Student success is influenced by their ability to access, evaluate, and use resources. Traditionally, academic librarianship has provided students with these information literacy skills. The increase in distance learning options has created the need for libraries to provide both reference services equitable to those available onsite and access to…

Library Web sites must compete against easy-to-use sites, such as Google Scholar, Google Books, and Wikipedia, for students' time and attention. Library Web sites must therefore be designed with aesthetics and user perceptions at the forefront. The Music and Performing Arts Library at Urbana-Champaign's Web site was overcrowded and in much need of…

Purpose: The paper aims to study how the present distance learning libraries can improve upon their existing services and introduce new ones to enhance quality of services to distance learners. Design/methodology/approach: The paper includes a review of literature on quality assurance in open and distance education in general and student support…

This paper presents the full results from a 2008/2009 research study examining the application of a "learning environment" paradigm to the school library setting. The preliminary results from the examination of the Fifth Grade science classes were presented at the IASL 2009 Research Forum. We now report the process of completing our…

A report of findings from a content analysis of 191 course-related research assignment handouts distributed to undergraduates on 28 college campuses across the U.S., as part of Project Information Literacy. A majority of handouts in the sample emphasized standards about the mechanics of compiling college research papers, more so than guiding…

This article reports the findings of a survey examining the current performances of libraries. The libraries that were surveyed this year reported a solid performance in 2005, with a budget growth of 4.7 percent. For the next fiscal year, libraries predicted a 5.5 percent increase in budgets which exceeded the inflation. Many of them, however,…

A challenge for school libraries is the identification and management of electronic and paper resources that teachers and students need. Courtenay Middle School, on Vancouver Island, has begun to assemble collections of mediated online links, in addition to the traditional paper and video resources, and to ask fundamental questions related to…

User involvement in information services is a contentious issue. This article explores the participation of patrons in libraries, archives and records centres. It reviews the causes of this change, and discusses the consequences for the information profession. The article notes the constants in information environments, and concludes by suggesting…

This paper examines the problems involved in subject retrieval from full-text databases of secondary materials in the humanities. Ten such databases were studied and their search functionality evaluated, focusing on factors such as Boolean operators, document surrogates, limiting by subject area, proximity operators, phrase searching, wildcards,…

Late last year, Ohio State University (OSU) library director Joseph Branin graciously invited this author to visit for an up-close look at the William Oxley Thompson library renovation and construction project underway on his campus. He eagerly accepted. Since 2001, when he first began reporting on the project, he has been amazed by the plan, its…

The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) began as a research project funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Microsoft Research and creates a digital library of outstanding children's books from all over the world (http://www. childrenslibrary.org). The project…

Hearing some fun facts about books and authors can bring books to life and help ignite students' interest in books and reading. Because most elementary school media centers and public libraries have many of the Newbery Medal books, students will have a better chance of finding books they decide they want to read once they hear about them. Reading…

This paper analyzes librarians' reactions to the Open OCLC WorldCat. A detailed survey was sent to ARL libraries to explore what, if anything, the libraries are currently doing to prepare for these changes and how they plan to cope with the probability of having all their records open to the whole world. Survey findings indicate that most of the…

These Guidelines constitute the third edition of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) "Multicultural Communities: "Guidelines for Library Services." This revision follows the IFLA Section of Library Services to Multicultural Populations' "2006-2010 Strategic Plans": to review and revise the…

This study sought to better understand search performance using an online portal containing a collection of heterogeneous library resources for K-12 students. Search performance is examined in terms of search success, search time, strategy, and effort. This study revealed unsuccessful searches tended to take longer than successful searches;…