Since 2009, Open Access (OA) Week has been celebrated worldwide in October each year. It is an opportunity for librarians to engage with the research community and demonstrate the value that they bring to their organisations in the area of disseminating scholarly output. Although thousands of events have been held since the inception of OA Week, a…

Although cited reference studies are common in the library and information science literature, they are rarely performed in nonacademic institutions or in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. In this paper, we analyze more than 400,000 cited references made by authors affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between…

Lists and discusses sources of child welfare materials for the historical researcher: general histories, reference guides, catalogs, bibliographies, directories, abstracts, indexes, and electronic services. Also listed are guides to archives containing--among other items--manuscripts, documents, social agency records, and oral history transcripts.…

The building and decoration of the Library of Congress in the late nineteenth century were emblematic of America's longing to be regarded as an enlightened nation and to take its rightful place among the great civilizations of the past. The sources for this ambition, illustrated in the paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions in the library's…

The Management Review and Analysis Program (MRAP) provides resources and guidelines for a research library to use in conducting an internal assessment of management practices. The MRAP self-study project has two components: a procedural methodology for conducting the analysis, and a conceptual framework provided to assist in evaluation. The study…

The Office of University Library Managmenet Studies has completed its second year of activity, pursuing its commitment to improving research library management. While the first year of operation focused on the Columbia Study, the second year emphasized the development of a new management tool--the Management Review and Analysis Program. This…

The third year of operation for the Office of University Library Management Studies demonstrated more extended programs and activities in the management arena and widespread involvement of member libraries. While the Management Review and Analysis Program moved into a fully operational context, the Office established a new Systems and Procedures…

What might motivate someone with a natural science degree to forgo the lab and pursue a non-traditional career in librarianship? Are there differences between LIS graduates with and without a science degree that might impact recruitment strategies? An analysis of data from a longitudinal career study, "Workforce Issues in Library and…

Western Illinois University Libraries has cut online serials subscriptions in the past 2 years. The librarians were guided by the statistics for downloads provided by the publishers of the journals. However, questions were raised by both professors and librarians regarding the exact meaning of the statistics. This caused the electronic resources…

This report presents statistics on how Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries spend money on electronic resources. This report indicates that 109 ARL libraries purchased 32,329,187 electronic books. In 2007-2008, there was a median of 28,319 acquisitions of electronic books by ARL libraries (this includes one institution that…

Like many libraries, Seton Hall University Libraries has suffered budget cuts that forced a reduction in serial subscriptions. As science librarian, I report on my efforts to streamline subscriptions and to address the question "Why are science journals so expensive?" Our science journals are significantly more expensive than journals in…

We investigated whether American dissertations that were deposited in university libraries or disseminated on microfilm prior to 1978 were "published" for copyright purposes. This question has direct bearing on the copyright status of these works today. In the absence of a directly relevant legal decision to clarify the matter, the…

This issue of "Library Lectures" contains lectures nineteen, twenty and twenty-one. Lecture nineteen, "Librarianship Today - Crisis or Change," presented by Dr. Jerrold Orne considers change a natural result of growth which should not be feared as a critical disruption. The twentieth lecture, "Twentieth Century Scholarship and the Research…

A mathematical model is used to justify having the Library of Congress do as much as possible of all the original cataloging for U.S. libraries. It is suggested that the potential savings due to decreased duplication of effort by local libraries could easily justify the use of a computer system at LC. (Author/JB)

The condition of the private library in the United States is precarious as great book collections are passed increasingly from the private sector to institutions. (4 references) (Author/RS)