To better understand health information provision in the public library setting, two cooperative library systems that serve primarily rural populations in upstate New York were studied. The central library in one of those systems established a consumer health information center (CHIC) in 1999. In the other system, the central library does not have…

Collaboration in the digital domain offers an opportunity to provide enhanced digital services and extended reach to the community. This article adopts a service-oriented perspective through which it considers environmental drivers for digital library collaboration; discusses emergent collaborative partnerships across UK educational institutions,…

Maintains that children have been denied access to information through the omission of children's materials in the development of automated information systems, and through the failure of library networks to develop policies that include children as users. Eleven references are cited. (FM)

The design and study of library information networks are enhanced by the use of the concepts which have been developed by graph theorists. This paper proposes a general network structure which is a good model for a wide variety of library and other information networks. (4 references) (Author/NH)

Discusses the public library's movement toward consolidation/cooperation with other libraries and the administrative, fiscal, and service implications of such a system. Incorporation of the public library into the national information network as a multitype or unitype system is examined through a review of multitype systems in New York and…

Comments on changes in the public library in the United Kingdom due to local government reorganization and recurring financial crises, and discusses the implications of networking and technological innovation. (CWM)

A study for assessing automatic vocabulary switching from a thesaurus to Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) revealed that a maximum 61%, but a more realistic 41.5%, of the terms could be switched automatically; as long as LCSH is used for subject descriptions in online catalogs, interfaces for vocabulary switching can only be partially…

Twenty-one libraries in Library Computer System participated in collection overlap study. Findings of random sample representing 1% of each collection indicate that high percentage of titles, 69.4%, occurred only once in network and that percentage of each library's collection unique to that library, ranged from 6.1% to 68.4%. (21 references) (EJS)

Comments on impact of photocopying, networking, and resource sharing on acquisitions programs of research libraries and describes fiscal situation in academic institutions, specifically in Massachusetts Institute of Technology libraries. Electronic publishing, role of research library as subscriber and intermediary, and communication between…

Describes the technical, political, economic, and cultural environments of library automation. A review is then presented of five books covering wide-ranging library automation themes, including practical experiences; planning second-generation library systems; software, systems, and services; new roles for librarians; and the national network…

Prior to 1997, the University of Oxford in Great Britain had approximately one hundred autonomous libraries with little coordination of services, collection development, or management among them. In that year a new director was hired with the mandate to integrate many of these libraries into one centralized system. Over the past seven years…

Examines influences on Israelis' reading habits during the past two decades, including the increase in the educational level, the assimilation of immigrants, the emergence of television and video, and the establishment of a network of public libraries. Reading habits of the school-age population and of Israel's Arab minority are also surveyed. (28…