Lack of funding, equipment, and expertise tops the list of reasons standing in the way of many smaller cultural heritage organizations digitizing their archival collections. Expanding on existing relationships with regional public libraries and museums, a pilot project was developed to address these reasons, partnering a university library's…

As the need for digital content increases almost daily, preserving this content for university libraries, especially in the least developed and developing nations, becomes a challenge, resulting in the loss of this data. Even though most of these libraries are automated and adopt one digital preservation strategy or the other, library users need…

This article presents a case for the benefits of knowledge exchange in the academic library. The authors define knowledge exchange and use the concept as a framework for describing a peer learning experience rooted in best digital practices education. Their partnership enabled the authors to extend their professional roles while developing…

University course assignments increasingly focus on group work and group projects to help students collaboratively discover more about their fields of study. The Thomas G. Carpenter Library realized the need to investigate means for reimagining itself to better accommodate today's researchers. The complex process of planning for the redesign of…

There is a growing shift to digital offerings among public libraries. Libraries increasingly are fulfilling roles as technology hubs for their communities, with high demand for technology and career development training resources. Ebooks and other digital materials are on the rise, while print is being scaled back. More libraries are turning to…

Literature on library service models is scarce and exists mainly in non-traditional formats such as blog entries and webpages. Nonetheless, the subject evokes heated debate among librarians with many supporting the model they are using, sometimes without understanding that there are other options which perhaps could be better for their…

Opened in fall 2009, YOUmedia attracts high schoolaged teens who want a safe and welcoming place to hang out and socialize, as well as those with established or nascent interests in both digital and traditional media. With the guidance of staff and the synergy of peer involvement, participants discover and pursue their interests through both…

This article describes the fundamental challenges to data curation, how these challenges may be compounded for smaller institutions, and how data management is an essential and manageable component of data curation. Data curation is often discussed within the confines of large research universities. As a result, master's and baccalaureate…

Technology has transformed libraries. There are digital libraries, electronic collections, online databases and catalogs, ebooks, downloadable books, and much more. With free technology such as social websites, newspaper collections, downloadable online calendars, clocks and sticky notes, online scheduling, online document sharing, and online…

Intellectual pursuit and the recognition of ideas is a central concept. Copyrights protect the rights of intellectual creators while balancing those rights with the needs for access. As technologies have expanded, and production has become more sophisticated, the legal regulations surrounding their use have become more complex. With the advent of…

It is hard to imagine a Microsoft venture falling under the weight of a competitor. That's the post-mortem offered by many academic librarians as they ponder the software giant's recent and sudden announcement that it is shutting down its book-digitization project. The librarians' conclusion: Google did it. Microsoft quietly revealed in May that…

Lesson planning serves as a key means for ensuring the quality of instruction. In an effort to facilitate and improve the literature related to lesson planning, this paper proposes a framework which integrates online lesson planners, databases, case libraries, and Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis to support both pre-service and in-service…

This article looks at some of the hype and the reality of e-books in higher education. An e-book is an electronic book that can be read digitally on a computer screen, a special e-book reader, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or even a mobile phone. In other words, e-books are consumed on a screen rather than on paper. However, underlying this…

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,…

The amount of online information has grown exponentially over the past few decades, and users become more and more dependent on ranking and recommendation systems to address their information seeking needs. The advance in information technologies has enabled users to provide feedback on the utilities of the underlying ranking and recommendation…