Outlines a planned panel discussion on electronic books and DRM (Digital Rights Management). Highlights include publisher's choice of format to protect content; institutional needs; circulating library materials to authorized users; integrating the electronic collection with the rest of the collection; integrating DRM with current library…

Describes the Questia subscription-based online academic digital books library. Highlights include weaknesses of the collection; what college students want from a library; importance of marketing; competition for traditional academic libraries that may help improve library services; and the ability of Questia to overcome barriers and…

Reviews international efforts to develop the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. Examines the need to amplify access to current scholarship. Concludes that universities need to develop and support Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) initiatives to provide broader access to their research and provide students with the…

Describes the evolution and progress toward a uniquely integrated library and computer services unit at Kenyon College. Discusses its focus on constituencies; merging of the divisions; benefits for students, faculty, administrative units, and the institution; meeting challenges; and generalizing from the model. (EV)

One opinion piece and five articles in this issue discuss: digital preservation infrastructure; accomplishments and changes in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative in 2001 and plans for 2002; video gaming and how it relates to digital libraries and learning technologies; overview of a music retrieval system; and the online version of the…

Discusses how a Supreme Court decision last year in "The New York Times Company v. Jonathan Tasini" has led publishers to make massive purges of archival material in newspaper databases, rendering them unreliable for many scholars. (EV)

Argues that special collections in an electronic environment will continue to be important because of the continuing value of artifactual documents and that special collections librarians may have new roles with respect to intellectual property and the merging of special and general digital collections. Discusses special collections on the…

Argues that unless issues of machine help and human help are given explicit attention by the library profession, the disappearance of human help in patron assistance without input is likely. Discusses convergent commercial- and academic-sector trends, implications for the profession, and three policy alternatives. Presents a patron self-help…

Consideration of metaphors related to the Internet focuses on the information superhighway, virtual communities, and digital libraries. Highlights include the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998; the Uniform Commercial Code; equality; privacy; communication; authorship; open software; information management; user fees; library collections; and…

Discusses the Internet Knowledge Manager (IKM) which provides an understandable way of representing knowledge, as readable software agents. Gives an example of writing and running an IKM agent for transfer pricing in corporations. Describes how the technology works. Concludes that the IKM could trigger new ways of performing knowledge management,…

Describes a collaborative effort to explore user needs in a digital library, develop interface prototypes for a digital library, and suggest and prototype tools for digital librarians and users at the Library of Congress. The design process and results are described and suggestions for future work are offered. (Author/LRW)

Discusses how libraries today are re-thinking their entire educational mission in response to changes such as laptops, connectivity, Web-enhanced learning, and portable computing. Libraries are now designed to integrate new technologies that allow digital resources to supplement and expand the library's traditional print holdings and to help…

Discusses technological change and intellectual property as it affects libraries and access to electronic information. Topics include the balance between copyright law and fair use; the Copyright Term Extension Act; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; product versus service; databases with public access; and similarities with Napster. (LRW)

Discusses the history and emergence of non-library commercial and non-commercial information services on the World Wide Web, often referred to as expert services. Describes the methodology used for a study of expert services and considers implications for further research and the development of digital reference services by libraries. (Author/LRW)

Virtual tours delivered via the Web have become a common tool for both instruction and outreach. This article is a case study of the creation of a virtual tour for a university library and is intended to provide others interested in creating a virtual tour of their library the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and successes of fellow…