Even as librarians have spent the past twenty years documenting the rich world of scholarly communication beyond the catalog, repositories and catalogs too often remain completely siloed from each other. Current practices and tools to unite the two focus entirely on matching names, an imprecise method requiring substantial time spent on review.…

Business faculty members teaching at undergraduate campuses of the Pennsylvania State University were surveyed in order to assess their satisfaction with free Web sources and with subscription databases for their professional research. Although satisfaction with the Web's ease of use was higher than that for databases, overall satisfaction for…

Policies and procedures are outlined for the Online Database Information Network (ODIN), a cooperative of libraries in south-central Pennsylvania, which was organized to improve library services through technology. The first section covers organization and goals, members, and responsibilities of the administrative council and libraries. Patrons…

The 1997 volume of Rural Libraries includes two issues containing seven articles. Articles are: (1) "Information Access through Electronic Databases for Rural Public Libraries" (Kitti Canepi); (2) "Bookmobiles in the Burbs" (Joyce Voss); (3) "Bookmobile Survey" (Liam Kennedy); (4) "Connections: Internet in Rural…

ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA is a statewide database that combines resources of over 500 academic, public, special, and school libraries in Pennsylvania. This article discusses the program's background and stresses the commitment its members must make to serve the state's population through resource sharing. It focuses in particular on the incentive the…

The Visual Image User Study (VIUS), an extensive needs assessment project at Penn State University, describes academic users of pictures and their perceptions. These findings outline the potential market for digital images and list the likely determinates of whether or not a system will be used. They also explain some key user requirements for…

Describes a study of secondary school library media specialists in Maine and Pennsylvania that was conducted to establish a baseline of data relating to the use of CD-ROM databases for reference purposes. Topics addressed include database titles; networking; staffing concerns; budget; funding; attitudes toward CD-ROMs; and training and curriculum…