The University of Louisville's Ekstrom Library needed to remove 260,000 items from its shelves, and shift a further 95,000 within an extremely short deadline ahead of plans to redesign its third floor into an inviting, modern, student-friendly space for patrons to enjoy. The move faced three distinct challenges: space, item tracking, and…

Despite the widespread adoption of streaming video by academic libraries, there has been little discussion about how video content is discovered and accessed through the library catalog as compared to vendor platforms. This article explores the current status of video resources in the library catalog to better understand how users find and access…

Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL) purchased the digitized "United States Congressional Serial Set," 1817-1994 and "American State Papers" (1789-1838) from the Readex Division of NewsBank, Inc. and, once funds and records were available, the accompanying MARC records. The breadth of information found in the "Serial…

There has been a noticeable divide the past few years within the library world regarding electronic books. Many academic libraries have been purchasing or leasing web-based academic ebooks for years. Most public libraries on the other hand (thanks in large part to services such as OverDrive) have directed their attention toward downloadable…

Animated maps of the library stacks were integrated into the catalog interface at Pratt Institute and into the EBSCO Discovery Service interface at Illinois State University. The mapping feature was developed for optimal automation of the update process to enable a range of library personnel to update maps and call-number ranges. The development…

The automation of a library that basically aims at improving the management of the library's resources and increasing access to these same resources by users has caught on so well in the western world that virtually all academic libraries in that part of the world have automated most of their services. In Africa, however, several challenges are…

Today's electronic information landscape is growing exponentially with no signs of slowing. This poses a significant challenge for academic libraries. Librarians must continually learn and adapt to harness this explosion of resources. To fulfill their claim as the leaders in the information field they must be effective in providing access and…

Several studies have researched the reasons and patterns for academic library users' interlibrary loan requests for materials already available at their college or university library. This study examines interlibrary loan statistics at the University of Delaware for four academic years to determine whether WorldCat Local impacts requests for…

In this article, a librarian at Lincoln Memorial University creates library services for an MBA program offered entirely online that is in the early stages of development. The library services include a subject guide and 4 tutorials that will be added to the MBA online orientation. Other services include offering online office hours and…

Big data sets and powerful computing capacity have transformed scholarly inquiry across many disciplines. While the impact of data-intensive research methodologies is perhaps most distinct in the natural and social sciences, the humanities have also benefited from these new analytical tools. While full-text data is necessary to study topics such…

In autumn 2012, the University of Birmingham launched FindIt@Bham, a Primo-based Resource Discovery Service, after a series of focus groups with students and staff to help determine its initial configuration and customization. This article presents the results from a large-scale online survey and focus groups that were conducted to poll users'…

The paper examines the level of library automation and virtual library development in four academic libraries. A validated questionnaire was used to capture the responses from academic librarians of the libraries under study. The paper discovers that none of the four academic libraries is fully automated. The libraries make use of librarians with…

Content-enriched metadata in bibliographic records is considered helpful to library users in identifying and selecting library materials for their needs. The paper presents a study, using circulation data from a medium-sized academic library, of the effect of content-enriched records on library materials usage. The study also examines OPAC search…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to examine the various features and components of web-based online public access catalogues (OPACs) of IIT libraries in India with the help of a specially designed evaluation checklist. Design/methodology/approach: The various features of the web-based OPACs in six IIT libraries (IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT…

Landman Library is two-thirds of the way through a three-stage process of migrating to the Koha open-source integrated library system (http://koha-community.org). We are an academic library with roughly 143,000 volumes, six professional librarians, and three support staff. The migration to open source was driven by the desire to access our own…