The ability of academic libraries to produce timely and effective responses to various environmental changes constitutes a major challenge for them to enhance their survival rate and maintain growth in competitive environments. This article provides a conceptual model as an analytical tool for both improving current services as well as creating…

As library collections increasingly become digital, libraries are faced with many challenges regarding the acquisition and management of electronic resources. Some of these challenges include copyright and fair use, the first-sale doctrine, licensing versus ownership, digital preservation, long-term archiving, and, most important, the issue of…

At the University of Maryland, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from information studies, computer science, education, art, and psychology worked with seven children (ages seven to eleven) to design a new digital library for children. This partnership led to new approaches for collection development, cataloging (metadata standards), and…

This study of public library employees' perceptions of library goals based on one case study reveals that staff hold generally conservative views of public library purpose and prefer goals that are print-based and directly related to reading. Most significant influences on perceptions are local practice and practical considerations. (24…

Prior to 1997, the University of Oxford in Great Britain had approximately one hundred autonomous libraries with little coordination of services, collection development, or management among them. In that year a new director was hired with the mandate to integrate many of these libraries into one centralized system. Over the past seven years…