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Gifts and donations form an integral part of an academic library's existence, whether monetary or physical items. While monetary gifts are greatly valued, gift-in-kind donations of physical items can also contribute rare or unique items to collections. However, gift-in-kind donations also bring many challenges, as processing and evaluating physical materials can be time-consuming and labour-intensive; moreover, these materials may occupy significant amounts of space and ultimately may or may not add value to the library collection. Providing clear, publicly available gift and donation information can mitigate some of these challenges and help to set expectations for donors by giving a clear overview of the evaluation process and letting them know which types of material are of interest. The author reviewed donation-related webpages of twenty-one Canadian academic libraries to determine commonalities regarding library donation webpages. This analysis can provide practical assistance to librarians who are creating or revising gift-in-kind policies and procedures in Canadian academic libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries are increasingly using quantitative and qualitative research methods to assess the quality of their resources and services. This can include collecting survey data and conducting focus groups and patron interviews. While these forms of data collection are considered standard assessment tools, libraries already have a rich collection of data available to them through their suggestion boxes -- one of the most longstanding methods to determine how well your library is doing. A survey of Canadian academic libraries was conducted to gain some insight into the prevalence of the suggestion box, how libraries were managing them in their day to day operations, and whether the collected data was mined for any decision-making purposes. The authors provide recommendations on how libraries can analyze their suggestion box data to improve services and engage more effectively with their users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the development and growth of the Canadian Forces Virtual Library (CFVL), a collection of electronic resources for education and professional development available to military and civilian staff of the Canadian Department of National Defence. The CFVL aims to provide the maximum of depth and breadth of content within the special conditions of its environment: English/French bilingualism, secure military computer networks and a large, sometimes far flung organization with fanny remote or "nomadic" users. The Canadian Forces Health Services benefits from the most recent expansion with the addition of six health and medicine databases from Ebsco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers his thoughts on audio-visual archiving. He said that The Virtual Gromophone project enabled his group to make some of the National Library of Canada's 78rpm disc collection available through the Web. He said that he brought out the project not for his own benefit but to emphasize the need for institutions to develop their own audio-visual archiving system.