How does a smaller, fully online academic library offer a wide and deep collection of academic level e-books to its distance learners in a sustainable and affordable way? The State University of New York (SUNY) Empire State College Online Library, with a staff of four, has used demand-driven e-book acquisitions since September 2013. Despite…

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online classroom content that can be reused, modified, and shared freely. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) undertook a project to redesign its undergraduate curriculum using OERs in place of traditional textbooks. UMUC librarians have played a critical role in this project, helping to find…

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have recently emerged as a disruptive pedagogy gaining rapid momentum in higher education. In some states, proposed legislations would accredit MOOCs to provide college-credit courses in the name of cost saving, efficiency and access. While debates rage regarding the place of MOOCs in higher education, some…

Based on in-person, task-based usability testing and interviews, the authors' library Web site was recently overhauled in order to improve user experience. This led to the authors' interest in additional usability testing methods and test environments that would most closely fit their library's goals and situation. The appeal of card sorting…

Gaps between users' and designers' mental models of digital libraries often result in adverse user experiences. This article details an exploratory user research study at a large, predominantly online university serving non-traditional distance education students with the goal of understanding these gaps. Using qualitative data, librarians created…

A significant number of distance students report they "stray" from their home universities by using local libraries, despite the fact that distance education librarians work hard to provide customized resources and services tailored to their programs and needs. Are public libraries and special libraries able to meet the research needs of…

Journey mapping, a method of collecting data that illustrates individuals' paths toward a specific goal, was originally developed for use in retail/customer service environments. Much of the literature describes its application in examining customer behavior when navigating merchants' Websites, allowing researchers to examine the effectiveness,…

Kimbel Library launched its mobile environment and ran it in full production for several months yet usage patterns were quite low and flat. The library only saw a substantial increase in usage when new, value-added services were integrated into this platform. Upon implementing and integrating discovery services, chat and SMS capabilities, and…

This paper describes the automated copyright clearance process for electronic reserves materials by the electronic reserves staff at the Information and Library Services (ILS), at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Besides the standard practice to handle and post required course readings in digital format for UMUC's distance…

This article argues that accessibility and universality are essential to good Web design. A brief review of library science literature sets the issue of Web accessibility in context. The bulk of the article explains the design philosophies of progressive enhancement and responsive Web design, and summarizes recent updates to WCAG 2.0, HTML5, CSS…

What could bring more change to an online library than going from a federated to a discovery search system? Not much! This paper will share what was learned about initiating and implementing an important change that ultimately impacts a variety of stakeholders, and the importance of collaboration between library personnel at all levels of an…

In an era of exploding online enrollment and tight budgets, Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) struggles to meet the needs of online students. CPCC librarians went one step towards solving that problem in 2009-2010 by launching an embedded librarian program. CPCC's program became so successful that it struggled to meet demand. In 2013, CPCC…

With both budget dollars and buying power shrinking for academic library collections, the selection of materials is a series of crucial choices. With increases in numbers of online programs, how can we determine if what we are buying is in fact what our users need? E-reserves are an increasingly popular way to provide digital copies of course…

Far from being dusty old relics who are guardians of the book, embedded librarians need to be proactively leading students through the digital maze of the virtual library. Working with students more than 7,000 miles away changed perceptions of how to teach and learn, and how people interact online. We will share how as embedded librarians we…

"Sense of place" no longer applies only to the physical library. All students are distance learners to one extent or another, and all distance services must be considered as a single virtual learning commons. Librarians at Bucks County (PA) Community College implement and integrate current teaching, learning, virtual reference, and mobile access…