Over the past twenty-five years, many academic libraries have shifted from print to digital collections. One consequence of this change has been the increased use of a library's website to access books, journals, and databases in a digital format. Thus, library space, once used to house print material, is now available for other purposes, creating…

With the advent of the big data internet era, the corresponding multimedia technology is also developing. At the same time, as an important place for students to improve their cognitive level and expand their knowledge coverage, the construction of knowledge and information in university libraries will have an important impact on the growth of…

Many school administrators and librarians offer students opportunities to hone social skills while they research, read, and learn in libraries. Recently, transforming traditional libraries into spaces known as "learning commons" has become a popular way to match the social and academic preferences of students with numerous technological…

Libraries have become increasingly interested in studying the use of spaces within their buildings. Traditional methods for tracking library building use, such as gate counts, provide little information on what patrons do once they are in the library; therefore, new methods for studying space usage are being developed. Particularly promising are…

Renovating, expanding or building new libraries today is a challenge on several levels. Libraries in general are faced with image issues, such as the assumption that a library building exists only to house print material followed by the equally erroneous assumption that everything is now available online, thus rendering a physical building…

An automated retrieval system, adapted from a commercial warehouse application, has been installed at Georgia Southern University and has been well accepted by patrons and library personnel due to its reliability, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and responsiveness. (Contains 1 figure.)

In the summer of 2004, Georgia Southern University began a library construction project that was to last 4 years. An important aspect was the installation of an Automated Retrieval System (ARC) to house a substantial portion of the library collections so that more space could be available for students, faculty, and the services to meet their…

Speech synthesis is a technology used in many different areas in computer science. This technology can bring a solution to reading activity of visually impaired people due to its text to speech conversion. Based on this problem, in this study, a system is designed needed for a visually impaired person to make use of all the library facilities in…

Academic libraries are turning to automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) as a long-term cost effective means of gaining additional space in their open stacks areas by removing lesser used books and other materials for storage and placement into ASRS bins. The new library building under construction at the University of Nevada-Reno will…

As campus renovation projects go, the Ohio State University's plan to turn its main library into "a library for the 21st century" is ambitious. The author describes the decade-long, $109 million transformation of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library. The overhaul calls for a complete replacement of all mechanical and electrical…

When Bruce Miller took up the position of head librarian at the University of California, Merced in 2001, the plan for the new library was to use the University of California (UC) system's rich base of support as a launching pad for something great and extraordinary: a model academic research library for the twenty-first century. This article…

For years, patrons have been able to access library services from home and in the library building, but in the world of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, library web sites and catalogs are too often not the first place people go to look for information. The innovative use of toolbars could change this. Toolbars have been popular for…

This article reports on a library renovation at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona which incurs complaints from professors and librarians about a shift from print to online materials. The $60-million project at Cal Poly is providing a difficult lesson in the challenges of library renovation, and in the changing role of one of the…

This book is designed to provide the information needed to start a new agricultural library. The guide covers a wide range of topics including information sources, acquisitions procedures, and public relations. It provides addresses of publishers and information sources; a list of common abbreviations; a ground plan for a library; and information…

From its earliest beginnings to the post war information explosion, this text traces the history of the world's largest library, the Library of Congress (LC). The library's creation in 1800 for use by members of Congress is comprehensively discussed along with its development into a world wide service. Library methodology is covered in chapters on…