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.…

This study reports faculty experiences regarding the discovery of scholarly content, highlighting similarities and differences across a range of academic disciplines. The authors interviewed twenty-five faculty members at a public, high-research university in the Midwest to explore the intersections of discovery, browsing, and format from diverse…

This article presents the results of a study of academic e-books that compared the metadata and search results from major academic e-book platforms. The authors collected data and performed a series of test searches designed to produce the same result regardless of platform. Testing, however, revealed metadata-related errors and significant…

The increasing interdisciplinarity of scientific research creates both challenges and opportunities for librarians. The liaison model may be inadequate for supporting campus research that represents multiple disciplines and geographically dispersed departments. The identification of units, researchers, and projects is a first step in planning and…

Assessment and supporting data have become of increasing interest in librarianship. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of the Northwestern University Library Acknowledgments Database tool, which gathers and documents qualitative data, as well as its component reporting function. This collaborative project and resulting…

Students today perform research in a disintermediated environment, which often allows them to struggle directly with the process of selecting research tools and choosing scholarly sources. The authors conducted a qualitative study with twenty students, using structured observations to ascertain the processes students use to select databases and…

Librarians regularly encounter students who struggle to understand and apply information literacy concepts. A qualitative survey administered to information literacy practitioners asked about troublesome content and analyzed results using the threshold concepts pedagogical framework first described by Jan Meyer and Ray Land. A threshold concept…

Though information literacy (IL) instruction is often assumed by faculty to be electronic, introductory, and teachable in a single visit, our collaboration on an inquiry-driven, research-intensive capstone course for English majors focused instead on bringing their information gathering and critical thinking skills up to a disciplinary level.…

Discusses results of a survey designed to investigate the role of technology in research, both from the instructor and student standpoints. Results indicate a wide discrepancy between instructor and student expectations and methods, as well as an increasing demand on the part of students for full-text sources. (Author/LRW)

Presents an analysis of information industry alliance formation using environmental scanning methods. Highlights include why libraries and academic institutions should be interested; a literature review; historical context; industry and market structures; commercial and academic models; trends; and implications for information providers,…

Examined the effect of an interdisciplinary Web-based citation database with full text, the ProQuest Research Library, on the Western State University library's acquisitions allocation plan. Used list price of full-text journals to calculate increases in acquisitions funding. A list of articles discussing formula allocation is appended.…

Discusses the role of consortia in academic libraries, specifically the Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL), and describes a study conducted by the IDAL that investigated issues surrounding full text database research including stability of content, vendor communication, embargo periods, publisher concerns, quality of content, linking and…

Considers the need for reliable, scholarly access to the Web and suggests that the Association for Research Libraries, in partnership with OCLC and the Library of Congress, develop a so-called scholar's portal. Topics include quality content; enhanced library services; and gateway functions, including access to commercial databases and focused…

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…