Electronic resource management (ERM) systems have inundated the library marketplace. Both integrated library systems (ILS) vendors and subscription agents are now offering products and service enhancements that claim to help libraries efficiently manage their electronic resources. Additionally, some homegrown and open-source solutions have emerged…

This article presents an interview with Patrick Sommers, president of reference/information publisher "Gale" (part of Cengage Learning). Sommers took the helm in October 2007, after running system vendor Sirsi beginning in 2001 and engineering both the 2005 merger with Dynix and the 2007 sale of the newly created SirsiDynix to Vista Equity…

While libraries, book and periodical vendors, system providers, and bibliographical utilities are collaborating to move scholarly information from origin to public access more quickly, scholarly publishers, particularly university presses, have been slow to join in. Discusses aspects of the publisher/vendor relationship: library/vendor…

Librarians, through their professional associations, have long been committed to the social justice principle embedded in the concept of "free access to information". External censorship challenges to library collections threaten this principle overtly. However, censorship can also occur in libraries in various covert and often unconscious ways.…

Outlines the basic options that schools and libraries have for accessing the Internet, focusing on four models: direct connection; dial access using SLIP/PPP (Serial Line Internet Protocol/Point-to-Point Protocol); dial-up using terminal emulation mode; and dial access through commercial online services. Discusses access option issues such as…

Analyzes the future direction of accessing government information via online electronic formats from commercial, public, and private sources; addresses library challenges in accessing and preserving online information; and examines reduced availability of government information. Discusses federal administration initiatives, federal agency…

Reviews optical technology products currently on the market, including their storage capacities, formats and uses, and outlines the benefits of integrating optical storage devices with online databases. A description of the HAYSTACK system is offered as a model of optical technology for library applications. A suggested reading list is provided.…

Discusses the networking of image-based libraries of scientific and technical documents and the role of information professionals in the future of libraries and information access. Topics include commercial databanks, projects involving cooperation between technical publishers and universities, and the Internet and World Wide Web. (LRW)

A distributed union catalog is a network of bibliographic systems that cooperate to enable their users to discover sites that hold copies of known items. Some participating systems will be traditional union catalogs, others will be single sites with comprehensive collections, and others will be local or regional resource sharing systems. A…

The virtual Canadian union catalog (vCuc) project is a project among Canadian libraries to use Z39.50 (an information protocol standard) for searching distributed individual library catalogs and union catalogs. This paper summarizes the major technical, vendor, bibliographic data, and administrative issues that must be resolved before the…