Health and educational leaders are sounding the alarm about the unhealthy condition of many students in America's K-12 schools. Each day, new scientific studies confirm that "The majority of American youth are sedentary and do not eat well. Sixteen percent of school-aged children and adolescents--or nine million--are overweight, a figure that has…

Living in the vast shadow cast by the spires of the Magic Kingdom presents special challenges for Orlando's Orange County Library System (OCLS), the most formidable of which is increasing its relatively small user base. The library additionally faces tension between the administration and staff, political strife on the board, and looming contract…

In this article, the author stresses the importance of welcoming preschoolers and babies into school libraries. She states that when read to from birth, a baby becomes used to the cadences and rhythms of spoken language, at the same time responding to the bright pictures and the presence of a loving adult. The baby associates books and stories…

Jennifer Duvernay, a science reference librarian at Arizona State University (ASU), feels it is very important to make sure that the information shopping experience is completely satisfying. "I'd like our students to choose to come to us because they have good experiences with us, trust us, and like us, despite [the availability of] plenty of…

Most librarians think literacy is an important goal, but Loriene Roy, an Anishinabe (Ojibwe) enrolled on the White Earth Reservation, knows it's a harder sell among America's two million Native Americans, who associate it with a history of forced assimilation and attempts to eliminate their language and culture. Considering most tribal schools…

Libraries have taken some major hits lately, again raising questions about how or whether libraries will survive a constantly shifting information landscape. The intrusion of the Web threatens to alter libraries in ways far different from those of past technological changes. Already the Web is affecting the very core areas of library services: (1)…

As most school districts do, the Groton Public School District of Groton, Connecticut, revises curriculum on a rotating basis. As both Director of Instructional Technology and of Library Media Services, this author has been responsible for driving the revisions of both these curricula. Previously these two concepts were considered separate but…

Innovations from Google[TM] and Amazon[R] are clear wake-up calls that as a profession and an industry things need to be done differently. Automation vendors and librarians must work together to ensure that the profession is positioned to take advantage of changing culture and technology to assume a rightful place at the table where rich and…

As technology is shaping today's art world, parallel changes are happening in the ways art book collections are identified and acquired. The purpose of this article is to identify the changes transpiring in the worlds of the artist and library acquisitions, and to evaluate the ways in which the changes effected by technological applications in the…

Information literacy has thus far been mostly a practical and strategic concept guiding the library field's efforts in teaching information seeking and using skills. Texts on information literacy rarely attempt to account for how individuals interact with other people and technical artifacts in their information environments. This article…

The activities surrounding the National Digital Library Program (NDLP) at the Library of Congress (1995-2000) are used to study institutional processes associated with technological innovation in the library context. The study identified modalities of successful innovation and the characteristics of creative decision making. Theories of social…

Archaeologists have used material artifacts found in a physical space to gain an understanding about the people who occupied that space. Likewise, as users wander through a digital library, they leave behind data-based artifacts of their activity in the virtual space. Digital library archaeologists can gather these artifacts and employ inductive…

The Oklahoma Department of Libraries (ODL) launched Oklahoma's statewide database program in 1997. For the state's academic libraries, the program extended access to information, increased database use, and fostered positive relationships among ODL, academic libraries, and Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE), creating a more…

In recent years, many higher education institutions, from liberal arts colleges to major research universities, have integrated their information technology (IT) and library organizations. Still more institutions are actively exploring the possibility of doing so. Their reasons for combining the separate organizations range from positioning the…

In the 1950s, the State of Florida led the way in developing a national model for the development of the junior or community college system. The "Brown vs Board of Education" Supreme Court Decision impacted the segregated system and during the 1960s, Florida's 12 black junior colleges were merged with pre-existent majority campuses. This…