Discusses the current state of the art in virtual reality (VR), its historical background, and future possibilities. Highlights include applications in medicine, art and entertainment, science, business, and telerobotics; and VR for information science, including graphical display of bibliographic data, libraries and books, and cyberspace.…

Considers the need for staff training in virtual libraries. Highlights include instruction and training, including in-house training, vendor contracts, and self-paced instruction; documentation; current awareness via professional literature, electronic discussions, bibliographies, and conferences; information filtering through selective…

Describes a study conducted at Columbia University (New York) to compare the costs of borrowing and document delivery with the costs of ownership of periodicals and monographs in the areas of biology, physics, and electrical engineering. Results suggest that access may be more important than ownership for some titles. (LRW)

Describes a study that investigated search intermediaries' requests for information from patrons during mediated online searching in an academic library. Topics of search intermediaries' elicitations include search terms and strategies, database selection, relevance of retrieved items, patrons' knowledge and previous information seeking, and other…

Explores problems of three groups of Russian-language students using romanized Cyrillic bibliographic records. Investigates students' ability to keyword search using Russian records romanized according to Library of Congress transliteration tables. Results show that transliteration is one of the factors limiting access by Russian-language students…

Explains the history and organization of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Highlights include participating agencies; data and information management needs, including the Global Change Data and Information System (GCDIS); and four sidebars that discuss GCDIS implementation, prototype projects, the library access, search, and retrieval pilot…

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Library and the American Physical Society (APS) are experimenting with electronically disseminating journals and reports in a project called TORPEDO (The Optical Retrieval Project: Electronic Documents Online). Scanned journals and reports are converted to ASCII, then attached to bibliographic information, and…

Three alternative career options for teacher librarians are discussed in separate articles written by individuals who have changed careers: a school principal, a computer resources teacher, and a consultant. It is noted that each of these careers requires skills that many school librarians already possess. (LAE)

Describes a Delphi study conducted for the Netherlands Council for Libraries and Information Services (RABIN) to forecast the future of information services in the year 2000. Highlights include information supply; information attributes; user needs; substitution of print by electronic information; the role of publishers; generic coding; and…

Discussion of the application of TQM (Total Quality Management) to libraries addresses planning based on customer needs and use of the scientific method to evaluate customer satisfaction. A TQM experiment at Marquette Middle School (Wisconsin) is examined, and ways that TQM was used to meet the needs of homeless students are described. (MES)

Outlines considerations in the design of a Competitive Intelligence Information Resource Center (CIIRC), which is needed by business organizations for effective strategic decision making. Discussed are user needs, user participation, information sources, technology and interface design, operational characteristics, and planning for implementation.…

Discusses reference management software that is used for the storage and retrieval of bibliographic and text files on personal computers. Uses in health sciences are reviewed, selection criteria are discussed, needs assessment is described, guidelines for selecting appropriate software are presented, and a list of software products is included.…

A study which used citation analysis techniques to examine information use by faculty in a university chemistry department found that 49 percent of the journals cited were from fields other than chemistry. The implications of this finding for university libraries providing information services to scientists engaged in interdisciplinary research…

The distance education program offered by the University of Oklahoma was studied to determine the impact of telecommunications media upon learning outcomes. Comparison of the attitudes and achievement of students enrolled in the telecommunications course and a control group showed no differences in learning between the groups at any level. (18…

Describes the redesign of a CD-ROM database interface by the Congressional Information Service (CIS) that addressed the needs of novice, casual, and expert searchers in academic libraries. Topics discussed include the user profile, the task profile, redesign goals, interaction style, menu design and implementation, system structure and the search…