Libraries are under pressure to prove their worth and may not have achieved this fully successfully. There is a resultant growing requirement for value and impact measurement in academic and research libraries. This essay reviews the natural history of library performance measurement and suggests that proof of worth will be measured by the…

The author is a reference and instruction librarian at Iowa State University with collection development and liaison responsibilities for chemistry, biochemistry, entomology, and natural resource ecology. She recently came to librarianship with an education and three years' experience in biochemistry and biotechnology. During the last four years…

Libraries are all about collecting data. When it comes to collection development and assessment of e-resources, collecting data on usage of resources aids in decision making regarding these resources and provides data-rich evidence to support the value for the user of these resources. However, the author asserts that libraries should take some…

I am grateful to the Editor for giving me excuse to delve into the fossil record. I confidently hope that my article was written before most of The Australian Library Journal's present readership was born. I am happy to stay with my pragmatic attempt at a definition of research as an intensified search undertaken with the hope of finding something…

"ARL" is the bimonthly report on research library issues and actions from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). "ARL" reports on current issues of interest to academic and research library administrators, staff and users; higher…

What will Google do next? Representatives of the company divulge few details of their projects -- a policy that, in the case of its partnerships with university libraries, probably only fuels the buzz. In this interview, Adam M. Smith, a senior business-product manager, discusses Google's work with publishers and libraries on expanding its…

Purposeful assessment of space for the understanding and improvement of the academic library is a relatively new area of inquiry. This essay offers a framework to consider different factors affecting such an assessment and insights for undertaking a meaningful inquiry about the relationship of space to an academic library's evolving purpose as…

The author recently asked his colleagues, "How can libraries determine the value in collecting, managing, preserving, and/or cataloging e-resources?" hoping to challenge readers to come up with some thoughtful opinions and useful tips. Not surprisingly, he received a handful of substantially different but uniformly provocative and creative…

John Palfrey is one busy guy, with an impressive gig. In 2008, he was named the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School. And when he's not teaching courses on intellectual property and Internet law, there's a good chance he's overseeing the L school's research library. Palfrey,…

In answering the question "What is the next trend in usage statistics in libraries?" an eclectic group of respondents has presented an assortment of possibilities, suggestions, complaints and, of course, questions of their own. Undoubtedly, usage statistics collection, interpretation, and application are areas of growth and increasing complexity…