Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

In 2011 the University of Wollongong Library undertook a significant review of its Resource Sharing services. This was prompted by constraints in the systems supporting this service, changes to the Library's key suppliers, Infotrieve Australia and the British Library Document Supply Service, and the need to deliver effective library services…

The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

First offered to public libraries in 2004, downloadable audiobooks have grown by leaps and bounds. According to the Audio Publishers Association, their sales today account for 21% of the spoken-word audio market. It hasn't been easy, however. WMA. DRM. MP3. AAC. File extensions small on letters but very big on consequences for librarians,…

When the electronic resource management system (ERM) at Kansas State University Libraries suffered a horrible data loss, the "contract db" presented a challenge for the librarians responsible for electronic resources. It was a decent data repository, but it had no ability to manage the tangled process of licensing, acquiring, activating,…

Despite lower attendance than in the past and blustery, cold weather, the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Denver in January offered lots of news from industry vendors and lots of opportunities to discuss important issues and trends. In this report, the author highlights some of the most important product announcements with a…

This article presents the results of a comprehensive survey of integrated library system (ILS) vendors conducted by the author and commissioned by "Computers in Libraries" CIL. The survey was intended to: (1) provide an up-to-date comparison of functionality currently available in ILS products; (2) provide a comparison of support services…

From the ascendance of the reference database and web sites offering endless opportunities for cyber-promotion to the crowds swarming through the doors to avail themselves of new computers, the Internet has transformed the way public libraries do business. That is not news. What is exciting, though, is how the Internet continues to change public…

Twenty-three scholarly papers and twelve abstracts comprise the content of the eleventh annual Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, held at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The peer-reviewed proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the symposium, portray the contemporary and future face of…

This article, the second installment of CIL's (Computers in Libraries) 2005 Helping You Buy series, provides an in-depth look at library selfcheck systems from 10 vendors. The product comparison chart will help you to quickly and easily compare products from competing vendors. All of the information on the product comparison chart came directly…

Corporations employ data mining to analyze operations, find trends in recorded information, and look for new opportunities. Libraries are no different. Librarians manage large stores of data--about collections and usage, for example--and they also want to analyze this data to serve their users better. Analysts use data mining to query a data…

Examines library automation product introductions and conversions to new operating systems. Compares user satisfaction ratings of the following library software packages: DOS/Windows, UNIX, Macintosh, and DEC VAX/VMS. Software is rated according to documentation, service/support, training, product reliability, product capabilities, ease of use,…

Innovations from Google[TM] and Amazon[R] are clear wake-up calls that as a profession and an industry things need to be done differently. Automation vendors and librarians must work together to ensure that the profession is positioned to take advantage of changing culture and technology to assume a rightful place at the table where rich and…

This Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) kit compiled by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) contains documents pertaining to bibliographic access in ARL libraries. Data collected in a 1975 SPEC user services survey are presented in two tables to illustrate new, eliminated, and planned services in ARL libraries and methods of…

This paper discusses ways in which the Queensland University of Technology (Australia) has freed up resources, particularly staffing resources, in order to focus attention on activities that add value to the academic process. Vendor partnership with Blackwell's Library Supply company for selection, acquisition, cataloging, and end processing of…