With both budget dollars and buying power shrinking for academic library collections, the selection of materials is a series of crucial choices. With increases in numbers of online programs, how can we determine if what we are buying is in fact what our users need? E-reserves are an increasingly popular way to provide digital copies of course…

This issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI") highlights the value of professional failure. The idea to explore this theme emerged from conversations with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Innovation Lab Advisory Group earlier this year. It is the hope this issue highlights the value of failure--both its necessary…

This paper reports the results of a survey of student satisfaction with electronic library resources other than the online catalog at Wayne State University. Undertaken in Fall Term 2000 as a class project for a marketing course, a student team designed, administered, and analyzed a survey of a random sample of students. Almost 40% of the…

This article describes the card-sorting techniques used by several academic libraries, reports and discusses the results of card-sorting usability tests of the Western Michigan University Libraries' Web site, and reveals how the WMU libraries incorporated the findings into a new Web site redesign, setting the design direction early on. The article…

"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…

This article describes the development of the "Electronic Journal Finder," a TDNet installation for the University Libraries of Western Michigan University. Topics covered include: rationale for subscription project timeline, content, product customization, set-up, maintenance issues, reporting functions, directing URL links, searching…