Students' Media Habits: A National Study." In the present study, Lithuanian university students' media habits relative to American students' media habits were gauged. A total of 1500 survey questionnaires were distributed to 7 of the 16 Lithuanian universities. Background biographical questions…

A study examined the status of hunter education in Georgia and the benefits of hunter education or "hunter safety" instruction as perceived by agricultural educators throughout the state. Surveys were mailed to a stratified random sample of 155 agricultural education teachers at middle, junior, and senior high schools throughout Georgia.…

This paper reports on a study examining what critical information in the Hazardous Materials Information eXchange (HMIX), a national electronic bulletin board sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is of value to local government officials who have a need for the information. HMIX has two…

Data for the Oregon Microcomputer Survey were collected in May 1989 via questionnaires for each of the department heads in a stratified random sample of 94 middle and high schools throughout Oregon. Designed to obtain information on the perceptions and reactions of the department heads to the status of microcomputers in their departments, the…

This study focuses on the growth of the library automation market from 1981 to 1990. It draws on library automation data published annually in the Library Journal between 1981 and 1990. The data are used to examine: (1) the overall library system market trends based on the total and cumulative number of systems installed and revenue generated; (2)…

Research analyzing users' reactions to the implementation of automation and computer technology in the industrial and business fields indicates that users will respond more positively to these new technologies if they are adequately trained beforehand. To measure response in the academic sector, users' reactions to the local area network (LAN) in…