Describes a study which investigated plans of Association of Research Libraries members in New England for total automated library systems, whether compatibility of microcomputers with existing or proposed equipment is a factor in microcomputer selection, plans for microcomputer use, and how appropriate microcomputer tasks are identified and…

To investigate the experience of American and Canadian university libraries with remote access catalogs, self-administered questionnaires were sent to the 137 directors of all Association of Research Libraries (ARL) libraries and all libraries of Canadian degree-granting institutions. The study was designed to: (1) survey Canadian and U.S.…

Preliminary reports from seven Association of Research Library (ARL) members conducting research on current public services concerns describe progress to date and initial findings. Research grants of up to $4,000 were provided for the projects, which were selected in part because of their potential usefulness to academic and research libraries.…

The 56 papers in this proceedings are divided into three groups--theme, alternative format, and contributed papers. Myths and realities are explored in the first group as they relate to university, college, community, and junior college libraries, and to private sector information utilities. The conference wrap-up session is included in this…

The library's role in helping the social or behavioral scientist find bibliographic material is explained, and methods for the retrieval of bibliographic information are given. A table giving titles of relevant abstracts and indexes also provides time spans covered, frequencies of publication, disciplines for which each is useful. (Author/MLW)

This study examined catalog records and compared the number and type of access points with number of circulations by type of user. Although little significant correlation was found between the total number of access points and total circulation, interesting trends were found in correlations by type of subject and user. (CDD)

Discusses the problems of assimilating electronic publishing within the technical services area of academic libraries: whether to consider electronic journals as acquisitions; how to catalog them; whether to charge users for access to them; and how to preserve online publications for future research. Future trends in electronic publishing are…

A controversial issue involving online computer searching is the effect of patron presence during the computer search. The purpose of this research was to determine the attitudes of university librarians toward patron presence. A survey was used to explore variables related to the search process and searcher characteristics. Also considered was…

This report describes a computer-monitoring study of users of the Ohio State University Libraries' online catalog, an established and heavily used information retrieval system. Designed for end users, online library catalogs require little or no formal training, and often replace an existing manual system. Data were gathered unobtrusively by…

This bibliometric investigation of literature on microcomputers in library and information services focuses on the years 1973-1986. Five printed reference tools and three online databases were searched to examine the number of publications, types of documents, contributing languages and countries, and the productivity of individual authors.…

This pilot study on the subject access problems of patrons of small to medium size libraries was designed to measure the extent to which users' vocabularies matched the search vocabulary of bibliographic records in the card catalog, and to enhance subject access by develooping a microcomputer system which integrated Library of Congress Subject…

Describes a study undertaken by San Jose State University of business-related ready reference searches done at that library. The results suggest that within certain restrictions of patron questions, librarian training, search cost, and the database, ready reference online searches can be the most cost effective approach to providing business…

This document outlines the methodology to be used for analyzing and reporting data collected through questionnaires at the various libraries of the University of California in April and May of 1982, as the second phase of an online public access catalog (OPAC) evaluation project. It is noted that the project was designed to enable systems…

Describes study of manual and experimental automated circulation systems in a university library in Nigeria. Data were collected for eight circulation activities in order to calculate the direct labor costs of circulating a book on each system. Automated system's book circulation costs were higher although direct labor costs were less. (MBR)

This 22-paper collection addresses a variety of issues related to representation and transfer of knowledge. Individual papers include an explanation of the usefulness of general scientific models versus case-specific approaches and a discussion of different empirical approaches to the general problem of knowledge representation for information…