Using the material of others without permission or attribution has always tempted students, but the internet has fed the flames by making an unlimited amount of content easily available for copying. While there are various approaches that instructors can take to combat illegal copying, studies show that when students are aware that…

The frequency and other characteristics of Internet use of students studying at the Department of Information Management at Hacettep University in Ankara, Turkey, are examined. According to the findings, students prefer electronic media to printed media, they find the easy accessibility of the information more important than the other qualities,…

This paper examines the problems involved in subject retrieval from full-text databases of secondary materials in the humanities. Ten such databases were studied and their search functionality evaluated, focusing on factors such as Boolean operators, document surrogates, limiting by subject area, proximity operators, phrase searching, wildcards,…

Introduction: In this research project, an empirical pilot study on the relationship between JavaScript™ usage and Website visibility was carried out. The main purpose was to establish whether JavaScript™- based hyperlinks attract or repel crawlers, resulting in an increase or decrease in Website visibility. Method: A literature survey has…

Accessibility of online scientific literature continues to expand due to the advent of scholarly databases and search engines. Studies have shown that undergraduates favor using online scientific literature to address research questions, but they often do not have the skills to assess the validity of research articles. Undergraduates generally are…

Purpose: To consider the findings of a recent e-resources survey at the University of Exeter Library in the context of the dominance of web search engines in academia, balanced by the development of e-library tools such as the library OPAC, OpenURL resolvers, metasearch engines, LDAP and proxy servers, and electronic resource management modules.…

Purpose: Locating information on the internet is an important skill in the Information Society. Some recent studies showed that searching using non-English terms is a more demanding task than searching in English. Based on these observations, this paper aims to apply the Instructional System Design (ISD) methodology to analyse, design and…

The information industry continues to consolidate, just as agribusiness has consolidated and now dominates farming. Both the family farm and the small information company still exist but are becoming rarer in an age of mergers, acquisitions, and increased economies of scale. Small companies distinguish themselves by high quality, special themes,…

This article presents a Technology Forum that focuses on online archives and their role in academe. The forum brought together Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost for scholarly information and university librarian at the California Digital Library of the University of California; Adam Smith, group business-product manager for the Google Book…

Web site usage statistics are a widely used tool for Web site development, but libraries are still learning how to use them successfully. This case study summarizes how Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale implemented Google Analytics on its Web site and used the reports to inform a site redesign. As the main campus library at…

With the advent of the World Wide Web, many business applications that utilize data mining and text mining techniques to extract useful business information on the Web have evolved from Web searching to Web mining. It is important for students to acquire knowledge and hands-on experience in Web mining during their education in information systems…

Social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies led the social whirl of the information industry. Publishers and librarians tried to keep their products and services relevant by mixing authoritative content with user involvement, but that was not enough. Enhancing interfaces, adding new forms of content, and making strategic acquisitions--all are…

Three hosted federated search tools, Follett One Search, Gale PowerSearch Plus, and WebFeat Express, were configured and implemented in a school library. Databases from five vendors and the OPAC were systematically searched. Federated search results were compared with each other and to the results of the same searches in the database's native…

While the traditional uses of InterLibrary Loan (ILL) can be cumbersome, much of the work is now done electronically. Google and WorldCat can tell patrons which libraries in their areas owns the the titles they want, but they cannot always tell patrons whether there is a copy on the shelf available for loan. Several ILS vendors and OCLC are…

The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in last Summer's "Atlantic Monthly," raised a number of provocative, and indeed worrisome, questions about computer usage and cognitive development. For instance, persons with considerable experience of reading for the sake of pleasure report that, after a couple of years using computers a great deal, they…