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This article seeks to understand the current state of the field of special collections library administration in the United States. Using a dataset gathered through publicly available information about special collections directors from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Independent Research Libraries Association (IRLA), and the Oberlin Group institutional members, the authors explore the educational backgrounds of directors, the types of positions they held prior to taking on their current roles, and the effect of gender on leadership advancement. This article also discusses the similarities and differences between institution types as well as promotions within institutions and across types of institutions.

The purpose of this article is to describe the scope and depth of the historic corporate annual report collections in twelve academic/research libraries in North America. For many decades, a few major academic business libraries have been collecting and preserving corporate Annual Reports (ARS), the reports sent to shareholders documenting the financial status and future plans of the company. Today these historic collections provide more than a record of the companies' finances; they provide a glimpse into the social and cultural thoughts from the past and the corporate stories of individual companies. Digitization of these reports has only just begun; so, except for fewer than 900 companies (most of which have been on the Fortune 500 list), the companies included in these historic annual report collections are not available electronically. The combined collection of the twelve libraries includes reports from nearly 38,000 different companies. Stanford, Harvard, and Western Ontario have the largest collections. Harvard and Columbia have collections with significant historic depth, while Purdue has a collection with important late-twentieth-century holdings. The overlap of the collections is much smaller than was anticipated. The two largest collections, Stanford with over 18,000 companies and Harvard with over 11,000 companies, have only 3,668 companies in common. The overlap of companies between the largest five collections is only thirty-three companies. This research identifies these collections as unique and therefore valuable to the study of specific company histories and the industrial development in North America. Librarians need to preserve these collections and work toward digitizing them.

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]

The article informs on strategies adopted by the University of Toronto Libraries for promoting digital primary source collections. Topics discussed include creation of conditions needed for knowledge sharing about digital primary source collections; promoting information resources to library users; and challenges faced by the Library in successful promotion of digital primary source collections such as metadata. It also mentions about making plans for library marketing.

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the relationship among measures of resource and service usage and other features of academic libraries in the USA and Canada. Design/methodology/approach – Through the use of a self-organizing map, academic library data were clustered and visualized. Analysis of the library data was conducted through the computation of a "library performance metric" that was applied to the resulting map. Findings – Two areas of high-performing academic libraries emerged on the map. One area included libraries with large numbers of resources, while another area included libraries that had low resources but gave greater numbers of presentations to groups, offered greater numbers of public service hours, and had greater numbers of staffed service points. Research limitations/implications – The metrics chosen as a measure of library performance offer only a partial picture of how libraries are being used. Future research might involve the use of a self-organizing map to cluster library data within certain parameters and the identification of high-performing libraries within these clusters. Practical implications – This study suggests that libraries can improve their performance not only by acquiring greater resources but also by putting greater emphasis on the services that they provide to their users. Originality/value – This paper demonstrates how a self-organizing map can be used in the analysis of large data sets to facilitate library comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information from a project that Simon Fraser University library implemented to assess its collection allocations. Describes how the university's collection building was consistent with the university's academic priorities; Examines the factors employed in identifying misaligned allocations.