On May 25-26 in New York, BookExpo America (BEA) will present new events for participants. To lighten participants' totes, BEA is partnering with Above the Treeline to create a free online catalog (Books@BEA) of the new and forthcoming titles on the show floor. There will also be a searchable database of all the authors participating in show…

The world of readers' advisory (RA) is embracing many of the tools that collectively are referred to as Library 2.0. RA has long shared many of the beliefs supported by Library 2.0--well before there even was such a thing--including conversations with readers, valuing and empowering the experience of the reader, and near constant reevaluation of…

This article describes the opportunities out of the 2007 turmoil precipitated by the dramatic shifts that redefined the industry in 2006. The turmoil made companies that avoided major business transitions more attractive and sparked explosive interest in open source alternatives. Some companies held a steady course and benefited from the fallout.…

Every year, more and more reference sources go from print to online, from the stacks to the library's homepage. The librarians at Quinnipiac University's Arnold Bernhard Library in Hamden, Connecticut, realized that these subscriptions are more than the occasional web offering to supplement the library's mission. They have become an important…

Illustrates the best form for library catalogs through a retrospective examination of the nineteenth century Rudolph Continuous Indexer. (RAA)

Discusses planning "future of the catalog" decisions given AACR2 and suggests that courses of action for small libraries may be developed through self-study and by reference to a list of 11 resources. (RAA)

Recommends that librarians locally develop mini-union catalogs to provide for increased access to library materials and to facilitate interlibrary loan. Practical instruction is provided for the preparation of such catalogs. (RAA)

The information industry continues to consolidate, just as agribusiness has consolidated and now dominates farming. Both the family farm and the small information company still exist but are becoming rarer in an age of mergers, acquisitions, and increased economies of scale. Small companies distinguish themselves by high quality, special themes,…

Identifies factors which may account for user dissatisfaction with online public access catalogs (OPACs) and discusses some advantages of OPACs over card catalogs: (1) design for subject searching; (2) flexibility; (3) browsing capability; (4) precision; (5) availability of status information; and (6) development of microcomputer software to…

If the resort city of Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland and its "imagineers," marked a departure from the urban reality of the typical American Library Association (ALA) annual conference, it was impossible, at this 2008 meeting, to avoid urgent library issues. How do libraries maintain their value and cultural presence as users…

Describes the strategies used by the Catalog Instruction Group at the university library which, in less than two months, managed to reverse negative staff attitudes and reach large numbers of library users with information about the combined card and microfiche catalog system. (RAA)

After decades of costly and time-consuming effort, nearly all libraries have completed the retrospective conversion of their card catalogs to electronic form. However, bibliographic systems still are really not much more than card catalogs on wheels. Enriched content that Amazon.com takes for granted--such as digitized tables of contents, cover…

Traditional library web products, whether online public access catalogs, library databases, or even library web sites, have long been rigidly controlled and difficult to use. Patrons regularly prefer Google's simple interface. Now social bookmarking and tagging tools help librarians bridge the gap between the library's need to offer authoritative,…

Outlines progress of California Spanish Language Data Base (CSLDB) project in its effort to provide subject access to Spanish language collections in public libraries. Generating Spanish counterparts for English subject headings, going online, and the current effort of seeking a host bibliographic utility are examined. References are provided.…

Librarians face two very pressing charges: make voluminous numbers of electronic resources as visible as possible in a landscape with multiple access points, and simultaneously manage all the technology, tasks, and data necessary to facilitate such ubiquitous access. In the past ten years, solutions have emerged and become commonplace in many…