The changing environment of academic libraries in Pakistan demands new competencies for future academic librarians. This study defines and validates competencies for entry-level professionals keeping in view the needs of the next five years. Top-level library managers of selected universities and post-graduate level colleges participated in the…

Over the past dozen years, the switch from paper to electronic sources of information has been all encompassing. How can technology support the efforts of scholars to find and evaluate information? General-purpose search engines use an obscure mix of advanced algorithms to index, search, match, and rank results. Metasearch software extends the…

All academic librarians can be easily convinced from studies and personal experience that the best way to help students learn lifelong research skills is by collaborating with teaching faculty. The author explores the need for this collaboration to be relational rather than circumstantial, with a long-term focus. She explores practical ways to…

Questions about the high prices of scholarly journals have grown in importance over the past several years, but they have assumed new urgency given the extremely tight budgets facing most universities today. In this article, the authors discuss the alarming increases in the cost of scholarly journals and the emergence of a concentration of…

In this article, the author provides a spirited defense of librarians' sometimes controversial role in public and legislative controversies over a wide array of topics including fair use, Internet filters, and digital rights to intellectual property. She argues that librarians cannot solve the copyright conundrum for their universities by…

Although many social sciences theories have been applied to the field of library and information science, one theory that has received relatively little attention is dramaturgy. The dramaturgical perspective posits that social life is inherently theatrical in nature. When applied to the academic library setting, both librarians and library users…

This article discusses and illustrates selected changes and trends in the way academic libraries are programmed and designed in response to changes in teaching techniques in higher education. The author draws particular attention to the new requirements for collaborative study in technology-rich spaces and makes detailed recommendations for those…

This article reports on the most recent search-engine company to join with academic libraries in digitizing large collections of books to make them easily searchable online. Yahoo Inc. has teamed up with the University of California system, the University of Toronto, and several archives and technology companies on a project that could potentially…

The authors used pre- and post-testing to determine if print workbooks helped to improve information literacy skills in 175 college freshmen. The results of the study demonstrate that workbooks remain a useful tool for academic libraries lacking resources or expertise to develop and maintain online tutorials.

In this article, the author, a Web development librarian at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, recounts how she initiated the implementation of a series of open source communication and collaboration applications for the Libraries' Web site and intranet, and how she gathered a number of tried and tested C&C tools that can…

Academic libraries are the cornerstones of universities in providing information resources for the students and staff of the university. Indirectly, they may be instrumental in the development of beliefs and attitudes regarding the employment of disabled people. In 1998, the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a study into the status and…

Storing and curating authentic academic literature and making it accessible for the long term has been a time-honoured task of national libraries. By guarding existing knowledge and facilitating its use to produce new insights, national and university libraries have formed an integral part of the research environment, complementing the roles of…

Digital technologies, combined with library expertise in information management and bibliographic control, access, dissemination and preservation, have provided new opportunities for academic libraries to play a more active role in the publication of scholarly information. Over the past decade a number of Australian academic libraries, drawing on…

Measuring website success is critical not only to the web development process but also to demonstrate the value of library services to the institution. This article documents one library's approach to the measurement of website success. LibQUAL+[TM] results and strategic-planning documents indicated a need for a new type of measurement. The…

The University of York is among the top universities in the United Kingdom, yet has not adopted all manner of electronic media. The University Library attempts to meet the demands placed upon it by its academic and student users for electronic media of all kinds, while working within a sometimes frame work that does not encourage exploitation of…