Technologists may find themselves alone on the bleachers trying to find supporters for the next "it" technology. Despite their enthusiasm, many times "it" ends up unused because a thorough evaluation was not performed prior to purchase. Before technologists lobby for approval or support of a new project, the author presents five questions for them…

In the summer of 2010, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam started offering the world's first library in an airport. This article describes Airport Library which is no ordinary library. It holds more than 1,200 items, but it lends nothing. It operates 24/7, yet it's only staffed by volunteers for 2 or 3 hours a day. It offers just nine public-access…

When it comes to helping others learn, there is a simple piece of advice that is often recommended to educators: Show! Don't tell. While appealing to the visual learning style of an audience is always a good idea, there is a growing expectation for more than just static images. They want video, which can deliver more dynamic presentations with…

In this article, the author discusses how the Berklee College of Music preserves its past and learns for the future. Though the library has received support from the college administration for the creation of an archive, it has been difficult for the interest in preserving the college's history to compete with more urgent needs, such as being able…

For nearly a decade now, librarians have discussed and deliberated ways, for the sake of convenience, to integrate internet-like searching into their own catalogs to mimic what academic library patrons have been using outside the library. Discovery tools and web-scale discovery services (WSDS) attempt to provide users with a similar one-stop shop…

Since the early 1990s, the Lloyd Sealy Library, where all four of this article's librarian-authors work in various capacities, has been providing the students and faculty of John Jay College of Criminal Justice with extensive electronic access to books and journals. In early 2009, the librarians at Lloyd Sealy decided to test a recent electronic…

This article proceeds from the position that obsession with technology is a distraction from librarians' true mission and explores how a constellation of emerging information technologies might empower librarians to reconsider their commitment to the technological treadmill and instead turn to a more humanistic orientation. This article presents…

Public libraries are redefining their roles in order to stay relevant to the needs of the communities they serve. Today, libraries are places where reading meets hands-on learning and where quietness coexists with voices and music. The latest advances in technology for children and teens, specifically, robotics sets and media-rich software, are…

The 2009 "Horizon Report" called mobile technologies "an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents in new and compelling ways." The report implied that academic libraries would find them to be the ideal tools for bringing reluctant researchers to the library, mainly for their convenience. It's not hard to see why--in 2008, mobile…

Since the turn of the century, one of the hottest topics in the IT world has been the coming mobile revolution. While there's been some arguing over the details, the fundamental tenet of the mobile revolution is that lots and lots of people will start accessing web content from handheld portable devices instead of using a traditional laptop or…

Northern Michigan University (NMU) is a public 4-year undergraduate institution of higher education with an enrollment of approximately 9,500 students. The university's Division of Academic Information Services encompasses both the staff of the library, which includes authors Clumpner and Burgmeier, and the instructional technology areas, where…

In these days of distance learners, virtual libraries, and electronic information, no library can be without some way of providing remote access to affiliated users, whether they are distance students, online students, or local students and faculty members working from home. Libraries subscribe to any number of electronic resources and journals,…

People live in an era of social, enterprise-oriented, and increasingly cloud-based technology; a dramatic shift away from stand-alone isolated silos that previously dominated. Computing systems can flourish today only when built to easily exchange data and services. An application that stands alone may provide practical functionality but may not…

Millipore Corp.--a global company of 6,100 employees for which the author serves as the science and patent information specialist--supplies products and expertise that span the research, development, and production stages in the life science research and biologic drug manufacturing fields. Millipore's corporate library, the information group,…

Lafayette College is an undergraduate, private liberal arts and engineering school in Easton, Pennsylvania. In 2005, Lafayette rededicated its newly renovated library, complete with shared library/instructional technology facilities and a media studio. As originally envisioned, instructional technology (ITech) would have its own separate service…