In both purpose and practice, general education in American higher education has experienced several recurring debates and national revivals. In a world with constantly evolving technology, students need a strong general education to be flexible and adaptable to the changes of the world. General education is an important component and requirement…

In late 2010, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) initiated a new safety program called the "Culture of Calm" initiative (CoC). Since 2010, CPS has focused resources on schools in order to improve school climate--particularly school safety. These resources were used, to a large extent, to hire vendors that provided services to teachers and…

State and local educators encountered both opportunities and obstacles in their first year of implementing the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In 2009, the ARRA, better known as the economic stimulus package, provided $3 billion for SIGs to help reform persistently low-achieving…

It's near-impossible to think about course management systems (CMS) without thinking about innovation, collaboration, and the sharing of ideas across institutions and even from vendor to vendor. Yet, "the next step" in CMS now means distinctly different things to various colleges and universities as, going forward, they consider their…

After seeing growing frustration among inexperienced undergraduate researchers searching a popular aggregated interdisciplinary database, the authors questioned whether the leading interdisciplinary databases are serving undergraduates' needs. As a preliminary exploration of this question, the authors queried vendors, analyzed their marketing…

Purchasing software license and service agreements can be daunting for any district. Greg Lindner, director of information and technology services for the Elk Grove Unified School District in California, and Steve Midgley, program manager at the Stupski Foundation, provided several tips on contract negotiation. This article presents the tips…

This directory of the major bibliographic databases that are offered by more than one vendor lists the producer, subject, vendor, maximum and minimum online charges, online hit charge, and offline print charge. The pricing systems of nine vendors are described. The directory appears every February and August in "Online Review." (EM)

Describes how the University of Virginia responded to attempts by vendors to transfer product liability to the school through their contract. (EV)

Provides information on commercial connections to the Internet via gateways as opposed to direct connection or through a modem. Hardware and software requirements are described; and commercial online services offering an Internet gateway are discussed, including America Online, CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie, and Prodigy. (LRW)

Describes standards for computer-based information systems, including Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and open distributed processing. The standardization process is explained, and the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment is described as a de facto standard for open distributed processing that has already gained…

Describes jukeboxes that are currently available for use by libraries to control the security and safety of CD-ROMs. Nine manufacturers are listed, and the alternative of installing an array in which each CD-ROM is in its own drive is explained. (LRW)

Describes relationship marketing, which emphasizes customers, and explains why libraries should be interested in it. Topics include the lack of marketing that libraries have done; creating new paradigms for marketing; and various markets that libraries should address, including the users, library employees, and suppliers. (LRW)

Interviews with three vendors of electronic resources provide a historical perspective of pricing, a discussion of current pricing structures, and insight into the future of pricing from three different perspectives: a database producer (Disclosure, Inc.), an online services provider (Questel-Orbit, Inc.), and a commercial online service/consumer…

Discusses negotiating with vendors when purchasing campus information technology. Describes the mechanics of a negotiation (deep discounts, maintenance and support costs, future discounts, warranties and remedies, training and consulting), vendor approaches to negotiating, composition of the negotiating team, and what to do after negotiations end.…

Discusses problems for information professionals arising from traditional copyright legislation, as well as from the proposed Uniform Commercial Code 2B on information licensing. Highlights include responsibility of information consumers; World Wide Web terms and conditions, including those of newspapers and publishers; privacy issues; database…