This article reports the results from a national survey of experiences in postsecondary education of students with visual impairments in gaining access to textbooks. Participants were members of listserves sponsored by the student affiliates of the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind. While the majority of…

This article discusses the importance of designing a library media center that engages students in constructing new knowledge. The author describes the planning stages of a new library facility. In the early planning stages, the author focused on the expectations of the administration. She soon realized that they had included all the…

As America entered the information age, libraries were no longer being pictured as a vital part of family life. Instead, technology became the critical resource for a middle-class family. In addition, state and national accountability and assessment initiatives forced school library media specialists (SLMSs) to demonstrate that the school library…

While the need for a data retention policy is rapidly becoming clear to schools, little guidance is available for crafting one. Most schools depend on backup and recovery plans that generally focus on individual servers or devices. However, retention policies also need to focus on the type of data contained on those servers and how it will be…

The study describes the methodology of a comparative citation analysis, discusses the results of its application to the analysis of published works and student theses at a single research university and evaluates the findings as a background for the management of a university library collection.

Promoting services is a conundrum for any organization. This is especially true for an academic library promoting distance library services. Systems thinking, process mapping, team learning, and diffusion of information practices offer ways of thinking about promoting services that help those involved find novel ways to approach promoting distance…

From the ascendance of the reference database and web sites offering endless opportunities for cyber-promotion to the crowds swarming through the doors to avail themselves of new computers, the Internet has transformed the way public libraries do business. That is not news. What is exciting, though, is how the Internet continues to change public…

For years, patrons have been able to access library services from home and in the library building, but in the world of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, library web sites and catalogs are too often not the first place people go to look for information. The innovative use of toolbars could change this. Toolbars have been popular for…

As blogging software has grown increasingly user-friendly, many libraries are employing blogs to make their web presence as inviting and interactive as their bricks-and-mortar counterpart. Libraries are reaping the rewards, too: well-written, frequently updated public blogs help librarians relate to their patrons, generate support for new building…

This abstract covers the breadth of higher education activities in North Carolina in their quantitative aspect, from simple counts of enrollment and degrees conferred to complex analyses of the flow of student transfers among institutions. Collected and published annually, this wide range of information should be useful to members of the public…

In this article, the author calls for librarians to find ways to implement technology projects with very limited budgets and to consider all the cost components of a technology project amidst the economic pressures. The author offers some perspective on what is involved in trying to accomplish important work with limited resources while…

Citation and print journal use data have been used to measure quality and usefulness of library journal titles. This study examined relationships among different measurements and found that electronic usage correlates with print usage and that local citation data are a valid reflection of total journal usage but Impact Factors are not as valid.

In this study, the staff of the library at Auburn University at Montgomery analyzed circulation patterns for electronic books in the fields of Political Science, Public Administration and Law to see if favorable "Choice" reviews can be used to predict usage of electronic books. A comparison of the circulations between print and…

Purpose: To examine and discuss the features of library portals and suggest further development of these research tools. Design/methodology/approach: The two categories of library portals (horizontal or public, and vertical) were examined to establish the characteristics of some of the portal software available in the marketplace. The study…

When properly utilized, the Internet can transcend the limitations of physical space, supporting the freedom of imagination and information on which the library profession is founded. The software described in this article (WebCalender, Dynix, Mambo) can benefit libraries by allowing their patrons to take full advantage of today's technologies.