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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) repository as a subset of local institutional digital repositories. The paper discusses the originating institutions and organizations including Virginia Tech Initiative, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the United States Department of Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2010, two researchers interviewed twenty-three library administrators of comparable academic libraries at American universities for their views of the value of research in academic libraries. The interview questions focused on the administrators' perceived value of academic librarians' research, incentives given to academic librarians to research, factors that influence the administrators' thinking about academic library research, opinions about the changes in Americans libraries in the past decades, and directions that they see the academic library heading. This paper reflects the answers of these (anonymous) administrators and attempts to analyze patterns in their responses that will be of value to the academic library and its community in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the opening hours of 50 randomly selected university libraries (UL) in Austria, Germany, Canada and the USA. The aim of this analysis is to identify possible influences on the extent of the opening hours. Potential influencing factors that we consider are library size and country (state) or linguistic area in which a library is located. The results of the analysis show that larger UL and UL that are located in the United States tend to be opened longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper reviews historical changes and trends in undergraduate libraries in the US since the 1990s, focusing on the contents of services provided, and examines how the concept of 'undergraduate library service' has changed in the US. Methods: First, through an extensive review of the literature, important discussions or assertions on changes in undergraduate libraries are systematically enumerated. Second, 23 universities having their own undergraduate libraries in 2009 were selected, and their services were surveyed by examining their websites and documents published about the undergraduate libraries. Third, a detailed case study was performed for four universities in which the undergraduate library had drastically changed and two universities that introduced a new undergraduate library in the.1990s. Results: The results show that the services of undergraduate libraries have: 1) become more integrated, 2) played a greater role in university education, and 3) become more sensitive to students' achievements. Also, library operations for the services have: 1) become more collaborative within the library system, and concurrently 2) become more collaborative with faculty members and campus's units. On the other hand, the concept of undergraduate library services has changed from "services within libraries exclusively used by undergraduate students in research universities" to "services for undergraduate students provided totally by the whole library system". More recently, services have become recognized as an important activity to be executed by the whole university, not only the library, through effective collaboration among departments involved in the education of undergraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]