Successfully providing access to special collections of digital geospatial data in academic libraries relies upon complete and accurate metadata. Creating and maintaining metadata using specialized standards is a formidable challenge for libraries. The Ontario Council of University Libraries' Scholars GeoPortal project, which created a shared…

This paper details community engagement activity of an academic library coordinated within a broader university strategic plan. The Anderson Library at Indiana University Northwest (IU-Northwest) supports a service called the Northwest Indiana Center for Data and Analysis. Created in 1996 with funding made available from the Indiana University…

Purpose: A mobile student information system (MSIS) based on mobile computing and context-aware application concepts can provide more user-centric information services to students. The purpose of this paper is to describe a system for providing relevant information to students on a mobile platform. Design/methodology/approach: The research…

What do Google Maps and a library's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) have in common? Google Maps provides users with all the information they need for a trip in one place; users can get directions and find out what attractions, hotels, and restaurants are close by. Librarians must find the ultimate OPAC that will provide, in one place, all the…

The virtual Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, also known as the Tree of Knowledge, is a project premised upon using ecology and organic forms to promote language learning in Second Life (SL). Inspired by Salmon's (2010) Tree of Learning concept this study examines how an interactive ecological environment--in this…

Divorcing one student information system and hooking up with another can cause serious upheaval. With the right plan in place, the transition to a new student information system can go surprisingly smoothly. The author interviewed technologists at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College and the Emily Griffith Opportunity School (CO) who recently…

Universities in Australia, like their counterparts abroad, are making available several different kinds of electronic information services for their student communities. University students need different types of information for the frequently entwined purposes of learning and living, and such information may be available from a variety of…

It is easy to lament the shortcomings of traditional online public access catalogs (OPACs) in the Google Age. Users cannot, for example, usually input a snippet of a long-forgotten pop song's chorus into an online library catalog and almost instantly retrieve a relevant result along with hundreds of other options. On the other hand, should OPACs…

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) has primary responsibility to ensure that Information Technology (IT) is acquired and information resources are managed in a manner consistent with statutory, regulatory, and Departmental requirements and priorities. This Department Information Resources…

The increasing prevalence of digital information systems and technologies compels libraries across the globe to update systems and provide users with a digital experience outside the confines of the structural library, providing useful benefits to the user while creating new areas of concern such as digital information preservation.…

This paper looks at criteria on how education service providers' websites could benefit their potential students from overseas. Effective design of education website is important as web users are typically fastidious and want information fast--this serves as the background of this study. The study focuses on three selected education institutions'…

Over the past decade, there has been a change in the citizen-government relationship. Citizens have moved from a traditional face-to-face communication with their government, to an electronic interaction through the use of e-government systems. Emerging technology has enabled citizens to communicate with their government remotely. However, trust…

The Joint Information Systems Committee National e-Books Observatory Project will assess the impacts, observe behaviors, and develop new models to stimulate the U.K. higher education e-books market. The project has licensed a collection of e-books that are highly relevant to U.K. higher education in four disciplines and will evaluate the use of…

Over the past several decades, millions of digital objects of significant scientific, economic, cultural, and historic value have been published and distributed to libraries and archives on removable media. Providing long-term access to these documents, media files, and software executables is an increasingly complex task because of dependencies…

An educational management information system is a network of communication channels, information sources, computer storage and retrieval devices, and processing routines that provide data to educational managers at different levels, places, and times to facilitate decisionmaking. Management information systems should be differentiated from…