The year 2010 is historic because it marks the passage of a U.S. health-care reform bill as well as midterm elections that sent to Congress people looking to repeal it. Meanwhile, the public is waiting to see what it all means. It also saw the rise of personalized medicine, with genetics and electronic health records promising a more…

This article reports on a content analysis of research articles focusing on library services in distance education published between 1999 and 2009. The study identified 472 articles on the topic and analyzed the citations, abstracts, and indexing to determine major topics, issues, and trends discussed; methodologies used; and major journals…

This study investigated the use of a university library academic service to assist in research information seeking, and the role and value of the academic services in support of research from the viewpoints of both academic users and librarians. Ten Ph.D. students completed questionnaires followed by face-to-face discussions and four academic…

In recent decades the literature dealing with graduate students and library use, including bibliographic instruction, information-seeking behavior, and information literacy has grown. However, there still appears to be a lack of research and resources available on the information-seeking behavior skills of graduate education students, which can…

The author of this article studies the history of libraries. Few libraries capitalize on their own organizational history, however, even though it can be, at minimum, a resource of images and factoids for everything from answering administrative questions to crafting fundraising and marketing pieces. It can also be a reservoir of professional…

Discometrics, a field of study technically related to bibliometrics, employs statistical analysis of discographies to ascertain public demand for classical music. In addition to providing a tool for collection development, discometric surveys may have a variety of uses for educators, record company executives, music dealers, and scholars. (4…

This review of case studies of five academic libraries in institutions that have ceased operation notes background, time factors, disposition of library collections, and nature of bankruptcy. Guidelines for closing (stabilizing and documenting collection, estimating worth of collection, obligations to government) are presented. Eight sources are…

Describes elements to look for when reading four identifiable sections of a research report: background and literature review, methodology and procedures, analysis, findings or summary. Literature review as prologue to author's argument, choices in design of a study, research participants, choices involved in analysis, and implications of findings…

Describes the general methodology of time and motion studies and reports the results of a study which used this methodology to compare digitization of images in a microcomputer environment with storage of images on microforms. (CLB)

Describes a study which examined (1) the percentage of personal and corporate name authority records in the Library of Congress authority file that do not contain any references, and (2) the percentage of references present on existing authority records that are not needed in an automatic right hand truncation, keyword searching environment. (CLB)

Reports the methodology and results of a study which explored the potential of three approaches to sampling the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) database files for determining collection overlap among Australian libraries. (Author/CLB)

Discusses areas needing revision in the manual "Output Measures for Public Libraries," i.e., measurement objectives, research skills of output measures users, management versus research contexts, relating inputs to outputs, problems in data collection, user versus library performance, sample sizes, interpretation of output measure…

Reports results of survey questioning "School Library Journal's" reviewers of children's literature in four main areas: review aspects (relating plot, commenting on literary quality); reviewer roles (reviewer, critic); review practices; and personal and professional background (demographic questions). The survey questionnaire and 38…

Argues that librarians need to be concerned with cost analysis of library functions and services because, in the allocation of resources, decision makers will favor library managers who demonstrate understanding of the relationships between costs and productive outputs. Factors that should be included in a reliable scheme for cost accounting are…

These two articles address the rising costs of monographs and serials in libraries and suggest strategies for coping with inflationary trends. Highlights include factors in price increases; gathering accurate data on the local budget; domestic and foreign price fluctuations; the increase in new journal titles; and publisher growth policies and…