The public library is a product of modernity that follows in the wake of industrialization, urbanization, and popular movements, while at the same time the public library itself supports the building up and development of the modern. This article will examine the arrival of modernity and the prerequisites for the rise of public libraries, as well…

The digital humanities (DH) are attracting considerable attention and funding at the same time that this nascent field is striving for an identity. Some research libraries are making significant investments by creating digital humanities centers. However, questions about whether such investments are warranted persist across the cultural heritage…

Digital curation refers to the actions people take to maintain and add value to digital information over its lifecycle, including the processes used when creating digital content. Digital preservation focuses on the "series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary." In this…

The collection, storage, processing, and dissemination of scientific and technical information make an important basis for economic and social development as well as for scientific development. A nation has to develop the right mechanisms and modalities to collect, store, process, and disseminate scientific and technical information tailored to…

This study examines the process of requesting copyright permissions through the Copyright Clearance Center's (CCC) pay-per-use service for electronic course reserves at the Penn State University Libraries in 2008. The authors investigate the efficiency of this process as a function of the percentage of permission requests successfully mediated by…

Using citation analysis, the authors examined the journals cited in theses and dissertations over the first five years of the Water Resources Graduate Program at Oregon State University. These journal titles were compared to the titles predicted as being important in the 2003 Oregon State University Libraries new program (Category I) review. A…

Visual literacy is essential for 21st century learners. Across the higher education curriculum, students are being asked to use and produce images and visual media in their academic work, and they must be prepared to do so. The Association of College and Research Libraries has published the "Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher…

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,…

In the early 1990s, numerous academic libraries adopted the web as a communication tool with users. The literature on academic library websites includes research on both design and navigation. Early studies typically focused on design characteristics, since websites initially merely provided information on the services and collections available in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how federated search engines are incorporated into the Web sites of libraries in the Association of Research Libraries. In 2009, information was gathered for each library in the Association of Research Libraries with a federated search engine. This included the name of the federated search service and…

This article outlines a pilot project to offer a personalized online library service to Open University MBA alumni. A review of the literature and results of a desktop analysis of other UK Higher Education alumni library services are included. Content procurement and systems issues are considered along with the underlying organizational, resource…

The Australian Government's Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program aims to encourage greater participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in higher education. Historically, participation and retention rates of students from underrepresented groups have been less than for the majority of school leavers. Universities…

This study examines the holdings of ARL libraries for core reference titles to see if there is a trend towards canceling the print in favor of electronic, and discusses the implications of duplication of titles in both formats. It also looks at the issue within the context of several areas of study including general reference, arts and humanities,…

To assist researchers, practitioners, and students in locating journal articles, books, papers, and reports relevant to all aspects of document design, the Document Design Project staff at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) is designing and building a computerized reference library using the operating system ZOG. The library will include material…

Examination of appropriateness of productivity measurements to assess performance of special libraries defines the concept, discusses problems in their use, and gives guidelines for implementation. Results of use of productivity measurements in Library of Congress and State Department library are reported, and productivity measurements are…