Discusses characteristics of typical online public access catalogs (OPACs) and examines patron use via printouts of transaction logs for three separate systems. Desirable features of OPACs (mnemonic search commands, boolean operators, forgiveness or automatic truncation, browsing a subject heading index, suggestive prompts) and need for…

This paper describes how four classes of high school students were introduced over a 2-year period to the concepts and terminology of online bibliographic searching, instructed to formulate their own search strategies, and received the opportunity to observe their strategies executed by a skilled searcher on various selected databases. It also…

This examination of misunderstandings between librarians and teaching faculty over concepts of library use and research concludes that library skills and research skills are essentially different things that can be learned in isolation from each other. Implications of these findings for bibliographic instruction and library policies are discussed.…