Presents a comparative analysis of electronic access to theses and dissertations through CitaDel and FirstSearch. Highlights include the effectiveness and ease of use in providing enduser access; strengths and weaknesses of searching capabilities; coverage; pricing; and examples of direct retrieval comparison. (LRW)

Outlines the use of proxy Web servers by libraries and reports on a survey on their use in libraries. Highlights include proxy use for remote resource access, for filtering, for bandwidth conservation, and for gathering statistics; privacy policies regarding the use of proxy server log files; and a copy of the survey. (LRW)

Discusses results of a survey of music technical services librarians that investigated retrieval problems with the symbols for sharp and flat in music notation in online catalogs. Comparisons are made with an earlier study of online catalog vendors, and a list of institutions surveyed and the questionnaire used are appended. (LRW)

Reports results of a study that used an online survey, focus groups, and logs of telnet connections to examine Internet use when accessed through the University of Toronto Library (Canada). Discusses needs of Internet users and reveals patterns of Internet use. An appendix contains the online survey. (JMV)

Character strings were planted in a World Wide Web site (Project Whistlestop) to test indexing and retrieval rates of five Web search tools (Lycos, infoseek, AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite). It was found that search tools indexed few of the planted character strings, none indexed the META descriptor tag, and only Excite indexed into the 3rd-4th site…

Presents research on using scanner technology to capture the contents pages of collective monographs, extract bibliographic information, and process this information with a standardized language, such as SGML, for tagging electronic documents. Results confirmed the feasibility of developing a system to automatically enrich records in online…

Three user interfaces to LIBIS, a library catalog accessible through the Internet, were evaluated for use by people who are motor impaired to identify how interface design influences the motor actions necessary to operate the system. Problems and recommendations related to simplicity, consistency, instinctiveness, interaction/feedback, and…

Full displays of bibliographic records for 5 monographs were analyzed in 36 library online catalogs and compared with International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) and traditional catalog-card displays. Sampled characteristics included completeness, visual layout, data sequence, label specificity, and integration of description and…