Western fiction is unique among the major fiction genres recognized by public libraries (which would include romance, mystery, and sf) in that it is defined principally by its physical setting--the American West (usually anywhere west of the Mississippi River) and in particular the frontier territories of the 19th century. The popular conception…

Academic libraries support their universities' goals of developing and maintaining successful research programs. As the information landscape and researcher practices change, recognition of the library's role in supporting research may be diminishing. This article will explore some aspects of the academic research enterprise and identify…

For the August/September 2010 issue of "Library Technology Reports" (LTR) published by the American Library Association Techsource division, the author and her colleague, Rachel A. Fleming-May, focused on use and usage, both of electronic resources and use of libraries in general. In this article, the author discusses a few of the findings from an…

In spite of nationwide budget cuts, the potential of school libraries to positively impact student achievement has never been higher. Schools cannot afford to do without strong school library programs. It is the professional responsibility of librarians to fight for their programs, using warrior tactics to survive and thrive through tough economic…

The re-envisioning of libraries as information leaders in higher education requires an examination of the decisions made in the acquisition and adoption of library technology. The Critical Theory of Library Technology offers a framework for viewing technology decisions through a social, economic and political perspective. This paper uses the…

Collection development for commercial online resources can be difficult without established standards, such as those librarians have for books. Using the Carnegie Classification System can be a good tool for generating a list of comparable universities to discover what they subscribe to. Librarians at the Paul Meek Library at the University of…

Situations arise almost every day of a reference librarian's working life in which a student (or a professor, a colleague, or a person off the street) asks a straightforward question that the librarian recognizes in a specific way. On the other hand, there are specific questions that come up fairly often and routinely lead to further queries. What…

With the purpose of designing a training program for a new team serving at a technology service point, the author analyzed the transactions log using a new, multi-faceted, taxonomy. The resulting list of competencies and the methodology would be useful for managers of information or learning commons. (Contains 5 tables.)

In this article, the author discusses the transformative power of care. In the interest of achieving some modicum of clarity, the author begins with a definition of the word "care." For each of the different school constituencies, there exist categories of actions through which educators demonstrate care. Broadly, these categories include:…

In "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture" Henry Jenkins defines participatory culture as having "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing with others, and informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices. Members believe their…

Attempts to assess the influence of the web upon our intellectual and imaginative capacities have resulted in a steady stream of commentary and debate. Although the subject has been approached from a variety of perspectives, the analyses often share a lexicon of transformation, of upheaval, of the unprecedented or the inexorable. This can be true…

Literature on library service models is scarce and exists mainly in non-traditional formats such as blog entries and webpages. Nonetheless, the subject evokes heated debate among librarians with many supporting the model they are using, sometimes without understanding that there are other options which perhaps could be better for their…

Academic, government, and corporate librarians organize and leverage internal resources and content through institutional repositories and library catalogs. Getting more value and usage from the content they license is a key goal. However, the ever-growing amount of content and shifting user demands for new materials or features has made the…

Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

This paper examines the idea, commonly expressed in the Library and Information Services (LIS) literature, that public libraries have a growing role as developers of social capital, and brings to bear some of the growing body of research into public libraries and social capital. It reviews definitions of social capital by writers outside the LIS…