Includes four articles that discuss a variety to topics, including a distributed network of physics institutions documents called PhysDocs which harvests information from the local Web-servers of professional physics institutions; the Dublin Core metadata initiative; information services for higher education in a competitive environment; and…

Describes the development of a curriculum-integrated and tiered instruction program over the course of five years at the University of Montana as well as the implementation of a Web-based assessment tool as a mechanism for establishing levels of information literacy. (Author/LRW)

Describes a study that examined the use of electronic mail reference service in three library units at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Highlights include patron demographics, question classification, and use patterns; and recommendations for further research. (Author/LRW)

Describes the planning, design, and service issues involved in the successful transition from a closed reserve collection to an open, self-serve reserve room. A questionnaire answered by 200 patrons revealed a high level of satisfaction with the new system, indicated a need for more photocopiers, identified reserve materials used most frequently,…

Explains conjoint analysis and its use in marketing research and describes an evaluation of reference services in academic libraries that used conjoint analysis to determine user preference regarding the importance of definitiveness of answer, waiting time, service time, number of items found, hours of available service, and cost. (Contains 13…

Describes the development of a Staff Creativity Lab at the University of Arizona library that was designed to help foster an atmosphere that encourages creative thinking by learning to use different microcomputers and new software and to develop new skills over networks. The selection of hardware and software is also discussed. (Contains eight…

Presents results of interviewing administrators, deans, and unit heads of budget departments of 20 public universities to determine each university's micropolitical budget strategy. Six propositions relating to budget strategies were identified; each is described with a summary of findings and a discussion of its relevance for library…

Southeast Asian Studies programs arose in American higher education after World War II, creating special problems for university and research libraries. The major problems were and still are acquisition and cataloging. The Donn V. Hart Southeast Asian Collection, founded in 1963, is unique in Illinois and contains 21,000 Indonesian; 15,000 Thai;…

Describes features of the INNOPAC Interlibrary Loan module and the procedures implemented by the library staff of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to make efficient use of the system. Patron-initiated requesting, staff requests, document delivery, statistics, and patron reactions are discussed. (LRW)

Discusses new partnerships created between the Government Printing Office and federal depository libraries to provide permanent access to the electronic files of agencies that have ceased operation. Describes one partnership with the University of North Texas to provide access to records of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.…

The 25 most popular free scholarly electronic journal titles, determined by number of holding institutions on OCLC, were searched on a random sample of library World Wide Web sites and catalogs to provide a separate gauge for access levels provided by institutions. Access levels were fairly low and decreased dramatically with size of the…

Discusses the plan for building an incremental, multi-year information literacy program at the University of Rhode Island. Reviews the current library instruction program and reasons for and methods of change. Discusses the development of credit courses in information literacy, creation of information literacy modules for specific disciplines, and…

Explains why student-athletes on college and university campuses are chosen as a special group for library instruction outreach programs. Gives a brief history of library instruction to athletes' programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, emphasizing the collaboration between the academic advisors of the athletes and the instruction…

Discussion of usability testing of Web interfaces for virtual libraries focuses on a usability study conducted at the University of South Florida. Highlights include testing instruments; discrepancies between actual performance and perceived performance; and the need to use plainer language and less jargon. (LRW)

Discussion of aggregator databases focuses on a project at the Hong Kong Baptist University library to integrate full-text electronic journal titles from three unstable aggregator databases into its online public access catalog (OPAC). Explains the development of the electronic journal computer program (EJCOP) to generate MARC records for…