Assessment and supporting data have become of increasing interest in librarianship. In this paper, we describe the development and implementation of the Northwestern University Library Acknowledgments Database tool, which gathers and documents qualitative data, as well as its component reporting function. This collaborative project and resulting…

The silo is a well-worn metaphor in information systems used to illustrate separateness, isolation, and lack of connectivity. Through the many iterations of system development, libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) have sought to avoid silos and find the sweet spot between interface design and metadata interoperability. This effort is being…

Any librarian who has managed electronic resources has experienced the--for want of words--"joy" of gathering and analyzing usage statistics. Such statistics are important for evaluating the effectiveness of resources and for making important budgeting decisions. Unfortunately, the data are usually tedious to collect, inconsistently organized, of…