There is a new buzzword in education: "MOOCs." These massively open online courses (MOOCs) can serve hundreds or thousands of students without the institutional hurdles found in classes at a university, such as acceptance requirements and physical location. Some schools are working with partners like Udacity and Coursera, while others…

Holocaust denial literature has been treated inconsistently in library collections. At one time Holocaust denial literature was classed and subject headings assigned with Holocaust literature. After specific Library of Congress classification numbers and subject headings for Holocaust denial and Holocaust denial literature became available in the…

Reference transactions in academic libraries have been on the decline since mid-1990. The Academic Library Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics shows an average drop of 25% in reference use from 1996-2004 with higher numbers at some institutions such as the University of Maryland which plummeted 47% (Martell, 2008). The…

This project was originally defined to explore the potential for ARL libraries to provide support to small, print-only publishers in order to ensure long-term digital access to their content. Research library publishing programs vary widely, from posting PDFs in an institutional repository to full-fledged publishing operations. During the life of…

In their Top Trends of 2012, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) named data curation as one of the issues to watch in academic libraries in the near future (ACRL, 2012, p. 312). Data curation can be summarized as "the active and ongoing management of data through its life cycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship,…

Research librarians should be literate in locating government resources at both federal and state levels. Although assistance with policy research may not be as frequently requested as other subjects, librarians need to be knowledgeable in this subject area. Policy resources produced by federal and state legislative and executive agencies can be…

The concept of the embedded librarian takes subject specialization to another plane. The article that follows discusses the embedded librarian as an evolutionary product and speculates on the reasons driving the change from the library to the department or center for the delivery of information services. Four drivers for change are explored with…

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…

Western Illinois University Libraries has cut online serials subscriptions in the past 2 years. The librarians were guided by the statistics for downloads provided by the publishers of the journals. However, questions were raised by both professors and librarians regarding the exact meaning of the statistics. This caused the electronic resources…

A key area of debate within the public and academic library sectors across the world is use of physical space. Changing ideas about what a library should be, coupled with the growth of digital collections, has raised fundamental questions about how library buildings are used and the role of space in library services. Alongside these drivers is the…

The reference collection traditionally rewards serendipity by presenting key resources in a compact group. At the University of Manitoba Libraries, reference collection space is at a premium and, increasingly, electronic versions of reference materials are selected for purchase. However, our space saving comes at a cost: Our patrons can't browse…

In fall 2008, a collaborative partnership was formed between the libraries of two Indiana universities--Marian College's (now Marian University) Mother Theresa Hackelmeier Memorial Library, and the University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). The authors discuss the digital nature of this collaboration, which…

Gathering qualitative information about usage behavior of library Web sites is a time-consuming process requiring the active participation of patron communities. Libraries that collect virtual reference transcripts, however, hold valuable data regarding how the library Web site is used that could benefit Web designers. An analysis of virtual…

Graduate students across disciplines feel pressure to publish their scholarship, but they are often unsure how to go about it, partly due to a lack of explicit training in this area. This article discusses the collaborative development of a semester-long Publishing Academy, designed to promote knowledge of scholarly publishing and increase the…

In 2005, the Library at UNSW began a comprehensive restructuring process that fundamentally changed the provision of services to its academic community. A primary aim of this process was to increase flexibility of service development and delivery and so to improve research support. The motivation for reformed services arose from considerations…