As the authors describe in Chapter 7 of their new book, "The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies," the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative continues to ramble on, without evidence to support its efficacy. That is because education reform in the United States is being driven largely by ideology, rhetoric, and dogma instead of…

School libraries are crucial to learning, but need resources to close the digital and print divide that widens as school budgets shrink. In this article, the author shares her perspective on stretching the library dollar. As budgets tighten and the use of library resources increases, school librarian's ingenuity, skill, and planning can ensure…

Bill Schickling has spent a good chunk of his professional life at what is now Polaris Library Systems, shaping both the older Galaxy system and the newer Polaris integrated library system (ILS). When he joined the company as a programmer in 1987, it was still part of Gaylord, known mostly for its furniture and supplies division. Schickling was…

David Foster is the founder of Kryterion, an Internet test administration company, and currently serves there as chief scientist and executive vice president. He is the author of numerous articles for industry trade journals and textbooks and sits on the Council for the International Test Commission. In this interview, Foster talks about his…

Mobile technology is one of several currents that upset the relatively placid world of admitting, enrolling, advising, serving, and graduating students. The authors have been involved with technology since they began in the profession. Technology is not really new to them. But with mobile technology, "so much" is new--indeed, foreign--to many…

One of the great ironies for those who are in higher education information technology is that, in the coming years, doing the best-possible job for their institutions will mean finding the optimal ways to replace their function with outside services. In other words, a critical part of their job will be to outsource themselves as effectively as…

This article presents an interview with Patrick Sommers, president of reference/information publisher "Gale" (part of Cengage Learning). Sommers took the helm in October 2007, after running system vendor Sirsi beginning in 2001 and engineering both the 2005 merger with Dynix and the 2007 sale of the newly created SirsiDynix to Vista Equity…

While libraries, book and periodical vendors, system providers, and bibliographical utilities are collaborating to move scholarly information from origin to public access more quickly, scholarly publishers, particularly university presses, have been slow to join in. Discusses aspects of the publisher/vendor relationship: library/vendor…

The author of this article shares her opinions and feelings on attending the American Library Association (ALA) Conference. She admits that she hates going to the exhibits. In this article, the author shares a list of hints to make exhibit time more productive.

Provides an annotated list of recommended selection tools for children's and young adult materials in Spanish. Commercial vendors, books, older lists for retrospective collecting, and periodicals and journals are among the categories included. (five references) (LRW)

Facing a major budget crunch, the Hawaii State Public Library System awarded a five and one half-year, $11.2 million contract to a vendor (Baker & Taylor) for collection development. Hawaii librarians argue that outsourcing sacrifices local expertise and a central part of their professional identity. Discusses the controversy from opposing…

Discussion of the Internet highlights its use in libraries and the need to teach patrons what it can and cannot be used for. Topics include the number and variety of existing sources, vendor organization and reliability issues, speed, quality control and regulation issues, and permanence of sources. (LRW)

Although cataloging, document delivery, inventory, barcoding, and other technical jobs might more effectively be done by outside contractors, managing a library and serving patrons demands the attention of information professionals. Discusses the shortcomings of outsourcing, focusing on companies and associations that outsource the entire…

Examines attributes, characteristics, and behaviors of performance-centered software packages that are emerging in the consumer software marketplace and compares them with large-scale systems software being designed by internal information systems staffs and vendors of large-scale software designed for financial, manufacturing, processing, and…

Asserts that corporations are changing higher education's student life, academic philanthropy, and institutional relationships with vendors. Explores whether they will also affect the educational mission. (EV)