This paper presents a qualitative analysis of nine interviews with academic library practitioners discussing their approaches to Web content strategy work. Findings reveal shared challenges and suggest that, while awareness of content strategy appears to be growing, its practice remains intermittent for many. An updated version of a wModel for…

Sixteen scholarly papers and twenty abstracts comprise the content of the eighteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship.…

In 2012, more than a decade after the original Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (hereafter the Standards) were institutionalized as the goal of academic library instruction, the Information Literacy Competency Standards Review Task Force convened by ACRL recommended…

As more and more New Yorkers turn to digital books, Wikipedia and other online tools for information and entertainment, there is a growing sense that the age of the public library is over. But, in reality, New York City's public libraries are more essential than ever. Far from becoming obsolete, the city's three public library systems--Brooklyn,…

In her biography about her horticulturalist father, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, Mary Turner Carriel wrote the following of Turner's quest to fence prairies; words that may also serve as an allegory for present-day libraries: What he could have done to tempt the pioneer from his home in the East to settle upon the fertile lands in the West. The first…

Broadband and bandwidth allocation is an essential technology planning activity that libraries should address on a continual basis. There are five key factors that will impact your network's performance: 1. infrastructure, 2. network load, 3. workstation performance, 4. prioritization of services, and 5. network management. The author thinks it's…

Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Patrons' privacy is precious to most librarians. Yet new Web services thrive on collecting and sharing the very information that has long been protected. This points to an emerging tension as libraries embrace digital services.…

Digital curation refers to the actions people take to maintain and add value to digital information over its lifecycle, including the processes used when creating digital content. Digital preservation focuses on the "series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary." In this…

An online survey of institutional repository (IR) managers identified copyright clearance trends in staffing and workflows. The majority of respondents followed a mediated deposit model, and reported that library personnel, instead of authors, engaged in copyright clearance activities for IRs. The most common "information gaps" pertained to the…

One of the first big shifts in how libraries manage resources was the move from print-journal purchasing models to database-subscription and electronic-journal purchasing models. Libraries found that this transition helped them scale their resources and provide better service just by thinking a bit differently about their services. Likewise,…

U.S. public libraries provide free public internet services to the communities that they serve, but require robust, high-speed broadband internet connections to continue meeting public demands. The 2008-2009 "Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study" ("PLFTAS") illustrates challenges that public libraries encounter in achieving broadband…

This paper reviews a selection of literature pertaining to the subject of censorship in modern libraries. It interrogates the literature in terms of the ethical debates informing much of the contemporary academic writing on this subject. A multi-pronged approach to the subject is adopted. The review includes evaluations of the relevant aspects of…

In the eighteenth century there were enough printed sources and archival materials to challenge or even overwhelm historians of that day. Two productive editors of lexicons and information management were Christian Gottlieb Jocher, who taught history at the University of Leipzig and became the chief librarian at his university, and Johann Heinrich…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of The Bridging Worlds Conference which was held in October 2008 in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach: One of the main topics the National Library Board of Singapore, the organising party, wished to address was the roles cultural institutions, such as libraries, may play in…

The cultural heritage preservation community now functions largely within the environment of digital technologies. This article begins by juxtaposing definitions of the terms "digitization for preservation" and "digital preservation" within a sociotechnical environment for which Google serves as a relevant metaphor. It then reviews two reports…