Resolving user access issues is inherent in managing electronic resources in libraries. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Library, situated within a predominantly distance learning-centered institution, has developed a series of web-based technical help pages to facilitate resolution of typical issues reported by its…

Digital learning environments are spaces in which data are shared, generated, and recorded. At the end of an online course, a rich collection of digital artifacts are left behind by the instructor and learners. Some artifacts are intentionally created learning materials and assignments, some are the products of class interaction in discussion…

Technology has transformed libraries. There are digital libraries, electronic collections, online databases and catalogs, ebooks, downloadable books, and much more. With free technology such as social websites, newspaper collections, downloadable online calendars, clocks and sticky notes, online scheduling, online document sharing, and online…

The contributions in this volume represent a decade of OCLC's user behavior research findings that articulate the need for the design of future library services to be all about the user. Highlights include: (1) People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services; (2) People…

Quora (www.quora.com) is a contemporary, web-based take on reference. Users post questions within Quora and other users answer the questions. Users can vote for and against answers (or not vote at all). It is users asking questions of friends and strangers and then sorting through the results. If the model sounds familiar, it's because it is.…

It's well known that technology is changing at an increasingly rapid pace and that many public libraries throughout the United States are attempting to adopt new technologies to better reach their patrons. In trade journals, blogs, and at library conferences, professionals in the field have continually discussed the best methods for using web…

Information professionals need to be reachable through email (through cell phones, laptops, Treos, and BlackBerries) and customers' questions have to be answered in "real time," meaning that once the question is sent, an answer is expected that moment. A library in a Google environment allows this to happen. It also allows the information…

As individuals become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, their virtual selves increasingly overlap their "real" lives. Posting a "happy birthday!" message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as…

A widget displays Web content from external sources and can be embedded into a blog, social network, or other Web page, or downloaded to one's desktop. With widgets--sometimes referred to as gadgets--one can insert video into a blog post, display slideshows on MySpace, get the weather delivered to his mobile device, drag-and-drop his Netflix queue…

The increasing prevalence of digital information systems and technologies compels libraries across the globe to update systems and provide users with a digital experience outside the confines of the structural library, providing useful benefits to the user while creating new areas of concern such as digital information preservation.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of The Bridging Worlds Conference which was held in October 2008 in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach: One of the main topics the National Library Board of Singapore, the organising party, wished to address was the roles cultural institutions, such as libraries, may play in…

Some people learn better through viewing and listening, and some people simply do not like to read. In this society, there seems to be a move away from text, or, at least text as people have defined in the past. Moreover, mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs, and cell phones make video and audio incredibly easy to imbibe. So how do libraries…

With all the new advances in library technology--including metadata, social networking, and Web 2.0, along with the advent of nonlibrary and for-profit digital information companies like Wikisource and Google Print--librarians have barely had time to reflect on the nontechnical implications of these innovations. They need to take a step back and…

E-Learning is a new form of pedagogy for learning in the 21st century. E-Teachers are e-Learning instructional designers, facilitators of interaction, and subject matter experts. The roles of e-Teachers are to enhance learners' cognitive engagement and interaction. This is achieved by using the benefits of computer mediated communication--greater…

Silverplatter's Electronic Reference Library (ERL) provides wide area network access to its databases using TCP/IP communications and client-server architecture. ERL has two main components: The ERL clients (retrieval interface) and the ERL server (search engines). ERL clients provide patrons with seamless access to multiple databases on multiple…