Members of the UWM CETL online and blended faculty development team share innovative technological and pedagogical strategies that they currently utilize to motivate and assist instructors in developing courses for the online or blended environments, and they discuss the lessons learned from incorporating active learning, open content, bring your…

As the digital environment continues to become more pervasive in our lives, academic libraries have had to adapt to ensure that services remain relevant to users' needs. Research was conducted to examine the 2009-2011 refurbishment at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Library and evaluate its success in meeting users' needs in terms of…

This article describes interviews with 40 elementary school librarians conducted by pre-service and in-service teachers. The purpose of the interviews was for education students to understand the responsibilities of the librarian, how the librarian might support them as teachers, and the future of the position in today's schools. Results suggest…

Many libraries have developed mobile versions of their websites. In order to understand their users, web developers have conducted both usability tests and focus groups, yet analytical software and web server logs can also be used to better understand users. Using data collected from these tools, the Ursula C. Schwerin Library has made informed…

A few articles have drawn some amount of attention specifically to the local causes of the success or failure of electronic resource management system (ERMS) implementations. In fact, it seems clear that local conditions will largely determine whether any given ERMS implementation will succeed or fail. This statement might seem obvious, but the…

This article explores the relationship between the perceived campus environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students at colleges and universities and how academic libraries have deployed GLBT-related resources on the Web. Recommendations are made for increasing GLBT-related materials and information in academic libraries.…

Many libraries have disaster recovery plans, but not all have prevention and action plans to prepare for an emergency in advance. This article presents the author's review of the prevention and action plans of several libraries: (1) Evergreen State College; (2) Interlochen Public Library; (3) University of Maryland, Baltimore-Marshall Law Library;…

College students have a tendency to become stressed from both their schoolwork and their personal lives. As the end of a semester approaches, the stress levels begin to rise for everyone. The procrastinators, the planners, and even those ahead in their work become tenser even with small problems, such as slow printers or an unavailable book needed…

Today's scholars face an outstanding array of choices when choosing search tools: Google Scholar, discipline-specific abstracts and index databases, library discovery tools, and more recently, Microsoft's re-launch of their academic search tool, now dubbed Microsoft Academic Search. What are these tools' strengths for the emerging needs of…

A critical part of electronic resources management, the electronic resources evaluation process is multi-faceted and includes a seemingly endless range of resources and tools involving numerous library staff. A solution is to build a Web site to bring all of the components together that can be implemented quickly and result in an organizational…

School librarians took notice when in 2009 Cushing Academy, a private secondary school in Massachusetts, transformed its library from a traditional facility to a digital media center. The library gave away most of its 20,000 books and bought 200 iRiver Story and Kindle e-readers. The school also sold to all of its 445 students a laptop to which…

The current ARL report summarizes a multi-year effort that captures evidence in the form of narrative profiles as it delivers the message of the value and contributions of research libraries during transformative times. When ARL library directors were interviewed in 2005 and asked to describe a research library in the 21st century, there was…

The perfect politician, the ideal political ally to a library, is often but not always an elected official. He or she is always an effective champion of "reasonable financial support," i.e., "the amount...which a thoroughly competent librarian can spend wisely." That is what J.T. Wyer, director of the New York State Library, said in his "What the…

Institutional repositories have been established by most university libraries but their level of success has varied. Determining what belongs in such repositories has been the subject of some discussion but research would suggest that a broader rather than narrower compass is a positive approach to adopt. By seeking out a variety of content types,…

Technology may not be a magic wand, but innovative technology programming can genuinely help children become adept at navigating our increasingly wired world while also helping them develop deductive reasoning, math, and other vital literacy skills. One of the simplest and most powerful tools for technology-based public library programming is…