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The document provides information on East Asian libraries in North American institutions for the fiscal year 2022-2023. It includes data on physical and electronic collections, fiscal support, staffing, and public services. The document highlights specific collections and acquisitions at certain institutions and mentions challenges faced by some libraries. It also provides contact information for libraries conducting research on East Asian studies. The document offers a comprehensive overview of the East Asian library collections and resources available at these institutions. [Extracted from the article]

As libraries, archives, and museums make unique digital collections openly available via digital library platforms, they expose these resources to users who may wish to cite them. Often several URLs are available for a single digital object, depending on which route a user took to find it, but the chosen citation URL should be the one most likely to persist over time. Catalyzed by recent digital collections migration initiatives at Indiana University Libraries, this study investigates the prevalence of persistent URLs for digital objects at peer institutions and examines the ways their platforms instruct users to cite them. This study reviewed institutional websites from the Digital Library Federation's (DLF) published list of 195 members and identified representative digital objects from unique digital collections navigable from each institution's main web page in order to determine persistent URL formats and citation options. Findings indicate an equal split between offering and not offering discernible persistent URLs with four major methods used: Handle, DOI, ARK, and PURL. Significant variation in labeling persistent URLs and inclusion in item-specific citations uncovered areas where the user experience could be improved for more reliable citation of these unique resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intriguing new opportunity for research into the nineteenth-century history of print culture, libraries, and local communities is performing full-text analyses on the corpus of books held by a specific library or group of libraries. Creating corpora using books that are known to have been owned by a given library at a given point in time is potentially feasible because digitized records of the books in several hundred nineteenth-century library collections are available in the form of scanned book catalogs: a book or pamphlet listing all of the books available in a particular library. However, there are two potential problems with using those book catalogs to create corpora. First, it is not clear whether most or all of the books that were in these collections have been digitized. Second, the prospect of identifying the digital representations of the books listed in the catalogs is daunting, given the diversity of cataloging practices at the time. This article will report on progress towards developing an automated method to match entries in early nineteenth-century book catalogs with digitized versions of those books, and will also provide estimates of the fractions of the library holdings that have been digitized and made available in the Google Books/HathiTrust corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the decline of budgetary allocation for libraries, information is being made available to wider audience through alternative means, such as digital libraries and online repositories. Increasing demand for certain print materials urge libraries to exploit open-source alternatives, which are highly advantageous for libraries with scarce financial resources and voracious demand from their users. An interview survey results justified the establishment of digital library service as both students and academics, amongst other issues, recorded their inability to spare time for accessing certain print collections. In this regard, like other libraries in the country, the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka has initiated digital library initiatives using freely available software. Amongst a number of open-source software (OSS) available to create and manage digital library collections, Greenstone and DSpace are being experimented for developing two different types of repositories. However, these two software have slight merits and demerits over one another. This paper scrutinizes those features corresponding to the needs of and challenges faced by the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL), which is in its initial stage of launching digitized collections representing both its academic works and local publications. The demand for unpublished works of students and past examinations papers is always high, hence, the Library is has started digitizing materials in demand and rare to find. This comparative analysis is solely based on experiences gained by the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two hundred twenty-nine health sciences libraries (HSLs) worldwide were surveyed regarding the availability of digital collections, evidence of the type of digital collections, level of access, software used, and HSL type. Of the surveyed libraries, 69% (n=157) had digital collections, with an average of 1,531 items in each collection; 49% (n=112) also had institutional repositories. In most cases (n=147), these collections were publicly available. The predominant platforms for disseminating these digital collections were CONTENTdm and library web pages. Only 50% (n=77) of these collections were managed by the health sciences library itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Medical practice today requires evaluating large amounts of information which should be available at all times. This information is found most easily in a digital form. Some information has already been evaluated for validity (evidence based medicine sources) and some is in unevaluated form (paper and online journals). In order to improve access to digital information, the School of Clinical Medicine and Research at the University of the West Indies and Queen Elizabeth Hospital decided to enhance the library by offering online full text medical articles and evidence based medicine sources. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the relative value of online journal commercial products available for a small hospital and medical school library. Methods: Three reference standards were chosen to represent the ideal list of core periodicals for a broad range of medical care: 2 Brandon/Hill selected lists of journals for the small medical library (BH and BH core) and the academic medical library core journal collection chosen for the Florida State University College of Medicine Medical Library. Six commercially available collections were compared to the reference standards and to the current paper journal subscription list as regards to number of journals matched and cost per journal matched. Ease of use and presence of secondary sources were also considered. Results: The cost per journal matched ranged from US $ 3194 to $ 81. Because of their low subscription prices, the Biomedical Reference Collection and Proquest products were the most cost beneficial. However, they provided low coverage of the ideal lists (12 - 17% and 21-32% respectively) and contained significant embargoes on current editions, were not user friendly and contained no secondary sources. The Ovid Brandon/Hill Plus Collection overcame these difficulties but had a much higher cost-benefit range while providing higher coverage of the ideal lists (14-47%). Conclusion: After considering costs, benefits, ease of use, embargoes, presence of secondary sources (ACP Journal Club, DARE), the Ovid Brandon/Hill Plus Collection was the best choice for our hospital considering our budget. However, the option to individually select our own journal list from Ovid and pay per journal has a certain appeal as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the Online Computer Library Center's (OCLC) Open WorldCat program. WorldCat is a worldwide union catalog created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 member institutions. Open WorldCat seeks to make library collections and services visible and available through popular search engines such as Yahoo! and Google and other heavily used sites on the open Web. In this capacity, Open WorldCat provides an important central connection between the shared information of the library network and the Web. The article describes the history and rationale of the project; explains how Open WorldCat works for information seekers, participating libraries, and partners; and reports on what OCLC has learned from the program to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ponders what the library of the future might look like. Researchers Raj Reddy and Michael Shamos at Carnegie Mellon University who are developing a universal library that can be accessed via the Internet; Research projects being funded by the federal Digital Libraries initiative; Challenges; Mention of a collection of maps available from the Alexandria Digital Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara. INSET: Taming MEDLINE with concept spaces.