Describes a study of State University of New York libraries that determined the cost effectiveness of journal ownership versus access by calculating financial costs of interlibrary loan versus subscriptions. Journal subscriptions in the fields of mathematics and sciences that historically have high prices and low levels of use were studied. (LRW)

Discusses electronic resources and collection development. Topics include how electronic resources are changing the world of access to information; how and why scholars and research libraries use electronic resources; digitization initiatives; knowledge and learning via the Web; archiving electronic resources; and building collections versus…

Describes an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Scholars Portal Initiative, a three-year collaborative effort which seeks to provide tools for an academic community to have a single point of access on the Web to find high-quality information resources and to deliver the information and related services directly to the…

Considers the role of interlibrary loan and document delivery services in support of research collections and digital information. Highlights include current practices; licensing as it relates to interlibrary loan in the digital environment; distance education; the role of consortia; technical infrastructure; and archival retention versus…

Discusses the impact of technological advancement on academic libraries and predicts the types of changes that may occur in the role of libraries and librarians, collection development, access to information, financing, and facilities. (CLB)

Describes the development and operating strategies of the Coalition for Networked Information that was formed to promote the creation of and access to information resources in the academic networked information environment. Topics addressed include organizational development theory and referent organizations; technological developments;…

Discusses new ways of selecting information for digital libraries. Topics include increasing the quantity of information acquired versus item by item selection that is more costly than the value it adds; library-publisher relationships; netLibrary; electronic journals; and the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)…

Discusses issues related to managing electronic resources in academic libraries from a vendor's perspective. Topics include collection development policies; format and content; decisions to buy, borrow, or link to online resources; ethics and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition); service, cost, and value; vendors'…

Describes a study conducted at Columbia University (New York) to compare the costs of borrowing and document delivery with the costs of ownership of periodicals and monographs in the areas of biology, physics, and electrical engineering. Results suggest that access may be more important than ownership for some titles. (LRW)

Argues that, as library roles change, providing access to information resources is becoming more important than acquisition of library resources and that libraries should be evaluated based upon what they actually do. Access and performance measures are proposed to supplement the statistics collected by the Association of Research Libraries. (30…

Describes JSTOR (journal storage), an electronic full-text database composed of pre-1990 issues of 10 scholarly journals in the fields of economics and history. Considers linking current issues to the archive; pricing; controls over access; institutional subscribers, including libraries and campus networks; individual subscribers; and budgeting in…

Presents the Brown University Library experiences in purchasing electronic services to serve as a model for issues of budgeting for electronic materials in academic libraries. Topics include politics of budgeting; education of users; availability issues; access issues; consortia issues; ownership issues; tracking electronic product prices; and…

Gives an historical explanation of Hawaii's Telecommunications and Information Act of 1988. Examines Hawaii's economic development and the formation of an information industry infrastructure using the University of Hawaii's library resources and networks of libraries throughout the state to provide statewide access to information. A time line…

Six papers from a seminar on special collections in research libraries address special collections and the scholarly community; the function of special collections in research and education; services and development issues; the evolving character of special collections; special collections in emerging information delivery programs; and the…

The University System of Georgia and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) built the innovative electronic library GALILEO (GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online system). This article describes the cooperation, leadership, and technology that made GALILEO possible; the proposal; planning and implementation; governance; current status; and future…