This call for action addresses the high-level benefits of adopting a university-wide policy regarding research data management. It identifies the various university stakeholders and suggests that the library initiate a conversation among them in order to get buy-in for a proactive, rather than reactive, high-level policy for responsible data…

Creating a learnable, effective, and user-friendly library Web site hinges on providing easy access to search. Designing a search interface for academic libraries can be particularly challenging given the complexity and range of searchable library collections, such as bibliographic databases, electronic journals, and article search silos. Library…

This study investigated the use of a university library academic service to assist in research information seeking, and the role and value of the academic services in support of research from the viewpoints of both academic users and librarians. Ten Ph.D. students completed questionnaires followed by face-to-face discussions and four academic…

Western Illinois University Libraries has cut online serials subscriptions in the past 2 years. The librarians were guided by the statistics for downloads provided by the publishers of the journals. However, questions were raised by both professors and librarians regarding the exact meaning of the statistics. This caused the electronic resources…

This article recounts a project at the Middle Tennessee State University library to include records for electronic databases in the online catalog. Although electronic databases are accessible via the library's Databases A-Z list and related subject guides, cataloging these resources also provides access via the online catalog, allowing more of…

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, is the world's largest social science data archive. The data sets in the ICPRS database give the social sciences librarian/subject specialist an opportunity of providing value-added bibliographic…

Libraries are investing heavily in an increasing number of electronic journals and providing access to them through their websites. We set out to determine if ARL academic libraries offer the same options on their websites to access electronic journals and databases. Using a checklist, we evaluated the websites for the presence of A-Z lists, links…

This report describes the background of the Association of Research Libraries Microform Project and summarizes results of the survey from which the database of the project's clearinghouse on the bibliographic control of microforms has been constructed. The Microform Project was established in 1981 to assist libraries, microform publishers, and the…

An increase in its distance-learning student population prompted Regent University Library to consolidate the library's information literacy program into one course. The course eventually went online to meet the needs of distance learners. During course development and implementation, librarians learned what worked well and what did not.…

This document is one of ten kits distributed annually by the Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC), a clearinghouse operated by the Association of Research Libraries, Office of Management Studies (ARL/OMS) that provides a central source of timely information and materials on the management and operations of large academic and research…

In 1988, the Associated College Libraries of Central Pennsylvania received a grant to create a value-added, compact disk, union catalog from the U.S. Department of Education's College Library Technology and Cooperative Grants Program, Title II of the Higher Education Act. Designed to contain, in time, 2,000,830 records from 17 member library…

This report on a funded project that established a chemistry research information service for researchers in the University of Houston's chemistry department provides detailed descriptions of the three objectives of the project, together with an explanation of how each objective was/is to be accomplished. These objectives were/are: (1) to document…

The Association of Research Libraries' Office of Management Services (OMS), working with the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG), began the North American Collections Inventory Project (NCIP) in July 1983 as a cooperative effort intended eventually to involve research libraries throughout the United States and Canada. The project's long-term goal…

This policy statement is designed to provide guidelines that will ensure the maintenance and improvement of the collection and services of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the period 1985 to 2000. The policy sets appropriate quality goals while simultaneously providing for flexibility in alternative…

Develops the argument that academic research libraries should use their materials budget to provide access to materials in all formats, including machine readable information in both locally available systems and commercially owned remote online databases. (CLB)