Staff shortages and high service ideals collided when the Iowa State University Parks Library recognized its need to find an alternative to the human-conducted tour for various groups of library users, including hundreds of non-native speakers of English who arrived at the school to enter a degree program. An audiocassette taped tour was developed…

The integration of library instruction within established courses offered by academic departments at the State University College at Potsdam is discussed. A report of the year's activities, which are funded by a grant from the Council on Library Resources, is followed by the library director's assessment of staff skills required for program…

The study reported in this paper was conducted to determine the need for "see" references for authors' names in library catalogs. Nine-item patron questionnaires were placed in the University of Rhode Island's main library. Over the course of six years, 160 questionnaires were completed, 47 by undergraduate students, 76 by graduate…

This paper presents results from a study undertaken in 1983 at the Australian National University (ANU) to determine the extent and type of problems academic staff and students had while using the library's catalogs or while locating materials on the shelves. A questionnaire mailed to a stratified random sample of approximately 1,200 academic…

One hundred sixty-one MEDLINE searches conducted by third year medical students were analyzed and evaluated to determine which search behaviors were used, whether those individual moves are effective, and whether there is a relationship between specific search behaviors and the effectiveness of the search strategy as a whole. The typical search…

Analysis of the needs of users of Compact Disk-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) was performed at the Tampa campus of the University of South Florida. A review of the literature indicated that problems associated with selecting the appropriate database, searching, and requiring technical assistance were the probable areas of user need. The library has 17…

Describes the goals, planning, implementation, and assessment of a term paper clinic for undergraduates conducted by Master of Library Science students and provides recommendations for similar undertakings. The results of a participant survey, including how students heard of the course and their impressions of it, are presented. A copy of the…

This document is the final report to the U.S. Department of Education of a research and development grant awarded to establish a fully equipped electronic training room and test the effectiveness of hands-on instruction in learning the NOTIS OPAC (online public access catalog) and the Silver-Platter ERIC database on CD-ROM. The purpose of the…

Users of optical data disk (CD-ROM) materials at the Main Library workstations of the State University of New York at Albany were surveyed to examine the problems they encountered while conducting their searches, identify factors that interfere with their task performance, determine their needs with regard to improvement in the databases they…