Many small and medium-sized companies see a library as a luxury they cannot afford. They may have room set aside with a small collection of books, periodicals or reports, yet the use of this often unsupervised storage system is minimal at best. These same companies, however, usually place great importance on maintenance of and access to…

Urban public libraries are confronted with a decreasing demand for traditional, book-oriented library services. In Detroit, library outreach programs attempted to encourage disadvantaged people to use the library with little success. The information that people needed in their everyday lives was not to be found in the library. To correct this…

Discusses two ways that perceptions concerning effectiveness of special libraries and information centers can be changed--change methods used to account for library financially and change provision of services to better meet users' needs. Seven steps for increasing real and perceived value of library to organization are proposed. (11 sources) (EJS)

Examines the objectives and structure of two-part end-user training program (classroom instruction, individualized hands-on training), which introduces scientists to fundamentals of literature searching, including both printed and online sources of scientific information. Brief history and future directions of the program are noted. Sample Amoco…

Viikki is one of the four campuses of the University of Helsinki. The Viikki Virtual Infocenter will be located on the Viikki Campus in Helsinki. It will be a modern learning environment that offers library and information services, study rooms and learning facilities, computer and network services, and administrative campus services to students…

This is a summary of a presentation on the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). The presentation provided information on how the user can gain access to the ERIC microfiche collection at libraries throughout the United States, and to reprints through the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). Use of the Thesaurus of ERIC…

This paper describes how focus groups were used to assess the effectiveness of the University of Kentucky's Agricultural Information Center (AIC) in providing patron services. The AIC serves 1,100 undergraduate students, 370 graduate and postdoctoral students, and 1,700 faculty and staff in the College of Agriculture. In August 2000, the AIC…

A rural library project of the Intermountain Group, a network of four land-grant universities, eight local communities, and the state libraries in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Montana, developed a Community Interest Inventory and solicited information on professional information needs from identified community groups who were users or potential…

This paper discusses some of the factors that lead to the success of a health information library, including: (1) the mission statement; (2) practical matters such as location, equipment, furniture, and layout; (3) considerations in writing the procedure and policy manual; (4) confidentiality; (5) staff and volunteer training; (6) sources of…

On-line information retrieval systems will spread beyond its narrow scope with the widespread development of interactive communication capability in connection with cable television. There is a possibility of far better attention to the information needs of the non-specialist with a coordinated information source. The major problems of such a…

The Learning Resource Center (LRC) at the Baraboo campus of the University of Wisconsin was designed to be an integral part of the teaching program, and to embody the multimedia approach to individual self-paced learning by using the most appropriate medium or combination of media for a given instructional situation. The collection includes books,…

Since 1992, the University of Iowa Libraries' Information Arcade, a facility designed to support the use of electronic resources in research, teaching, and independent learning, has been a springboard for developing new collaborative technology-based services. This paper describes next generation developments underway in applying learning…

The historical and current status of information dissemination centers and the problem of user interface are reviewed. During the past decade, the problems of technical data processing have been conquered; information dissemination has evolved from a loosely knit group of experimental centers to an organization of established centers, many…