Search

Purpose The purpose this study was to determine currency of print health materials readily available in North Carolina public libraries, through a statewide assessment. Two subject areas were examined: health reference and diabetes. Design/methodology/approach In total, 30 randomly selected public libraries were visited and unobtrusive stacks assessments were completed. Some months later, the libraries’ websites were examined for collection development policies, and online catalogs were searched using the keyword diabetes to identify possible discrepancies and additions. Findings For visits, publication dates for reference books ranged from 1899-2014 and the average number of holdings was 10 (range 0-30). The most common reference item, the AMA Family Medical Guide (2005), was available in 6 of 30 libraries. In diabetes collections, publication dates ranged from 1983-2013; the average number of books was nine (range 0-26). The Atkins Diabetes Revolution (2004) was the most common, available in 9 of 30 libraries. Two-thirds of libraries did not have a collection development policy online. Catalog searches revealed 10 titles prior to 1983 and 18 titles (non-cook books) from 2014-2016. Practical implications The study found overall that print health reference books were outdated. In diabetes collections, there were also many outdated items. It appears that regular weeding to assure currency of print health literature is not taking place. Originality/value The study demonstrates that public libraries may not be providing optimal print health information. With unprecedented access, it is imperative that librarians in all types of settings aid in health literacy promotion by assuring access to reliable and timely health information.

Mbooks are open-access, digitized books freely available on the Internet. This article describes the Auraria Library's experience of loading brief MARC records for Mbooks into its online public access catalog and looks at some of the issues that arose from the record-loading project. Despite the low quality of the records, librarians in Auraria Library thought that loading them into the catalog was advantageous because of the rich content in the collection and because many of the records could be improved using the global update functionality in the catalog. Making the records available through the catalog, as opposed to merely linking to the entire collection from the Library's Web page, was considered to be valuable because of the aggregation a catalog provides and because the Mbooks collection helped fill gaps in the Library's physical collections. As more open-access, digitized books become available, libraries will need to plan and manage how best to provide access to them.

Digital collections, institutional repositories, open educational resources, open access publishing, and new forms of digital scholarship are all ways in which academic libraries are growing their collections from the inside out as well as making this content widely available to other libraries and users. This article will explore national and global trends in library-enabled publishing and content creation, focusing on the kinds of collections being published by libraries, the ways that metadata can bring these collections together for improved access, and the role of consortia in the process.

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.

Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a public state university with a commitment to Native American students (Hughes and Tsosie 2013). The university’s Cline Library strongly supports the values of academic excellence, student engagement, and student success. NAU is a unique academic institution because it has a Native student community population of 4%; according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2006 Native students at US universities averaged only 1% of the entire student population. As of 2016, the Native American population at NAU was 825 students. Compared to the overall student population Native students comprise about 3% of student growth. In 2005 NAU’s strategic plan defined a commitment to Native Americans and to “become one of the nation’s leading universities serving Native Americans.” This goal is currently under revision by the university’s Commission for Native Americans and the Vice President for Native American Affairs (Chad Hamill, PhD). What does this goal mean for the university? This is the only goal in the university’s strategic plan where a specific community is mentioned and highlighted as a priority. The institution’s commitment to serving Native Americans has a direct impact on the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates for Native American students. The university commitment to developing collaborative services and outreach programs to Native American communities and promoting engagement and appreciation of Native American cultures and tribal nations within the university and broader community is still a top goal (NAU Strategic Plan 2005-2010). Today over a hundred tribes from across the country are represented at NAU. A large portion of students come from the geographic region of Northern Arizona and New Mexico. Beginning in 2008, Cline Library sought out ways in which it could align its activities with the university's strategic commitment to serving Native Americans. Cline librarians and archivists work to support indigenous students, researchers, scholars, and communities through collecting and preserving Indigenous scholarship. In order to achieve the university’s commitment to Native Americans Cline Library needs a robust collection and services available for Native students. This paper will focus on themes that emerge from a critical analysis of the library’s collections and their work with American Indian communities. It will start by describing how the library applies concepts of critical librarianship and teaching and learning to collection development. The conversation continues with the critical role of librarians and archivists at Cline Library in supporting faculty and students. Finally, as an independent yet integrated department, the library’s Special Collections and Archives unit responds to the Native American community’s tribal concerns with the collaborative management of cultural materials in ways that balance archival theory and practice with access to sensitive information. The conclusion offers strategies to improve on existing efforts at Cline and ties together many of the themes woven throughout the article.

e-codices -Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland [Fribourg, Switzerland] 2005- http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en (Accessed 25 June 2015) [Requires a web browser, and Internet connection. Mobile app requires an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch running iOS 7.0 or later. Pricing: free.]In January 2005 a pilot project to digitize 130 medieval manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland began. The program was an initiative of Prof. Dr. Christoph Flueler at the University of Fribourg with the intent to digitize medieval manuscripts and make them freely available online to scholars and researchers through the Codices electronici Sangalleses (CESG) website (henceforth, "e-codices").8 Ten years later, with funding from multiple sources and the support of the Rectors Conference of Swiss Universities, the project has become part of a national initiative for widespread digitization. Scholars now have free access to 1,363 fully digitized manuscripts as part of a virtual research library of bound manuscripts dating from the fourth century to early modernity made available by fifty-seven libraries, churches, and private collections in Switzerland and abroad.The breadth and quality of material digitized and available in e-codices is a rich resource for researchers investigating varied aspects of manuscript studies such as textual transmission and criticism, paleography, liturgy, musical notation, iconography, and source studies. Users can search the virtual library by institution and manuscript shelf number or by person name to find high resolution, digital images of complete manuscripts. Each item in the library includes at least one detailed, scholarly description and accompanying bibliography related to the manuscript object.For music scholars, the significance of the collections available in e-codices cannot be understated. The manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gallen represent the largest set of digitized volumes-541 to date-and 92 of these feature musical notation. Within the digitized holdings are some of the most important primary source documents for early music notation. Digitized holdings include the Cantatorium of St. Gall 9, the earliest known complete manuscript with neume notation. Also online is Einsiedeln Stiftsbibliothek (Codex 121(1151)), which is the oldest complete extant neumed mass antiphonary and is a primary source for sequences by Notker Balbulus. Early modern additions to the virtual library include the Autographs of Jean Jacques Rousseau project featuring Rousseau's first handwritten edition of the Dictionnaire de musique.The design and functionality of the site by the Swiss-based IT company text & bytes GmbH is impressive. The company specializes in the digital humanities and in custom built web applications.10 In December 2014, e-codices Web Application 2.0 was made public, giving users a new search function, an improved viewer with seamless zoom, a user friendly metadata display, and improved PDF, print, and downloading functionality. The new application incorporates international standards for interoperability and adheres to the Text Encoding Initiative standards (specifically, TEI-P5) for electronic manuscript descriptions. In all, the v2.0 upgrade reflects the commitment of e-codices to meet the most current needs of digital scholarship and accessibility to resources.InterfaceThe home page of the site features a colorful banner cycling through manuscript images. More than a slideshow of beautiful illuminations, the twenty-one slides are linked pages for each of the e-codices subprojects providing collection overviews and project information.Below the banner, the page frame is separated into two columns. One column is a list of manuscript collections for the entire site. On the right, the smaller column contains news updates as manuscripts recently added, a quarterly newsletter, and press coverage for the site.Above the banner is a navigation ribbon with options for the user that remain visible on all pages of the site. …

The subject of this article is to analyze the national bibliography as a means for promoting the documentary heritage and providing access to it. It discusses various forms of the national bibliography as well as their potential for preserving the memory and ensuring access to documentary resources and their promotion. The article serves the purpose, by drawing on the analysis of foreign publications, of substantiating the idea that the national bibliography as a structured registry of the national publishing output may serve as a reliable means for promot­ing the documentary heritage. The article elaborates on the evolution of the notion and coverage of the national bibliography as well as its presentation to the public. The national bibliography was defined in the 60ies of the 20th century by joint efforts of UNESCO and IFLA. This definition underlined that the national bibliography must cover the nation’s entire published output. The notion of the national bibli­ography underwent some evolution, and in the 21st century the focus shifted towards registering electronic publishing resources alongside with solving the issues of presenting the national bibliography to the public. Previously, the presence of a bibliographic record in the national bibliography signified that the resource was available within the legal de­posit collection of the library, whereas at present the issue of having to register national information resources which do not belong to this collection is gaining persistence. Another significant issue in making the national bibliography a comprehensive reg­istry of the nation’s publishing output is the relation between the national bibliography and legal deposit. Successful and sustainable development of the national bibliography requires cooperative effort in creating and updating publication and factual data and ef­ficient communication with publishers and other suppliers of public information within the chain of legal deposit. This interaction substantiates the existence of the national bibliography as the all-reflecting mirror creating opportunities to cognize the national documentary cultural heritage and ensuring its promotion and access, The register of bibliographic and authority data of published documents helps preserve the cultural and his­torical memory; ensures dissemination of knowledge about historical and cultural events and their interpretation; and gives a panorama of the cultural history, the heritage of the traditional culture, prominent fellow-countrymen and national uniqueness. The analysis of websites of national libraries of various countries which are legal deposit receivers shows that some of them remind the publishers of their obligation to submit legal deposit copies in a laconic manner and some of them provide more information, e.g. types and quantity of legal deposit copies and terms of submission as well as give references to appropri­ate legal acts. Some of these institutions highlight the significance of legal deposit as a means of preserving cultural heritage and ensuring access to it for the general public and researchers. However, there is no clear message addressed to the integral and primary chain of the legal deposit system, the publishers, about their responsibility about the comprehensiveness of legal deposit and the publishers’ benefits from contributing to the preservation and access of the national cultural heritage. The article analyzes the transformation of the national bibliography from a printed list to a presentation of linked data. Digital and information technologies applied in publication pro­cesses and creation of new forms of disseminating data of national bibliographies contribute to promoting the national history and cultural memory. Broad access to national bibliographic data allows the general public creating new services and products. The precise definition of purposes of the national bibliography and its users could facilitate the shaping of the appropriate model of the national bibliography.

Public and university libraries have embraced placemaking theories to develop user-centric library spaces. Placemaking has largely been overlooked in the context of academic law libraries. This article explores the range of space planning choices available to law libraries as they downsize their print collections. The benefits of reimaging law library space using placemaking concepts are explained.

This essay and checklist document the exhibition Pageant of the Tsars: The Romanov Coronation Albums, held at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens February 16–June 8, 2013. The exhibition focused on the history of the Romanovs through the lens of the coronation albums of the tsars. Based on the collection of five of the seven coronation albums held in the Hillwood library, the exhibition was supplemented with objects from the museum and library collections, loans from other institutions, and electronic versions of the albums available on iPads in the exhibition and via the iBooks store. The show marked the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.

For information regarding the scope of this column., consult the headnote in the September 2012 issue. The dates of access for each review of an online source indicate the dates during which the reviewer was evaluating the resource. All Web sites were last accessed to verify availability on 1 November 2012. Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music. [London]: Academic Rights Press, 2012--. http://academiccharts.com/ (Accessed August 2012). [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Pricing: institutional subscription $2250 per year with unlimited simultaneous users; currently, subscriptions available for academic libraries only.] Until the launch of Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music (ACO) in June 2012, any project requiring the ability to extract and compare charting data for sound recording sales was a labor-intensive and often bleak prospect. Of course, Billboard data have long been available to some patrons via local subscriptions of print and microfilm editions and more recently electronically, including via the Billboard site and through Google Books, (1) while Cash Box holdings are more limited in libraries but now available online as well. (2) The Official Charts Company provides electronic access to a subset of British charting data via their Web site, (3) and dedicated scholars have compiled much charting data in books. (4) Users hoping to collect, compare, and analyze sales and charts data over time could certainly gather some of that information manually using such sources. but the introduction of ACO facilitates that work for the user, provides tools for analysis, and adds much more data than have traditionally been collectively available in library collections. ACO currently includes chart data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain, Australia, and Mexico from a variety of sources authorized by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. (5) Coverage dates and chart types vary by location. For the U.S. and Canada, Billboard data represent all of the included information, with U.S. singles going back to 1956 and U.S. albums to 1985 (with eventual album backfill to 1955), and Canada going back to 1996. U.K. data come from Official Charts, beginning in 1952. Media Control provides German and Spanish data going back to 1977 and 2003, respectively. Australian data come from ARIA (back to 1988), and Mexican data from Nielsen Music Airplay (back to 1999). In each of these areas, coverage generally differs for singles charts, album charts, genre charts, and so on. New data arrive weekly, although one provider has a short embargo before the data appears in ACO with an average of only about a week's lag time for the majority of the content. These data are presented as a searchable database with tools to create analytics that allow the user to compare charting positions by artist, title (singles and albums), countries in which titles charted, label, and more. ACO personnel come from backgrounds in electronic publishing and databases, with additional experience in the music industry, so they approach this project with expertise and enthusiasm; for example, they started Classical Music Library as one of the pioneers of streaming music for libraries. An advisory board made up of librarians and academics helps guide the development of the product and supplements this expertise. Functionality AC0's approach to controlled vocabulary mirrors the predictive search mechanism in Google and, as such, will seem familiar to many users. When one begins a search, potential results display just below the search box; the user selects the desired search term from the controlled list to populate the search box. 11 no suggestions appear once a complete name or title is entered, there are no data for that search term. The predictive results will include a combination of possible results types. For instance, a search beginning with "Elliott" will suggest Missy Elliott, Carol Elliott, Elliott Smith, William Elliott Whitmore, and others as artist searches, as well as albums and singles by each of these artists. …

The article discusses a newly-discovered collection of administrative documents and correspondence from the Russkii zagranichnyi istoricheskii arkhiv [Russian Historical Archive Abroad], which was active 1924–1945. The collection is housed in the Slavonic Library in Prague. It is important for both the history of the archive itself and the history of the Russian emigration. An inventory list of the collection is now available on the library's Web site.

Purpose The study aims to investigate the document selection rationale of library and information science students to satisfy their academic needs. Design/methodology/approach The descriptive survey design was used for the study using questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The collected data are analysed by frequency distribution and presented using charts and tables. Findings The results of the study reveal the preferences of Library and Information Science (LIS) students and hints what they want from LIS literature. A majority of students prefer books in comparison to journal articles as reading material. The survey revealed a high preference towards books written by authors from national origin than international authors. Similarly, students prefer books published by the national publishers than the international publishers. The findings further suggest that the affiliation of the author is a major factor, as the students prefer books written by authors from central universities more than those written by authors belonging to state universities or authors from industry. Further, students seem to be more impressed with the books written by LIS academics than the books written by practising librarians. Research limitations/implications One limitation of the study is that it was conducted in India, taking the case of LIS students from only two universities. To generalise the impact, similar studies should be replicated by taking a larger sample to gain a complete perspective of LIS students. Practical implications The findings of the study have both theoretical and practical implications. The theoretical understanding of the behaviour of LIS students will help faculty members to understand the selection rationale of students. The practical aspect of this study is that the findings will help the acquisition librarians to take informed decisions in collection building for LIS collection in their libraries. Originality/value Most of the studies available in LIS literature related to reading preferences, study the general aspects such as frequency of library visit, the favourite place of reading, the purpose of library visit, gender-wise distribution of library visit, and time spent in the library. There are very few studies investigating the document selection rationale of LIS students.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine whether aggregator packages might be appropriate to replace or supplement print collections in business and nursing, it aims to identify e‐book equivalents for print books acquired for an academic library's collections.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides a list of the library's acquisitions in two disciplines checked against e‐book aggregators' holdings. The comparison is analyzed and discussed.FindingsThe results confirm findings of a previous study showing that less than one‐third of print books acquired for this library's nursing and business collections have e‐book equivalents available from aggregators, so the aggregators' holdings do not strongly match the library's collecting profile.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study applies previous research to a different type of collection, and tests previous conclusions.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to assessment of the value of e‐book collections for academic libraries.

South Pointe Hospital is a community hospital that originally had few electronic resources available. This article describes how the library gradually acquired an electronic journals collection that started with just 2 titles and grew to a list of over 6000 titles including open access publications. The journals' online usage statistics were used to justify and increase the library budget, which enabled the library to purchase more titles as journal infrastructure software. Even though the collection had been created, it must be maintained and promoted; this article briefly discusses the need for education and promotion of the resources.

Over the past decade, participation in book discussion groups has blossomed. Libraries have experienced a similar growth in expectations from book club members about the services and resources that can be supplied. Working with book groups gives the library the opportunity to engage a large community of active and passionate readers. But there are challenges to providing these services. One of the great challenges faced in supporting book discussion groups is supplying enough copies of the book being discussed for each group member. In addition to the books, groups often are seeking author information, book reviews, discussion questions, and ancillary material to enhance their encounter with the book. The development of Johnson County's Book Club to Go Kits are part of a strategic direction to offer support to local reading groups and to build the community of readers. Here, members of the Johnson County (Kans.) Library discuss their response to readers' needs for book club titles and discussion resources. Virginia Hermes, who retired in 2007, served as readers' advisory specialist at Johnson County's Central Resource Library. Mary Anne Hile serves as collection development manager for the Johnson County Library, and earned her MLS at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Johnetta L. Frisbie is Johnson County Library's fiction development librarian, and holds an MLS from Emporia (Kans.) State University.--Editor The woman consulting her list of Book Club to Go Kits (BCTGK) has been here before. She stands in front of the shelves of bags, reviewing the titles her book club wants to read next and skipping over the ones already marked off. Planning ahead is easy because of the library's check-out period of two months with one renewal. Plenty of time! She can choose from among many types of books--biographies, chick lit, ethnic, literary, mystery, nonfiction, classic, young adult crossover, and men's interests. All readers can be accommodated. The large print copy required by one of her club's members is not a concern. Most of the kits have corresponding large print and audio formats for each title available in the library's collections. Will the kits provide good fodder for discussion.) This also is a guarantee. All of the titles chosen for kits not only contain themes and issues that lend themselves to good discussion but also have discussion guides included either in the book itself or available on the library's website. Actually, she learned how to conduct a book club in this very library. The library offers sessions on how to facilitate a book club, in addition to the How to Start a Book Club link on its website and book discussion groups, led by library staff, to join and from which to learn modeling. Is this book club heaven, or what? WHY BOOK CLUB KITS? WHY NOW? Oprah Winfrey re-energized interest in literature and book clubs when she started her book club in 1996. As a result, public libraries all over America have needed to respond to renewed popular demand for books appropriate for book club discussion and for how-to information about forming and conducting book clubs. In this context, the Johnson County Library staff reviewed its reader services for meeting the goals of its own strategic plan and addressing the Reading at Risk report from the National Endowment for the Arts (www.nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf). The library's strategic plan charges staff with providing convenient and personalized materials for patrons and had already itemized book club discussion kits as an objective. From this review emanated a literary plan, Cultivating Readers and Writers: Building a Literary Tradition. This plan has several tangible goals including more--and more innovative--literary programming, developing a Find a Good Book page on the library's website, and promoting book clubs. The BCTGK collection is one product of this plan. How does one start? The outcomes identified in the plan were for abstract ideas such as "Creation of a richer literary culture in Johnson County" and "Literature is a means to discussing more serious issues facing our community and our culture. …

PURPOSE: The research assesses the impact of online journals on citation patterns by examining whether researchers were more likely to limit the resources they cited to those journals available online rather than those only in print. SETTING: Publications from a large urban university with a medical college at an urban location and at a smaller regional location were examined. The number of online journals available to authors on either campus was the same. The number of print journals available on the large campus was much greater than the print journals available at the small campus. METHODOLOGY: Searches by author affiliation from 1996 to 2005 were performed in the Web of Science to find all articles written by affiliated members in the college of medicine at the selected institution. Cited references from randomly selected articles were recorded, and the cited journals were coded into five categories based on their availability at the study institution: print only, print and online, online only, not owned, and dropped. Results were analyzed using SPSS. The age of articles cited for selected years as well as for 2006 and 2007 was also examined. RESULTS: The number of journals cited each year continued to increase. On the large urban campus, researchers were not more likely to cite journals available online or less likely to cite journals only in print. At the regional location, at which the number of print-only journals was minimal, use of print-only journals significantly decreased. CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION: The citation of print-only journals by researchers with access to a library with a large print and electronic collection appeared to continue, despite the availability of potential alternatives in the online collection. Journals available in electronic format were cited more frequently in publications from the campus whose library had a small print collection, and the citation of journals available in both print and electronic formats generally increased over the years studied.

Throughout the 1990s, many academic libraries undertook major restructuring initiatives. In many cases, this involved merging a Government Documents Department with a General Reference Department. At the University of Oregon Libraries, a different approach was taken. Between 1998 and 2000, the Business Reference service and Map Collection was successfully integrated into the Government Documents Collection. With these three collections now available through one service point, many new opportunities have been created for enhanced reference services, library instruction, collection development, and outreach across campus and into the community. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service

Beginning in July 2002, the Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill underwent an 11 million dollar renovation. During three phases of the renovation, parts of the collection were inaccessible to patrons. In order to continue to make the library's collection available, library staff created a paging system. Patrons submitted requests for needed library materials using paper and electronic forms and library staff retrieved the requested items. The paging service was modified three times based on prior experience. Patrons were generally satisfied with the service. The renovation ended in December 2004.

PurposeProposes encouraging librarians to be more informed about the value of collection evaluations.Design/methodology/approachThree examples of collection evaluation methods (user‐centered evaluation, physical assessment, and specific subject support) are explored.FindingsMany strategies are available for evaluating collections, regardless of the kind of library or size of the collection. Evaluation allows librarians a more thorough knowledge of what already exists, what may be needed, and whether collection development goals are being achieved.Practical implicationsMethods of meaningful collection evaluation are shared so that librarians may create an evaluation that will provide useful information to them in their library setting. Implications for successful future collection management, financial resource management, and effective format selection are discussed.Originality/valueDiscussion that includes the “assessment of specific subject support” and “assessing and building specific subject collections” encourages librarians to recognize their major and minor collections, creatively assess those collection areas, and involve techniques or individuals who might guide them to specific subject materials.

Seeking to develop a better understanding of the collections they managed, and beginning a process of long-term planning, music librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) enlisted the assistance of the library's preservation administrator in assessing their collection's condition. This assessment gathered information about the collection's history and publication formats, circulation patterns, and preservation needs with the intent of generating a more complete picture of the collection's health. The data collected indicated directions the library should take to enhance the collection's management, and refuted long-held assumptions about the collection's preservation needs and the institution's ability to purchase replacement copies of damaged materials. The following article describes the project's planning and organization, reports on the assessment's findings, and proposes a series of recommendations to improve the cooperative preservation of our printed music collections. COLLECTION HISTORY The University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign's printed music collections began as an integral part of the library's main collection. Housed in the Main Library's stacks until 1944, the library administration moved the 15,000-piece collection of scores and books to the second floor of the Smith Music Hall. Within twenty years, Smith Music Hall's inadequacy as a proper library became clear. The collection not only filled all of the available space in Smith Hall by the mid-1960s, but it resided within locked, wire-caged shelving that lined the building's non-air-conditioned hallways. In 1969, the library administration relocated the Music Library's listening services and circulating collections, excepting the scores, to the newly constructed Undergraduate Library. Nevertheless, this solution also proved unsatisfactory; the scores remained in an increasingly cramped Smith Hall, separated from the listening and general circulating collections. In August 1974, the university dedicated a new music building, consolidating the library's collections and the public services operations into a new, purpose-built library within the new building. At this time, the library administration relocated many of the valuable, older materials to secure, climate-controlled conditions in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC). Those items not meeting RBSC's collection policies moved to a closed stack area within the new Music Library. Although this move did not represent a concerted effort to collocate all printed music materials published before a specific date, the identification and transfer of these items served to create a circulating collection consisting almost entirely of materials published after the early 1900s. The musical scores received substantial support in terms of physical treatment when compared to other collections within the library. This resulted, in large measure, from the forward thinking of personnel within the Music Library itself. Nearly every score is either commercially bound or pamphlet bound, and personnel in the Music Library received training on basic collection maintenance treatments such as tipping in loose pages and mending torn leaves long before most individuals within the University Libraries were so trained. Although the Music Library's staff actively participated in caring for the collection, there was no assessment of the collection's condition. The recently completed assessment project occurred, in part, because of the deteriorating condition of the older Dewey-classed materials. The most significant reason for doing so, however, was the appointment of the University Library's first full-time preservation administrator. Although the University Library supported the continuous operation of a small mending unit from its inception as part of the Roosevelt administration's Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the centralized preservation program is relatively young when compared to those of similar institutions. …

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.

In 2002, the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee commissioned the National Library of Australia to analyse the uniqueness and overlap of Australian university library collections, comparing library collections in each state, using the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) available through the Kinetica Service.

In June, 2001 the CITY2000 (Chicago In The Year 2000) Foundation donated 500,000 photographic negatives, over 500 audio- and videotapes, and office archives to the University of Illinois at Chicago. The collection represents an image time capsule of a major American city during the year of the millennium. Every class of individual, event of the year, and neighborhood was explored by 200 professional photographers and brought together in this unique archive. As part of its agreement in accepting the archive, the UIC Library committed to making the collection available at least until the year 3000.

Library of Congress managers and security officials collaborated on developing a comprehensive collections security plan in 1997. The plan serves as a blueprint for ensuring that the Library's collections (heritage assets) are safe and available for current and future generations. The plan identified four areas that must be satisfactorily addressed - physical security, preservation, and bibliographic and inventory control. The framework prioritizes protection across five tiers of risk and five collections cycles. Because the plan was developed collaboratively rather than being imposed from the outside, staff have considerable buy-in, a shared vocabulary, and an effective way to make the best use of limited resources.

As universities attempt to expand access to higher education through the establishment of distance centers, it is important that those distance students receive library services equivalent to those offered on the main campus. The author describes how Southeast Missouri State University is attempting to serve these non‐traditional learners through innovative techniques and resources. By making use of both subscription and freely available online databases, providing document delivery through the interlibrary loan department, recycling still valuable reference materials, and developing a list of recommended materials that each distance center should have available in its own collection, the library is fulfilling its mission to these students.

This selective bibliographic essay on government information on education available at the U.S. Department of Education, National Library of Education, describes a wealth of resources available in print, microform, and/or electronic formats. More specialized library resources-archival collections, expert staff-are touched upon. Emphasis is placed on information generated by the Department of Education or its contractors or grantees.

Women musicians were virtually ignored in the literature of Western music until their recent inclusion in standard reference sources and other publications. However, making these works available to the researcher becomes a challenge for library collection development departments, especially for small libraries unaffiliated with music schools that have only a modest music collection and budget. This paper offers guidance in developing a small collection of books on women in music that will complement the current collection and provide a more accuratehistory of Western music. Justification for building a collection on women musicians and an annotated list of recommended books are included.

Locating guidance for developing foreign language collections in academic libraries can be difficult. The author reviews strategies for applying the available advice to Spanish‐language literature collections, including trips to international book fairs, creating approval plans, and establishing lines of communication with faculty and students. While the availability of traditional development tools has diminished, new online resources have developed. A selected list of online resources is included. The article concludes by urging the incorporation of foreign language collections into the new formations developing in contemporary academic libraries, including digital libraries, links to digitization projects in other countries, full‐text CD‐ROMs, DVD video formats, and electronic text centers.

This article reviews the value of federal depository document titles, often underutilized as sources of research, and discusses reasons why many of them are worth cataloging. Several approaches to cataloging these titles to make them more readily accessible are profiled. The Adelphi University Library has devised a system, relying on Boolean logic and using an online public access catalog (OPAC), to choose which depository titles are worth cataloging because of their scholarly research value. This has resulted in the enrichment and expansion of the collection of readily available research titles and has contributed significantly to the library’s permanent collection development program.

The rich musical heritage and vital musical traditions of Brazil are the subject of increasing interest throughout the world. Contemporary popular musicians draw large and enthusiastic audiences in the United States, where knowledge of Brazilian music was long limited to the bossa nova of the early 1960s, heard in jazz interpretations by American musicians. The vitality of contemporary Brazilian music in the classical tradition is increasingly acknowledged as well, but a longer overview of music history in Brazil is more difficult to gain for musicians outside (or even inside) the country. A number of signficant stumbling blocks confront the researcher in Brazilian music. Only a tiny fraction of the musical production of Brazil in the almost two centuries since it achieved independence from Portugal in 1822 is available to scholars in American libraries. Of the vast number of musical scores printed in Brazil during this period, very few have been reprinted since their first publication. Bibliographical access to these scores is difficult, as they are not indexed in published catalogs of the holdings of the major collections. Library catalogs in Brazil will eventually be available as OPACs searchable over the Web, but most catalog information is accessible only as local card files. Bibliographies of scholarly work on music by Brazilians are few. Monographs on music published in Brazil commonly lack indexes, making their consultation difficult. A second edition of the most important reference work on Brazilian music, the Enciclopedia da musica brasileira, [1] has just been published, but from an extra-Brazilian point of view, the work has some liabilities, chief among them being the adoption of a single, integrated bibliography at the back of the volume rather than the provision of bibliography for each entry. Scholarship in Brazilian music by researchers from outside the country has not been extensive, which is perhaps not surprising given the low priority of lusophone language and culture in the United States, and even the most fundamental works in Portuguese are unavailable in English translation (for example, the writings of the modernist and nationalist Mario de Andrade). Three of the major music libraries in Rio de Janeiro are the Music Section of the National Library; the collection of the late scholar Mozart de Araujo, now housed at the library of the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil; and the Biblioteca Alberto Nepomuceno, the library of the Escola de Musica of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The Escola de Musica is one of the oldest continuously operating musical institutions in Brazil, having been founded as the Conservatorio de Musica in 1841. It was incorporated into the Academia de Belas Artes in 1855. The Conservatorio de Musica moved into its first purpose-built quarters in 1872. The change from imperial government to a republic in 1889 affected many of the cultural institutions of the empire, including the Conservatorio, which was replaced by the Instituto Nacional de Musica (INM) in 1890, with composer Leopold Miguez as director. The INM moved to the present location of the Escola de Musica in 1910, occupying what had formerly been the edifice of t he National Library. New construction, including a concert hall, was necessary, and the physical plant arrived at its present configuration in 1922. The institution has gone through various administrative changes over the years, becoming a part of the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro after the revolution of 1930. The university was renamed the Universidade do Brasil in 1937, and received its present appellation, the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in 1965. The library, named for the second director of the INM, composer Alberto Nepomuceno, holds significant special collections in addition to the resources used to support the teaching mission of the school, including numerous manuscripts of the important composer Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia. …

Terminai „knygų kolekcija“, „knygų rinkinys“, „fondas“ knygotyroje ir bibliotekininkystėje dažnai vartojami sinonimiškai, bet tam tikrais atvejais jų prasmės skiriasi. Knygų kolekcija in corpore įprasta vadinti istoriškai susiformavusį, nedalomą, istorinės, mokslinės ir kultūrinės vertės knygų rinkinį. Straipsnyje analizuojami knygų kolekcijos termino vartojimo teoriniai aspektai, Lietuvos ir užsienio bibliotekose susiklosčiusi knygų kolekcijų gyvavimo praktika. Tyrimo objektas – Lietuvos nacionalinėje, valstybinės reikšmės ir apskričių bibliotekose sukauptos knygų kolekcijos. Ištyrus jų pateiktį bibliotekų interneto svetainėse paaiškėjo, kad jose knygų kolekcijos in corpore specialiau neatspindimos, tad vartotojui rasti informacijos apie jas gana keblu. Iš viso šiose bibliotekose sukaupta 144 knygų kolekcijos in corpore. Vyraujanti jų grupė – asmeninės bibliotekos (137), institucinių bibliotekų yra septynios. Šiuo metu kolekcijų in corpore komplektavimas sumažėjęs, tai atliepia šiandienos bibliotekininkystės situaciją. Knygų kolekcijos in corpore dėl savo išskirtinumo tampa knygų paminklais, taigi toks jų statusas įpareigoja saugotojus elgtis su jomis kaip su ypatingos vertės dokumentų kompleksais – knygos paminklais. A book collection in corpore is usually used to describe a historically formed, indivisible collection of books having a historic, scientific and cultural value. Specialized research on this topic in Lithuania has been scanty, if any, with the exception of research conducted on acquiring and storing book collections in libraries as well as similar topics. The article aims at investigating the theoretical aspects of using the term book collection and providing the analysis of existing practices and trends with regard to book collections both in Lithuanian and foreign libraries. To achieve this objective, the following methods of literary analysis and empirical research have been used: analysis of library websites, expert survey, interviews with the library staff taking care of book collections at their disposal. The objects of research are the book collections in corpore, acquired and stored in the National Library of Lithuania, libraries of state-level and county libraries. The libraries which decide to store and preserve book collections in corpore, undertake a museum function, that is, the inherent function pertinent to a memory institution. This function is not characteristic of public libraries. However, it is among the core functions of the libraries having the national and state status. Based on the criterion of the former owner, collections in corpore can be grouped as follows: personal libraries (the libraries of outstanding statesmen, public figures, science and culture makers) and book heritage of various institutions (institutional libraries). It turned out that currently 144 collections in corpore are being stored in the National Library of Lithuania, state-level and county libraries, with personal libraries identified as the prevailing group among them (137). The seven remaining collections in corpore are institutional libraries. The analysis of the information available in library websites on the collections in corpore revealed that the material presented is rather scarce and the websites do not contain comprehensive information about the scope of the respective collections. Thus, the user’s access to information is rather restricted. Today, the acquisition of collections in corpore has been reduced in scope, reflecting the current situation in librarianship. The status of some of the libraries which have acquired a great many book collections in corpore (for example, Vilnius University Library) have to be reviewed. Having established whether we are dealing with a collection in corpore or whether it is merely a donated collection of books, we can integrate the books in question into the library holdings, marking book provenance indicators in a bibliographic description in the online catalogue. Due to their exclusivity, book collections in corpore are becoming book monuments. Such a status puts their custodians under an obligation to treat them as the sets of documents having special value, that is, as book monuments.

The Lindesmith Center is a drug policy reform research institute with both a traditional and a virtual library. The traditional library includes books, government and non-governmental organization reports, periodicals, and vertical files. The virtual library is a collection of over 150 full text documents organized into Focal Points and available in the Lindesmith website.

A review of: Gallagher, John, Kathleen Bauer, Daniel M. Dollar. “Evidence-Based Librarianship: Utilizing Data From All Available Sources to Make Judicious Print Cancellation Decisions.” Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services 29.2 (2005): 169-79. Objective – To apply the principles of evidence-based librarianship to the decision-making process regarding the cancellation of print serials. Design – Quantitative analysis of local and national data from various sources. Subjects – Data sources included 1249 current unbound print journals, 3465 Medline-indexed electronic journals, statistics from the Association of Research Libraries and American Association of Health Sciences Libraries, as well as traditional library statistics. Setting – The study was conducted in the Yale University’s Cushing/Whitney Medical Library located in New Haven, Connecticut U.S.A. Methods – Several sources were targeted for data. A three-month periodical usage study of the current issues of the library’s 1249 actively received print titles was undertaken. Excel-generated alphabetical listings of titles were used by shelvers to indicate, with a check mark, which issues were shelved during a specified week. The workflow was adjusted to ensure only items under study were counted. Signs asking patrons not to re-shelve journal issues were posted. Usage data were collected weekly and entered into an Excel spreadsheet where the total use of the journals was tracked. In-house circulation, photocopy, and gate count statistics were also used. In addition to the survey, SFX statistics for the library’s electronic journals indexed in MEDLINE (3465) were gathered during the same 3 month period covered by the print usage survey. MEDLINE was chosen as the delineating factor to ensure consistent subject coverage with the print journal collection. For perspective and trends, statistics from the Association of Research Libraries and the American Association of Health Sciences Libraries were considered. Main Results – Based on the study’s findings, 53% of the print collection (657 titles) received no use during the study period; 7.1 % (89 titles) were used more than once per month; and 1.28% were used one or more times per week. Further, only 10% (125 titles) of the collection represented 60.7% of the total print collection use. There was also a direct correlation between the drop in patrons coming to the library and the decrease in print periodical use. SFX statistics revealed that of the 3465 MEDLINE indexed titles 14.8% (513 titles) were not accessed at all and 10% of the journals represented 56.8% of all SFX usage. These results were consistent with statistics from the Association of Research Libraries and the American Association of Health Sciences Libraries. Conclusion – Titles that were used the most in print were also used the most electronically. Further, the study revealed that print journals are used only a fraction as often as their electronic counterparts. Indeed, in both the case of print and electronic journals the largest use came from a small number of subscribed titles. Print collection maintenance is more labour intensive and costly than electronic. Consequently, resources spent supporting 53% of the print collection that is not used seriously impacts efficiency. With constraints on acquisitions budgets, funding unused collections does not make sense. Examination of the print serial collection is only part of ensuring effective collections. As this study has indicated, unused electronic titles are also a drain on resources and further analysis of electronic packages is warranted.

Almost fifty years ago, when the organization that now is the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) was founded, university and research libraries were facing issues similar to those challenging them today: lack of space in libraries to shelve growing collections; new library materials formats to absorb into acquisitions budgets; more or more expensive research materials to which patrons needed access. In 1949, higher education looked for solutions in cooperative programs. CRL evolved as a unique endeavor-a program for cooperative collection development and a library that acquires and makes available essential research materials. CRL has endured because of its members' commitment, the gradual building of a unique, centralized library collection, and the organization's capacity to serve as a coordinator for cooperative decisions and implementation of programs. These strengths will support CRL into the future.

Describes the British Library’s new building and its collections, together with the timetable for making the services available to users.

Library 2020: Today's Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow's Library. Edited by Joseph Janes. Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow, 2013. 161 p. $45.00 paperback (ISBN: 978-0-8108-8714-5). Librarians, despite the inherently conservative nature of their role in the preservation of knowledge, spend a considerable amount of time looking forward. Joseph Janes, chair of the University of Washington's Information School and longtime American Libraries columnist, has brought together a variety of thinkers to answer the question, "The library in 2020 will be--." Participants were selected by Janes from among his friends and "some people [he] admire[s] a great deal" (v). The year 2020 was selected as being "far enough out that some exciting things might well have happened, but not so far out as to have to resort to shiny-jump suit and hovercar predictions left over from 1965 about 2000" (v). The selections are organized into six sections "along thematic lines. These sections include "Stuff," "People," "Community,.... Place," "Leadership and Vision," and Janes's own thoughts in a section titled "My Turn." Most of the selections blur these boundaries, but their placement accurately reflects the main thrust of each essay. The Annoyed Librarian opens the discussion with a dystopian image of a library world where collections are no longer available to lend. She foresees a future where e-book, video, and music licensing becomes so restrictive that distribution of these items is impossible. Kristin Fontichiaro follows by suggesting that "'libraries can no longer count on describing themselves as the repositories for stuff' (7). She goes on to describe an even more vibrant future in 2020 in which libraries are "makerspaces" where community members come together to learn from each other and create. The final two essays in this section echo these themes as Elisabeth Jones describes the effect of large-scale book digitization projects on the library's role as book warehouse and the changing role of librarians within this regard. Clifford Lynch reminds readers of potential barriers to access that these changes might entail as libraries shift to greater licensed and fewer owned collections. The second section deals with the most important resource in any library: people. Sarah Houghton suggests a future where libraries are staffed and managed by technologically sophisticated individuals whom she describes as "benign geek librarian overlords" (35). In his essay, Stephen Abram posits that "the library in 2020 will be everywhere" (41). He goes on to describe the changing roles of librarians as they spend more time delivering programs and providing individual assistance to patrons. He too emphasizes that the days of the library as book repository are at an end. Courtney Greene considers a wide range of possibilities, but comes back to what she considers "the enduring value of our work," which lies in "serving and supporting our communities" (53) regardless of how things might change technologically. Like Abram, Marie Radford sees the library in 2020 as being accessible from anywhere via mobile apps of increasing sophistication, and like Houghton she sees a need for librarians to become technological leaders. James Rosenzweig closes the section by describing his vision of the library as "an information base camp" and librarians as "guides" (63). …

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.

Examines the contribution of the library to Old Dominion University’s five‐year strategic plan, which targeted cultural diversity as one of its eight objectives and included specific statements about library support of this goal. To meet its part, the library created a three‐pronged action plan for the selection of videos, development of guides to the collection, and an evaluation of the multicultural collection, the most extensive portion of the project. Explains the choice of university minority and international student populations to assist in prioritizing collection efforts. The actual assessment project was collection‐centered; project coordinators identified a series of appropriate bibliographies to compare against the collection as the most practical way to meet defined objectives.The resulting retrospective desiderata list identified resources (once funding became available) to improve both the depth and scope of the library multicultural collections with very little impact on staffing.

New Age philosophies are having an increasingly important influence on contemporary life. They offer a challengingly holistic view of human potential, and are available in numerous publications and formats. Public library collections often marginalize New Age materials, and find selecting and acquiring them a challenge. Argues that greater awareness of what such materials have to offer would answer growing demands from users and provide spiritual and cultural benefit for the community.

Since high school students use both public libraries and media centers for school assignments, this research examined those collections in three separate communities for books relevant to the high school curriculum. Both textbook bibliographies of recommended titles and subject searches of term paper topics were used to identify appropriate titles for English and science courses. Public libraries and media centers both have titles that are appropriate and available for use in the preparation of term papers. Public library collections have quantitatively more titles, while media centers have significantly more books when proportions are compared When textbook bibliographers were searched, there was no discernible pattern in the titles found: Both types of collections have some of the books. In order to devise a collection development strategy, reviews were located for as many of the science textbook titles as possible. Science Books and Films and Choice should be used to identify and purchase science title...

Reviews the publication of the Bodleian Library pre-1920 Catalogue on CD-ROM. Notes that this database provides a significant enhancement to the apparatus available to facilitate retrospective bibliographic searching by providing a key to the collections of another great UK deposit library. Outlines the work carried out over a 60 year period to improve the catalogue in various ways, focusing particularly on the great efforts made to generate computerized cataloguing records. Briefly describes the operation and searching characteristics of the database; noting that complicated searches tend to yield high recall but low precision but simple

Much of the professional literature is devoted to major university and research libraries. Consequently, less information is available about the staffing, services, budgets, collections, and facilities of smaller academic libraries. This study addresses that need and offers an initial statistical and demographic profile of the four-year liberal arts college library.

PURPOSE: The research assesses the impact of online journals on citation patterns by examining whether researchers were more likely to limit the resources they cited to those journals available online rather than those only in print. SETTING: Publications from a large urban university with a medical college at an urban location and at a smaller regional location were examined. The number of online journals available to authors on either campus was the same. The number of print journals available on the large campus was much greater than the print journals available at the small campus. METHODOLOGY: Searches by author affiliation from 1996 to 2005 were performed in the Web of Science to find all articles written by affiliated members in the college of medicine at the selected institution. Cited references from randomly selected articles were recorded, and the cited journals were coded into five categories based on their availability at the study institution: print only, print and online, online only, not owned, and dropped. Results were analyzed using SPSS. The age of articles cited for selected years as well as for 2006 and 2007 was also examined. RESULTS: The number of journals cited each year continued to increase. On the large urban campus, researchers were not more likely to cite journals available online or less likely to cite journals only in print. At the regional location, at which the number of print-only journals was minimal, use of print-only journals significantly decreased. CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION: The citation of print-only journals by researchers with access to a library with a large print and electronic collection appeared to continue, despite the availability of potential alternatives in the online collection. Journals available in electronic format were cited more frequently in publications from the campus whose library had a small print collection, and the citation of journals available in both print and electronic formats generally increased over the years studied.

Many libraries, museums, galleries, and heritage centres are thinking of using electronic media to help them to achieve some of their aims, and a much smaller number have started to put these plans into practice. One such project is the Wellcome Institute Library's Iconographic Collections Videodisc, which has been up and running since June 1993, available to the public free of charge and without appointment at the Wellcome Building in London.

Electronic information and the growth of networks are beginning to have a major impact upon the process of scholarly communication and the development and management of library serial collections. This paper examines the various types of electronic serials currently available and discusses issues relating to storage, access, selection, acquisition, bibliographical control, training and resource allocation. Discussion of current alerting and document supply services (CASIAS) highlights the impact such services are having on library serial holdings and collections.

Objective – To determine whether and how Danish university and higher education students use public libraries for study purposes. Design – Online survey. Setting – Post-secondary students in Denmark. Subjects – 1,575 students in university-level programs or other higher education programs (vocational three-to-four-year programs) in Denmark. Methods – A sample of students was drawn from the national database of students by selecting every student born on the 15th of every month (approximately 4,900 students). A letter describing the study and with an invitation to fill out an online questionnaire was sent to all students in the sample. There were 1,694 valid responses (approximately 35% response rate). Students following short vocational programs were deemed to be under-represented and these subjects were omitted from the analysis of this report, which reflects the response of 1,575 students. The online questionnaire gathered demographic details (gender, age, educational institution, study topic, study year, geographical location, access to the Internet, etc.) and used 110 questions or statements to gather information about student information-seeking behaviour related to study purposes. These included use of the physical library and satisfaction with services, use of search engines, awareness and use of library Web-based services, study behaviour, and participation in information literacy activities. Main results – For the purposes of this study, “academic library is used as a generic term covering university libraries, research libraries, educational libraries and all other kind of libraries outside the field of public libraries” (p. 278). The survey results confirmed many of the previous international reports of student information-seeking behaviour: 85% of students use the academic library for study purposes; fewer than 10% of all students are able to cope without any library use; students in technology and engineering, the sciences and arts, architecture and music have a higher rate of non-use of their academic libraries; a large percentage of students access the electronic resources from home; the physical library is still considered important to students; Google is used extensively and is nearly the exclusive choice for search engine. The public library is used for study purposes by about 58 percent of all students with the highest use (76%) by students in higher education institutions (HEI); students of education, social topics and psychology are very frequent public library users. Female students in HEI were the most frequent users of the public library independent of study subject or year, or any other demographic variable. Seven per cent of students rely exclusively on the public library for study purposes and first-year HEI students in the subject areas of education, social topics and psychology are over-represented in this group (which additionally has less Internet access from home than the other students). Students perceive nearly all aspects of service in the academic library as superior; HEI students rate ambience, electronic resources and speed of inter-library loan provision in the public library as higher than the academic. University students give a low rating to the collections of public library, although the students use the public library principally to supplement the collections available in their academic libraries. Another high use of public libraries by HEI students is for inter-library loans placed through the national resource sharing system. Public library reference services are used often by only one per cent of students and only two per cent use the public library on a regular basis for “study related group activities.” Conclusion – Students use physical libraries to a great extent to support their studies and students have embraced digital access to collections, especially access from home. Google is the most heavily used search engine and is used by nearly all students; use of Google complements and supplements library use. Nearly 60% of all students use public libraries for study purposes and to supplement the collections of their academic library, but they find that the public library collections are insufficient to meet their needs. The inter-library loan policies of public libraries are more lenient and accommodating to student needs and may drive the high use of public libraries. Students form a large constituency of the public library user population and they generally rate most aspects of service as substandard to those of academic libraries. There is a call for review of the public library’s role in meeting the information needs of students, and in particular, those of HEI programs who are most dependent on the public library.

For most of the 400 years of the Bodleian Library's existence, users have had to travel to Oxford to use its collections. In recent years, Oxford has undertaken a number of focused, 'boutique' digitisation projects. Now, as a partner in the Google Library Project, an immense range of scholarly and other 19th century out-of-copyright library materials from the Bodleian's collections will be digitised en masse and will be made freely available over the internet to anyone who has Web access. Millions of books and journals will be scanned in the course of the project and the author contends that digitisation on such a scale represents a revolution in the dissemination of information that parallels the impact of the invention of printing from moveable type in the 15th century.

The historical poverty of Alabama's academic institutions required bold action if deficiencies in library resources were ever to be overcome. The Network of Alabama Academic Libraries has implemented a successful cooperative collection development program to strengthen resources available for graduate education and research. Recommendations resulting in the establishment of the Network are reviewed along with the conceptional decisions necessary for the implementation of the cooperative collection development program. Program funding, the formula for distribution of funds to disparate institutions, and corollary activities are discussed

Journalists working in newspapers frequently resort to retrospective reference to make news presentation more attractive and informative to the reader. Realizing the impact that the library can have on newspaper production, some newspaper managements maintain a library/inhouse information system for the provision of a comprehensive service to the editorial department. This study was undertaken with the objective of assessing the present state of newspaper libraries in Kerala with respect to their administrative set-up, organizational efficiency, library collection, technical processing, services, personnel and physical facilities. Libraries/information units attached to newspapers having a circulation of above 50 000 were chosen for study. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, examination of the relevant files and records, and by personal observation. The study revealed that the book collection of the newspaper libraries in the state of Kerala in South India is inadequate. Books are not procured regularly and even the reference books available are outdated, old editions. Newspaper managements do not seem to be enthusiastic about developing a library collection containing the latest edition of important reference books. The available materials are not properly classified and catalogued in most of the libraries and adequate measures are not taken for preservation of library materials. No comprehensive clippings indexing services are available in the majority of the libraries. Library personnel employed in the newspapers in Kerala are totally inadequate from the point of view of both quality and quantity. The problem of space is faced by almost all libraries and reading materials lie scattered in different places because of this shortage of space. Thus the picture presented by the libraries of the newspapers in Kerala is far from satisfactory.

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.