This SPEC kit is based on a June 1987 survey of approval plan use by 94 members of the Association of Research Libraries. It reports on the current practices of these libraries, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using approval plans, and the effect of increased library materials costs and library automation on such plans. It is noted…

Discussion of cooperative activities among libraries focuses on cataloging of Latin American materials among research libraries. Differences in motivation for cooperation in acquisitions and in cataloging are discussed; and a study is described that examined which libraries were providing online cataloging, and differences between OCLC and RLIN…

In 2002, the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee commissioned the National Library of Australia to analyse the uniqueness and overlap of Australian university library collections, comparing library collections in each state, using the National Bibliographic Database…

This article describes the current distance education environment for university libraries and the distance education library services for faculty and students. The authors surveyed selected Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members to determine current services and the changes in distance education library services since the 1996 ARL SPEC…

This manual describes the methods, procedures, techniques, and activities that were used to produce the Academic Library Survey of 2004 (ALS:2004). This manual is designed to provide guidance and documentation for users of the ALS data. Included in the manual are the following: (1) an overview of the study and its predecessor studies; (2) an…

Kids ask the darndest questions. And sometimes they ask them in the darndest places, including online information systems that were not designed to answer them. There is a reason for this continuing phenomenon, and an important lesson in it for school library media specialists and other educators. To understand the phenomenon at hand, imagine an…

Professionally, school librarians are faced with an explosion of choices--search engines, online catalogs, media types, subscription databases, and Web tools--all requiring scrutiny, evaluation, and selection. In turn, this support "stuff" forms a basis for making additional choices about how and what they teach and what they assess. Whereas once…

This package of statistics on Colorado's school library media centers (LMCs) is the product of the Survey of School Library Media Centers in Colorado 1994. There are three major components to this profile: (1) a 210-page complete tabulation of the survey's results, arranged by school level and enrollment range; (2) a set of tables reporting…

This report begins by noting that, in the interests of developing a vigorous and professionally active library faculty, a major goal of the James White Library (Andrews University, Michigan) is to recruit, retain and promote librarians who are highly self-motivated and have the ability to support the mission of the library. It then provides…

The topic of this Urban Libraries Council (ULC) Frequent Fast Facts Survey is library staffing. These ULC Frequent Fast Facts Surveys are not intended to be scientific studies of the library community but rather "snapshots" on topics of current interest. Further analysis of the results is suggested, and for that reason, the completed…

On July 1, 1991, the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Research Committee launched a pilot project to mentor academic librarians in their conduct of research. Since the mentors and protegees were potentially from all over the United States, the decision was made to mentor using the electronic conferencing capability of BITNET…

This how-to-do-it guide for Oklahoma public libraries to use in evaluating their performance defines the individual performance measures, explains the data collection and analysis procedures, shows example calculations, and discusses the analysis and presentation of the performance measures. The performance measures are presented in terms of the…

Designed for persons with no prior knowledge of statistics, this continuing education course syllabus presents basic information on methods of data collection and analysis in libraries. It is noted that emphasis is placed on concepts rather than mathematical formulas and on reasons for using particular techniques. Topics covered include problem…

This annotated bibliographic guide to basic reference sources for the study of the history of the United States up to the mid-20th century concentrates on the traditional disciplines of history, such as constitutional, diplomatic, economic and social history, and biography. Annotated entries appear in one of five sections of sources: (1)…

This paper reports the results of an investigation into the relationship between librarians' status (i.e., librarians having faculty status or librarians lacking such status) and the organizational structure of the college library. The analysis was conducted within the conceptual framework of two organizational models: the bureaucratic and the…