The year's activities of the Cataloging and Classification Section of the American Library Association are reviewed and articles of special interest to the catalog librarian are given. (NH)

Podcasting is an innovative, asynchronous communication tool. A pilot study was conducted to assess the utility of podcasting as an educational tool for undergraduate medical students. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire was developed and distributed to the 40 first-year students enrolled in the francophone stream of the medical curriculum at the…

Developing an Open Access, multi-institutional, multilingual, international digital library requires robust technological and institutional infrastructures that support both the needs of individual institutions alongside the needs of the growing partnership and ensure continuous communication and development of the shared vision for the digital…

Despite the challenges of understaffing, unfunded legislative mandates, and tight budgets, district support services departments are still expected to meet school systems' myriad noncurriculum-related needs. But the very nature of these services, even when they are focused on school safety and security, is so diverse and labor-intensive that…

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs…

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…

Libraries are successful to the extent that they can bridge communities and can leverage the diversity of the quest, the research, and the discovery. By building bridges among various sectors, libraries will be able to define themselves in the next generation.

The South Carolina Information and Library Services Consortium (SCILS) began with three public two-year college libraries in 1995. Since then, nine other public two-year college libraries have joined SCILS. In 2004, Sirsi's buyout of Data Research Associates (DRA) in 2001 was the impetus for SCILS to migrate to Sirsi. Migration to a more dynamic…

Things are failing everywhere. A few years ago, several large companies disappeared almost overnight in a series of scandals. This year, the mortgage industry imploded. More recently, stalwart financial and insurance corporations have been dropping like flies. Failures happen on a smaller scale too. Recently, the all-caps word "FAIL" became a…

The conversion of catalog records to machine-readable form is described. The conversion system is outlined. Conversion costs and actual and contemplated results are listed. (Author/NH)

Emphasis is placed on the automation efforts of the Federal Library Committee's Task Force on the Automation of Library Operations. (MF)

The on-line acquisition program (LOLITA) in use at the Oregon State University Library is described in terms of development costs, equipment requirements, and overall design philosophy. (Author)