In this article, the author talks about the concept of school library as a place of learning for students. He contends that a school library must be conceived in terms of three aspects. First, it should have a creative school library media specialist to lead the principal through a meaningful vision of what the library could be in terms of…

Electronic performance support system (EPSS) technology provides a powerful mechanism for helping end-users operate complex systems. This article describes and discusses some research we have undertaken to explore their potential within academic library systems. Based on a needs analysis, an EPSS for supporting library users was designed and…

Getting kids excited about the library isn't as difficult as media librarians think. All it takes is giving them some control. They'll be surprised at how quickly their attitudes change once they let them play a role in everything from programming and technology to book selection and design. It may take some getting used to, but listening to what…

The primary role of any library is to provide resources and services for its patrons, and school library media centers are no exception. Most of the time, library media specialists think of patrons only in terms of students and faculty. However, there are a variety of ways library media specialists can expand influence and increase support from…

The author's middle school has created a mediated set of electronic learning resources designed to more effectively meet students' research needs. These research strategies help students with a variety of reading skills and allow students, and their teachers, to focus on higher-level thinking activities because the resource collections provide…

Twenty-three scholarly papers and twelve abstracts comprise the content of the eleventh annual Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, held at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The peer-reviewed proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the symposium, portray the contemporary and future face of…

The Arts Libraries Society of Australia and New Zealand (Arlis/ANZ) recently implemented a new web presence. More than just a website, it was envisaged as a web "identity", a virtual clubhouse where the Society could conduct its "virtual business" and where members could "meet" and contribute to the activities of…

Academic librarians are challenged with development and maintenance of collections of research materials in various formats. Although it is assumed that they are monitoring the needs of their constituencies as a part of the collection management decision-making process, the literature reflects only a few studies that focus on direct solicitation…

With all the new advances in library technology--including metadata, social networking, and Web 2.0, along with the advent of nonlibrary and for-profit digital information companies like Wikisource and Google Print--librarians have barely had time to reflect on the nontechnical implications of these innovations. They need to take a step back and…

This article talks about the author's experiences as a school librarian in meeting the accelerating demands for student's learning and achievement. School librarianship has definitely changed in the accelerating school universe since the publication of "Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" in 1988. That…

This article addresses graphic novels and their growing popularity in academic libraries. Graphic novels are increasingly used as instructional resources, and they play an important role in supporting the recreational reading mission of academic libraries. The article will also tackle issues related to the cataloging and classification of graphic…

This article examines the results of a survey sent to Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Special Collections requesting information on outreach to K-12 students. Over half of the respondents work with K-12 and many of those who currently do not are planning to. New pressures and changing philosophies contribute to this trend.

In this article, the authors discuss ways one can create a digital library on a shoestring despite the current high technology costs. Here, they describe the University of South Carolina's digital library development. The cost associated with building and maintaining the digital collections seems to have been worth it based on the feedback that…

This paper summarizes the history of privacy as it relates to library records. It commences with a discussion of how the concept of privacy first originated through case law and follows the concept of privacy as it has affected library records through current day and the "USA PATRIOT Act."

Purpose: This paper seeks to look into Gabriel--the Worldwide web server for those European national libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), providing a single point of access on the internet for the retrieval of information about their functions, services and collections. Above all, it serves as a gateway…