The Bibliotherapy Education Project began as a teaching collaboration between faculty at Oregon State University's Libraries and School of Education. The project's evolution from 1999 to 2004 was previously described in this journal (McMillen 2005). The core of the project is a book evaluation tool, which builds counselor skill and knowledge in…

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, is the world's largest social science data archive. The data sets in the ICPRS database give the social sciences librarian/subject specialist an opportunity of providing value-added bibliographic…

Given the massive amount of science and mathematics content available online, libraries working with science teachers can become lost when attempting to select material that is both compelling for the learner and effective in addressing learning goals. Tools that help educators identify the most appropriate resources can be a great time saver.…

Digital collections enable university students and faculty to share academic scholarship across their campuses and beyond. Based on interviews, the authors present cases of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates to illustrate some factors that seem to determine why they do or do not use digital collections in their research, teaching, and…

Explains the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) which was developed to solve problems of digital library interoperability on the World Wide Web. Topics include metadata; HTTP; XML; Dublin Core; the OAI Metadata Harvesting Protocol; data providers; service providers; reference linking; library policies; shared semantics; and name authority systems.…

Describes the development of the OAIster system (Open Archives Initiative, University of Michigan, Digital Library Production Service) to harvest, store, transform digital object metadata into Digital Library eXtension Service (DLXS) Bibliographic Class format, build indexes and make the metadata searchable through an interface using the XPAT…

Discusses how to translate your data from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to other formats. Explores key features and concepts of tools that address this problem and relates the problem to the Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) standard. Also investigates translation problems and the roles of SGML and DSSSL in…

Examined job announcements between 1990 and 2000 in "College and Research Libraries News" that contained the word "electronic" or "digital". Showed an increasing number of position announcements; a greater diversity of functional areas; a wider variety of institutions placing advertisements; and distinctions between…

Discusses the need for long-range strategic planning in libraries and related organizations and examines plans included in their Web sites, including the Library of Congress; ALA (American Library Association); OCLC (Online Computer Library Center); CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries); and planning for a digital library with the New…

Proposes and analyzes a method for servicing keyword queries expressed in a digital library. Topics include efficiency via the concept of customers and producers; grouping queries into clusters of similar concepts; information density of the library; query delay; query priorities; and fuzzy decision-making. (Author/LRW)

Shows how XML is applied to digital library systems. Compares major features of XML with those of HTML and describes an experimental XML-based metadata retrieval system, which is based on the Dublin Core and is designed as a subsystem of the Korean Virtual Library and Information System (VINIS). (Author/LRW)

What would a person do if they were suddenly given half a million dollars? The Southern Oregon University Library, after receiving a congressional grant of $470,000, decided to use the money to create the Southern Oregon Digital Archives (SODA). The primary goal for SODA was to have a full-text, completely searchable database of hundreds of…

Up until fairly recently, library collections have consisted of physical things--books; journals; audiovisual materials; and, in some libraries, collections of realia. Now, however, collections often include materials that cannot be placed on library shelves either because they are digitized versions of primary sources or because they exist only…

In this column on digital repository management, the author defines three areas within the sphere of digital repositories that need work. The first two pertain to information architecture, while the last one pertains to taking action. The author's first "wish" is for top-notch library Web sites that act as a gateway to any sphere of knowledge. He…

In days that seem very long ago, when the card catalog was the only way to search a library's collection, there was very little debate about the usability of the catalog. Librarians were most concerned about properly formatting catalog cards and, of course, ensuring that the cards were filed correctly. Today, the card catalog has been replaced in…