Without question, the ongoing transition from print to electronic periodicals has challenged librarians to rethink their strategies. While some effects of this change have been immediately apparent--greater breadth of material, easier access, exposure to new sources, publisher package deals, and open access--the broader outcomes on library…

As libraries experience changes in their environment, communicating to stakeholders about the changes as well as the library's mission, strategies, and responses to the changes is critical. Such communication serves well to inform how the change management integrates with the mission of the library so that stakeholders have a shared understanding…

Purpose: To share the experiences in data migration of the KFUPM Library with libraries planning to move from legacy systems such as DOBIS/LIBIS to third-generation systems. Design/methodology/approach: A detailed analysis of DOBIS/LIBIS data structure, data extraction, including data mining, and data conversion of bibliographic, non-bibliographic…

Purpose: To discuss the issues and challenges of digital preservation facing institutional repositories and to illustrate the Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) view on institutional repositories and its key initiatives in helping UK institutions address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: A combination of published work and JISC…

Purpose: The paper seeks to record the work of the committee and its interaction with the much better known Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme. It also examines the principles that underlay the development of content acquisition and supporting infrastructure in UK university libraries in the 1990s. Design/methodology/approach: A historical…

Pornography has become part of mainstream culture. As such, it has become a subject of academic research, and this, in turn, has implications for university libraries. Focusing on adult Internet pornography, this study suggests that academic libraries should provide access to adult pornographic Web sites by including them in their online catalogs.

Questionnaires and computerized observations were used to measure purposes for visiting the academic library and uses made on its workstations. The research was done among 1004 users in Israel. The findings show that non-library uses are the major activity on academic library workstations and that libraries with large number of workstations are…

Cataloging and catalogers play an important role in the access to electronic catalogs for users at all levels. Two recent studies investigating the preparation of entry level library media specialists and the frequency they perform original cataloging led to a larger examination of the topic in the context of academic libraries. One factor has…

This article summarizes the approaches taken by the Washington State University Libraries in an ongoing partnership with the WSU Athletics Department. Library instruction and liaison relationships, the libraries' presence at game day events, the involvement of the libraries' development director, and a multi-part advertising campaign tied to the…

The author argues that there is a need to reassess the direction of the academic library and the working practices of the staff within it to reclaim our libraries for their users and to examine the epistemology of library and information services. He argues that in order for academic libraries to find their place in the tertiary education culture…

Many academic librarians use online information literacy tutorials as an alternative or a supplement to in-class library instruction. Tutorials created with streaming media software such as Camtasia Studio have become increasingly popular. Librarians at a mid-sized Midwestern university have created several such tutorials demonstrating various…

In the past decade, academic libraries have struggled with the design of an effective library home page. Since librarians' mental models of information architecture differ from those of their patrons, usability assessments are necessary in designing a user-centered home page. This study details a usability sequence of card sort and paper and…

The desire to investigate similarities and differences of Australian and US academic library professional librarian jobs motivated this paper. Job advertisements were gathered in August, September and October 2004. They are a subset of those reported in earlier studies which are more general in scope; this paper focused on the job market's…

The Council on Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) libraries websites were assessed for Section 508 errors using the online WebXACT tool. Only three of the twenty-one institutions (14%) had zero accessibility errors. Eighty-six percent of the COPLAC institutions had an average of 1.24 errors. Section 508 compliance is required for institutions…

Librarians often cringe when they hear the word copyright, when it is combined with electronic reserves the immediate impulse is to run away as far and as fast as possible. This paper presents the process used by the Armacost Library staff at the University of Redlands to develop and implement a copyright policy for the electronic reserve…