The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the effects of the use of dual-screen monitors by library staff in an academic library. A self-administered survey questionnaire was used to gather information from library staff to examine the positive and negative effects of utilizing dual-screen monitors.

In many professional roles, long-term vision may help guide short-term decisions. This is especially true for school library professionals as library media programs are constantly evolving. This author suggests strategies to assist library media specialists to nurture their vision and provides reviews of several sources and experts in the field…

Any successful library media center or program requires advanced planning. In this column, the author advocates the development of measurable goals for library media programs and describes several resources that can be used to help meet these goals and, at the same time, succeed in providing what the patrons most want out of the library media…

If someone has something to say, they have never had it so good. People can get their word out by posting to a blog, by editing a wiki or a web site, or even by using cost-effective print-on-demand book production services. In other words, collection development librarians now live in a world of hurt. All these methods, as well as a number of…

These pioneers set out to set up new communities in the virtual frontier. Now, more than 50 libraries serve as Web hubs for their local settlements. The communities we live in have changed over time. But no matter the size of the tallest building, no matter how advanced the infrastructure, they grew to that size from humble beginnings: a…

This article discusses the current environment of the ILS (Integrated Library System) plus add-ons tailored for electronic content and its future. It suggests that while the ILS may be mature, the supplemental products are not and the linkages among them are even less so. On the technical front, the recent interest in Web services gives reason to…

This article discusses the events that occurred when Donald J. Olson was arrested for arrested for insider trading and SEC violations. Olson had been arrested for embezzling money from his own company, cooking the books to hide the missing funds, providing insider financial information to friends to boost stock prices, and numerous other offenses.…

She is still in the wings, but once Sharon (Sherri) McQueen arrives on the stage of library education, innovation will surely follow. McQueen comes across like a fast-forward version of Katharine Hepburn's Bunny Watson without the fear of technology. Funny and clever, she seamlessly trades her comedy mask for tragedy when she turns to the future…

Nearly all academic libraries keep circulation statistics which are often shared with their parent university, library consortia, and national organizations. This study attempted to discover what goes into circulation statistics by surveying Southeastern research libraries. Libraries were asked what they count in their circulation statistics and…

In June of 2001, the University of California Libraries initiated a pilot project that enabled library patrons to direct request items held in the University of California Special Collection Units. The pilot ended the need for patrons to initiate most requests for unique items in person through the Special Collections department and allowed…

This article reports on the newly revamped version of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), the nation's largest electronic education library. ERIC made its debut last September with promises of more offerings to come from the federal project. In the move to upgrade and streamline ERIC, the Department of Education shut down the 16…

Modern academic libraries have a great number of information resources available online in the form of electronic catalogs, books, journals, and subject subscription databases. To determine whether users can easily retrieve the information they are seeking, academic librarians conduct usability testing of their libraries' Web sites. There has been…

Information literacy instruction programs for graduate students can be challenging to develop. One solution is to develop non-course-based, non-mandatory library instruction programs, in order to meet the information literacy needs of as many graduate students as possible. This was the approach taken by the Taylor Library at the University of…

What types of information sources do masters and doctoral (M and D) students at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) use most, how do the patterns of use differ across subject disciplines and faculties, and to what extent does the Library and Information Services (LIS) keep or provide access to the journals that are mostly used by M and D…

This article presents a case study of an urban academic library's attempt to identify factors that influence the perceptions of students of color concerning the library as a welcoming space. The goal of this study is to determine if there are qualitative divergent factors along racial lines concerning how students use this library. The research is…