Academic libraries must provide accessible electronic and information technology to patrons using assistive technology to access library materials. Accessibility of scholarly material is particularly important in the STEM disciplines, where attrition rates of students with disabilities is higher than in other fields. In this study, the…

Focused on community colleges in North Carolina participating in the Scholars of Global Distinction initiative, the goal of this article is to assist librarians in their efforts to thoughtfully increase global and area studies online resources available at their libraries. Through this article, the author hopes to increase global library resources…

In 2011 the University of Wollongong Library undertook a significant review of its Resource Sharing services. This was prompted by constraints in the systems supporting this service, changes to the Library's key suppliers, Infotrieve Australia and the British Library Document Supply Service, and the need to deliver effective library services…

This article describes how York University analyzed the results from its 2010-11 implementation of the Measuring the Impact of Networked Electronic Services for Libraries survey to measure value of investments in e-resources. The results were assessed through two variables: e-resources used by faculty when carrying out funded and non-funded…

Introduction: Our aim is to compare the advantages and problems of e-book acquisition identified in research literature to those experienced by two Swedish university libraries. Method: A literature review was used to identify the main issues related to acquisition of e-books by academic libraries. The data for comparison were collected through…

In 2005, the authors reviewed citation help in databases and found an error rate of 4.4 errors per citation. This article describes a follow-up study that revealed a modest improvement in the error rate to 3.4 errors per citation, still unacceptably high. The most problematic area was retrieval statements. The authors conclude that librarians…

Library staff members should ultimately base their purchasing choices on the mission statements of their employing institutions. Fortunately, library mission statements have much in common. Undoubtedly, for example, all libraries have a goal that includes "serve the information needs of the community," because on some level, all libraries are…

EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) has been heavily used by UMUC students since its implementation in fall 2011, but experience has shown that it is not always the most appropriate source for satisfying students' information needs and that they often need assistance in understanding how the tool works and how to use it effectively. UMUC librarians have…

Discovery tools are the next phase of library search systems. Illinois State University's Milner Library implemented EBSCO Discovery Service in August 2010. The authors conducted usability studies on the system in the fall of 2010. The aims of the study were twofold: first, to determine how Milner users set about using the system in order to…

After seeing growing frustration among inexperienced undergraduate researchers searching a popular aggregated interdisciplinary database, the authors questioned whether the leading interdisciplinary databases are serving undergraduates' needs. As a preliminary exploration of this question, the authors queried vendors, analyzed their marketing…

Millennial students make up a large portion of undergraduate students attending colleges and universities, and they have a variety of online resources available to them to complete academically related information searches, primarily Web based and library-based online information retrieval systems. The content, ease of use, and required search…

Describes two types of online vendor gateways--front-end buffers and host-to-host links. The potential threats and opportunities of gateways to database owners, online vendors, and users are identified, and a code of practice developed by the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services is presented. (CLB)

Presents suggestions from online searchers for using online services. Topics discussed include decreasing costs by using less expensive files; modifying searches on Dialog; use of controlled vocabularies and free text; using a variety of databases; the importance of search intermediaries understanding the topic; and patent searching. (LRW)

Describes specific techniques for using the MAP command for business searches on DIALOG that use more than one file. Limits of the MAPping function are discussed, and modification of these techniques for application to other databases and systems is explained. (Four references) (LRW)

Summarizes presentations on profitability in the information industry from the viewpoints of producers, who have to have a reason to be in business, and users, whose businesses are often driven by the information they can access and the price of that information. (Author/CLB)