In 2012, more than a decade after the original Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (hereafter the Standards) were institutionalized as the goal of academic library instruction, the Information Literacy Competency Standards Review Task Force convened by ACRL recommended…

Broadband and bandwidth allocation is an essential technology planning activity that libraries should address on a continual basis. There are five key factors that will impact your network's performance: 1. infrastructure, 2. network load, 3. workstation performance, 4. prioritization of services, and 5. network management. The author thinks it's…

Digital curation refers to the actions people take to maintain and add value to digital information over its lifecycle, including the processes used when creating digital content. Digital preservation focuses on the "series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary." In this…

The cultural heritage preservation community now functions largely within the environment of digital technologies. This article begins by juxtaposing definitions of the terms "digitization for preservation" and "digital preservation" within a sociotechnical environment for which Google serves as a relevant metaphor. It then reviews two reports…

This paper reviews a selection of literature pertaining to the subject of censorship in modern libraries. It interrogates the literature in terms of the ethical debates informing much of the contemporary academic writing on this subject. A multi-pronged approach to the subject is adopted. The review includes evaluations of the relevant aspects of…

An online survey of institutional repository (IR) managers identified copyright clearance trends in staffing and workflows. The majority of respondents followed a mediated deposit model, and reported that library personnel, instead of authors, engaged in copyright clearance activities for IRs. The most common "information gaps" pertained to the…

Sixteen scholarly papers and twenty abstracts comprise the content of the eighteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship.…

Drupal is a PHP-and MySQL-based system for managing web sites, developed in 2000 and released in 2001 under the open GNU General Public License (GPL). It is modular, extensible, and scalable. In recent years, Drupal has gained a huge following within libraries as a content management system (CMS). Probably the best-known extension of Drupal in the…

The foundation of the mighty Google Empire rests upon an algorithm that connects people to information--things such as websites, maps, and restaurant reviews. Lately it seems that people are less interested in connecting with information than they are with connecting to one another, which begs the question, "Is Facebook the new Google?" Given this…

Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Patrons' privacy is precious to most librarians. Yet new Web services thrive on collecting and sharing the very information that has long been protected. This points to an emerging tension as libraries embrace digital services.…

One of the first big shifts in how libraries manage resources was the move from print-journal purchasing models to database-subscription and electronic-journal purchasing models. Libraries found that this transition helped them scale their resources and provide better service just by thinking a bit differently about their services. Likewise,…

It seems that fear of Web 2.0 is in full force. There are two concerns that resulted in a national panic concerning Internet Web 2.0 tools: pedophiles luring children via the Internet and corruption of youths through exposure to hard-core pornography or other vile material. Administrators, no doubt, are thinking in terms of saving themselves from…

U.S. public libraries provide free public internet services to the communities that they serve, but require robust, high-speed broadband internet connections to continue meeting public demands. The 2008-2009 "Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study" ("PLFTAS") illustrates challenges that public libraries encounter in achieving broadband…

During the period in which Duane Webster led the Association for Research Libraries (ARL), powerful commercial interests sought for their own financial purposes the information resources essential for providing education and performing research. Juxtaposed was the Internet with its inherent capacity to democratizing these resources. Commercial…

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…