In addition to building a new facility and providing innovative services to its students/faculty/administration, the Valley Library of Oregon State University, winner of the Gale Group/Library Journal Library of the Year Award, has created partnerships with public libraries, the business community, school districts, and other academic…

Reviews the resources available through the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) Web site, a consortium of the libraries of the 39 state-assisted colleges and universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. States that VIVA provides, in an equitable, cooperative, and cost-effective manner, enhanced access to library and information for these higher…

The components of professional development include staff development, peer interaction, benchmarking, and individual development. The New York State Association of School Business Officials has responded to demands for downsizing/increased productivity with professional development programs that mix both soft and hard skill development while…

Applies Stephen Covey's seventh habit (sharpening the saw/self-renewal) to needed personal and professional development activities for school business officials. Key activities include networking, mentoring, surfing the net, professional reading, formal learning, and reinventing oneself. Self-reinvention is the Covey habit that recharges,…

Discussion of Internet2 and the college or university's decision to participate in the network looks at the characteristics of the system and the advantages of access to it; infrastructure needed to participate; costs to the institution; considerations in making the decision to participate; and the consequences of waiting. (MSE)

Does information technology "pull" the organizational management toward change in terms of authority and control, or is information technology "pushed" through the organization, by management, to maintain its existing system of authority and control? These conflicting positions are explored through a case study of the Federal…

Analyzes the patterns and variations of "grapevining," or social networks, through interviews with 172 parents who were in the process of choosing secondary schools for their children. Finds that there are three types of parent responses to using the grapevine as a means for school choice: (1) suspicion; (2) doubt; and (3) acceptance. (CMK)

Building social capital for poor children is an important endeavor. Disadvantaged children generally lack a network that allows them to thrive in school and achieve a sense of belonging. Schools in impoverished neighborhoods can strengthen ties to students by building links to the community, becoming full-service community schools, and joining…

Describes construction of citation network systems and some subsystems (time sequence network, cocitation network, couple network). Establishes structural modeling of these systems by means of system engineering. Explains and analyzes citation network systems. Includes graphs and charts. (JAK)

Six-year followup study of five rural Missouri communities found that community viability in terms of maintenance as trade and service center had become disconnected from demographic variables such as school enrollment. Unexpectedly, leaders of more viable places were not better educated or demographically different from other leaders, but had…

The purpose of this study was to determine certain attitudes of students who had received instruction via an interactive distance education environment utilizing compressed video technology. Subjects were students enrolled in courses offered by Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and other members of the Mississippi Community College network.…

TayNet is a local service provider established to support the development of businesses in Tayside (Scotland) by providing local access to the Internet. This article discusses the network's hardware and software components, evaluates the pilot phase, provides performance and connection statistics for 45 audit participants, and describes technical…

Describes the way in which a new applied-physics course introduced in British Columbia as part of a program in applied academics can be seen to construct different networks in different contexts. Employs actor network theory (ANT). Contains 20 references. (DDR)

Outlines ideas for building interactive home pages for economics classes. Illustrates how to link the home page to course materials, sources of economic data and information, as well as lectures and spreadsheets. Discusses using Internet technology to communicate with, engage, and assess students. (MJP)

Marking the 25th anniversary (August 26, 1996) of WorldCat (the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Online Union Catalog) OCLC and the U.S. regional networks sponsored an essay contest for librarians and library users to write essays describing their impressions of the OCLC Online Union Catalog. Four prize-winning essays from Michigan, Kentucky,…