Shows that Web-based materials enhanced teaching and learning in an introductory operations-management course. Suggests guidelines for implementing such a course: understanding why students visit the Web site, timing the availability of materials to match usage patterns, and providing information in appropriate detail and format. Shows that the…

Presents questions for evaluating a media center's reference section, focused on types of resources; reference-material evaluation criteria and items that belong in or are misplaced in the reference section; relocating materials and ensuring use of newly classified materials; and how to collect data on usage of resources. (AEF)

Discusses the PCs for Families experiment, a longitudinal quantitative and ethnographic study of networked computing in the fifth-grade classroom examining how networked computing affects students' educational achievements, attitude and professional development of teachers and support instructors, and how families support students and react to the…

Examines implications of undergraduate students' patronage of Barnes & Noble bookstores instead of libraries. Students' reasons for preferring Barnes & Noble included the atmosphere; more materials and easier access; more convenient hours; and organization of materials that is easy to understand. (AEF)

This study of 36 K-12 teachers focused on computer use for noninstructional activities and their perspectives on facilitating and impeding factors. Study revealed that computers were used 94% for preparing instructional materials and 58% for finding subject area information. Most common obstacle to computer use was not enough time to learn new…

An investigation of books reviewed (1989-95) in Choice Reviews, the CD-ROM version of Choice, determined all titles mentioned (n44,950) were received or purchased by California State University Dominguez Hills and other academic libraries in the Online Union Catalog (OLUC). Findings were further tested to see how they could be incorporated into an…

Coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is a Web-based system that provides increased access to data and information on the nation's biological resources. This article-an individual case study-addresses the structure of the NBII related to thematic, infrastructure and place-based…

Investigates ways in which people group or categorize documents associated with a voluminous work to guide the construction of organized displays for information retrieval systems. Discusses results of cluster analyses based on "A Christmas Carol" (Charles Dickens) and suggests implications for metadata standards and digital libraries as…

Discusses the apparent failure of information technology (IT) education in preservice teacher education courses. Offers a conceptual framework for investigating and analyzing this failure. Suggests that IT outcomes are likely to be diverse and variable for any one student teacher population and these outcomes need to be considered in the context…

Faculty at Western Illinois University were asked to share in the library's journal deselection responsibility by ranking the library's journals by importance. These rankings were then compared to student use of the same journals. Results indicate that journals that were frequently cited or retrieved by students were highly ranked by the faculty.…

Describes a study that compared performance differences (perceived, actual, and temporal) for a strategic business information acquisition experimental task when subjects used a library versus using the Internet. It was found that task performance decreased and time to completion increased when using the Internet. (Author/LRW)

Discusses reference-use statistics in academic libraries. Highlights include new functions and resources, limits of traditional counting methods, ranking the sources, the Internet's impact on instruction, computer-assisted versus one-on-one instruction, and creative solutions to reference services. (AEF)

Examines differences between the formal features of commercial versus noncommercial Web sites, and the relationship between Web page complexity and amount of traffic a site receives. Findings indicate that, although most pages in this stage of the Web's development remain technologically simple and noninteractive, there are significant…

Analyzes certain features of work tasks and relates these features to types of information people are looking for and using in their tasks, patterning of search strategies for obtaining information and relevance assessments in choosing retrieved documents. The major claim is that these information activities are systematically connected to task…

Includes four articles that discuss a conceptual framework for open and context-sensitive reference linking for Web-based scholarly information; issues for academic libraries due to increased use of information and communication technologies; the future of electronic books in academic libraries; and an academic library user study on the needs for…