After three years of collecting electronic resources of troubleshooting tickets in Springhare's LibAnswers at University of Houston Libraries, the author conducted an analysis of over 300 tickets. The type of problem was identified for each ticket and then categorized into a functional area using an existing categorization schema developed at…

Citation management programs are tools used to organize references and to create citations and bibliographies. Libraries are often the central point for providing training and support in using these tools. To determine how we could improve our support and training services, we surveyed users to determine what software in being used, why they chose…

Learning programming has become more and more popular and organizing introductory massive open online courses (MOOCs) on programming can be one way to bring this education to the masses. While programming MOOCs usually use automated assessment to give feedback on the submitted code, the lack of understanding of certain aspects of the tasks and…

Resolving user access issues is inherent in managing electronic resources in libraries. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Library, situated within a predominantly distance learning-centered institution, has developed a series of web-based technical help pages to facilitate resolution of typical issues reported by its…

A primary role of any e-resources librarian or staff is troubleshooting electronic resources (e-resources). While much progress has been made in many areas of e-resources management (ERM) to understand the ERM lifecycle and to manage workflows, troubleshooting access remains a challenge. This collaborative study is the result of the well-received…

Students pick up technology faster than their teacher's. So when it comes to troubleshooting technical headaches in the classroom, it's not surprising that schools are turning to their own best resources--the students themselves. Whether staffing a "genius bar" in the media center or troubleshooting a balky projector, students at some schools are…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement was started roughly ten years old (Wiley & Gurell, 2009). Since that time thousands of resources have been produced. Though these resources have been used both for classroom development and for the autodidact, the development of OER was not without problems. Incompatibility between Creative Commons…

In recent times, "plagiarism detection software" has become popular in universities and colleges, in an attempt to stem the tide of plagiarised student coursework. Such software attempts to detect any copied material and identify its source. The most popular such software is Turnitin, a commercial system used by thousands of institutions…

Indiana University (IU) provides great support for the technology the community needs to teach, learn, and conduct research. Rather than limiting support by defining a rigid support matrix, IU has chosen instead to utilize knowledge management technology to provide self-service for repetitive information technology (IT) questions, and focus…

In this article we present a partially realized project for building a distributed learning environment for studying digital circuits Test and Diagnostics at TU-Sofia. We describe the main requirements for this environment, substantiate the developer platform choice, and present our simulation and circuit parameter calculation tools.…

Miscommunications and misunderstandings surrounding common words that have one meaning in library-speak and a different meaning in IT-speak are all too common. There are tons of books on communicating; one could spend a career reading them all. In this article, the author recommends one book that describes how to focus on phrasing questions in…

Data loss from life's little power calamities may be the most common form of IT disaster any campus can face. According to a 2007 industry association survey(www.connect.educause.edu/library/ecar/shelterfromthestormitandb/41174), 82 percent of higher education institutions reporting a disruptive occurrence in the five years prior to the study…

Knowledge management (KM) in the U.S. Navy is championed as a strategic initiative to improve shipboard maintenance and troubleshooting at a distance. The approach requires capturing, coordinating, and distributing domain expertise in electronics and computer engineering via advanced information and communication technologies. Coordination must be…

Researchers espouse that youth are learning differently than any other generation. Many researchers believe that because youth are leading the way with technology, their technology practices impact the way that they connect with the world around them. As a result, educators examine how to successfully engage youth in learning by understanding how…