Researchers were the first adopters of digital resources available through the library. Online journals and databases make finding research articles much easier than when this author started as a librarian more than 20 years ago. Speedier interlibrary loan due to digital delivery means research materials are never far away. Making it easier for…

People see challenges to libraries in funding, in ebooks, and in the internet. However, in this information-rich age, librarians' roles are even more important. They are information experts. They know how to think about the changing information environment, and they know the impact--both positive and negative--it can have on people whose jobs…

Good libraries are a critical part of any university's research and teaching, whether in physical or digital form. But, as numerous accounts have documented, many African libraries have struggled to maintain good collections in the face of falling budgets, rising purchasing costs, and expanding student numbers. This paper draws on a literature…

Today's students have grown up in an information environment very different from the one that many people remember. They have been raised on the fast-paced edutainment of "Sesame Street" and have spent their adolescence watching 3-minute music videos on MTV. Their media environment specializes in short messages and multimedia, with news dispatched…

Teacher-librarians have implemented collaborations, becoming facilitators of literacy development throughout their schools as library research moves into multimodal forms. For instance, Wolf & Jordan (2006) studied teacher-librarian collaboration with third grade students researching and writing within a unit on severe weather preparedness. The…

In this article, the authors discuss how the University of Rochester's two-year ethnographic study reveals what students do on campus and how the library fits in. Under Nancy Fried Foster's guidance, teams of librarians and staff conducted a two-year investigation. The goal: to improve the libraries' reference services, facilities, and web pages…

This article provides results from a survey of library and web resources usage by students enrolled in mathematics courses at LaGuardia Community College. The study examined information and technology usage habits and library skills of mathematics students. The study also identified the library/information services that mathematics students…

Welcome to the 21st century, where many students turn to Google as their main source of information. In fact, some kids wouldn't look anywhere else but the Internet. So what does that mean for nonfiction books? Five years ago, everybody warned that fresh, interactive digital content would eventually replace old-fashioned books. However, last…

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, is to familiarize the reader with some advances in cataloging that may not be so esoteric in the near future for school librarians. Second, is to provide hints for easy cataloging of traditionally uncataloged electronic information and thus enhance information access through the school library OPAC.

Difficult to teach and learn, information literacy is a set of skills and knowledge that must be mastered through practice. Advances in the learning sciences reveal that students are not receptacles for wisdom deposits. They decide what they will learn. Problem-based learning exploits that insight. It calls for faculty/librarian collaborations.…

This article reports on a study we conducted with first-year students in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne in 2003. Building upon our 2002 research ("Library Review," 2003, vol 52, no 5 pp209-217), we investigated the prior library instruction, information preferences and skills of students enrolled in first-year…

These proceedings document the fifth year of the "Brick and Click Libraries Symposium", held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. Thirty five peer-reviewed papers and abstracts, written by academic librarians, and presented at the symposium are included in this volume. Many of the entries have…