The author, a digital access architect in the information systems department of the Orange County Library System in Florida, was given the challenge of creating a library mobile app around the 2009 holiday season. At that time, Sheri Chambers, digital content manager in the information systems department, and Debbie Moss, assistant director of the…

Purpose: Entering data about published research results should be implemented as a web application that enables authors to input their own data without the knowledge of the bibliographic standard. The aim of this research is to develop a research management system based on a bibliographic standard and to provide data exchange with other research…

Academic, government, and corporate librarians organize and leverage internal resources and content through institutional repositories and library catalogs. Getting more value and usage from the content they license is a key goal. However, the ever-growing amount of content and shifting user demands for new materials or features has made the…

Purpose: Online information vendors currently offer a variety of additional services; among these are alert services which present requested information on recent publications to registered users. This paper aims to investigate a variety of alert services provided by four online information vendors. Design/methodology/approach: A comparison of the…

Creating a learnable, effective, and user-friendly library Web site hinges on providing easy access to search. Designing a search interface for academic libraries can be particularly challenging given the complexity and range of searchable library collections, such as bibliographic databases, electronic journals, and article search silos. Library…

The technology of the 21st century has had no shortage of challenges for libraries, but it has also brought opportunities. Operating systems, databases, and application environments that can use cheap off-the-shelf hardware to scale and handle hundreds of millions of transactions were not developed for libraries. However, libraries have taken…

In this case study the authors describe Pepperdine University Libraries' migration to OCLC's WorldShare Management Services. They elaborate on the rationale for the decision, review some of the challenges and lessons encountered along the way, and briefly discuss some effects of the new system on our libraries. The focus is on technical services…

In April 2007, the University of Washington Libraries debuted WorldCat Local (WCL), a localized version of the WorldCat database that interoperates with a library's integrated library system and fulfillment services to provide a single-search interface for a library's physical and electronic content. This brief will describe how WCL incorporates a…

The Anatolian University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS) was created in 2001 with only a few members subscribed to nine e-journal collections and bibliographic databases. This Turkish library consortium had developed from one state and three private universities joining together for the purchase of two databases in 1999. Over time, the numbers of…

This paper examines the problems involved in subject retrieval from full-text databases of secondary materials in the humanities. Ten such databases were studied and their search functionality evaluated, focusing on factors such as Boolean operators, document surrogates, limiting by subject area, proximity operators, phrase searching, wildcards,…

This digest highlights bibliographic file creation and maintenance practices that affect a library's ability to use various automated system capabilities for current and future applications. The first section covers database creation options, cataloging resource file forms, and record creation and editing. The importance of adherence to MARC…

Given the recent spate of library system vendor acquisitions and consolidations, integrated library system (ILS) migrations have become a hot topic again. Although ILS migrations happen all the time, they tend to be cyclical in nature. Today, people are thinking broadly about what options might be available to them. These include changing vendors,…

Examines efforts of the Research Libraries Group to use RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) to support cooperative and individual member library preservation activities. Areas covered include enhancements to make item-specific microform information available and efforts to code information on the physical condition of materials. (30…

Libraries must increasingly accommodate bibliographic records encoded with a variety of standards and emerging standards, including Dublin Core, MODS, and VRA Core. The problem is that many libraries still rely solely on MARC and AACR2. The best-trained professionals to lead librarians through the metadata maze are catalogers. Catalogers…

Catalogers, catalog managers, and others in library technical services have become increasingly interested in, worried over, and excited about FRBR (the acronym for Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records). Staff outside of the management of the library's bibliographic database may wonder what the fuss is about (FERBER? FURBUR?), assuming…