The National Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical Education Digital Library (NSDL), inaugurated in December 2002, is developed to promote science education on a comprehensive scale. The Journal of Chemical, Education (JCE) Digital Library, incorporated into NSDL, contains its own collections of digital resources for chemistry…

Research library catalogs serve as authoritative sources of access. The increasing practice of including Web sites in the catalog, resources not under the library's control, raises new issues of the catalog's accuracy and reliability. An analysis of ARL libraries' catalogs examined the persistence of cataloged URLs. Error rates ranged from a low…

In recent years an increasing number of publishers have adopted tiered pricing of journals. The design and implications of tiered-pricing models, however, are poorly understood. Tiered pricing can be modeled using several variables. A survey of current tiered-pricing models documents the range of key variables used. A sensitivity analysis…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a bimonthly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) Diversity in Research Universities (Bernadette Gray-Little); (2) An…

Storing and curating authentic academic literature and making it accessible for the long term has been a time-honoured task of national libraries. By guarding existing knowledge and facilitating its use to produce new insights, national and university libraries have formed an integral part of the research environment, complementing the roles of…

Can we use the methods of Web usability testing to learn about library instruction? This article is among the first in the field trying to establish a link between usability and instruction. The author discusses useful insights that Web usability can bring to our pedagogy as well as to the efficiency of library instruction. The result of a Web…

The age of networked research and networked data analysis is upon us. "Wired Magazine" proclaims on the cover of their July 2008 issue: "The End of Science. The quest for knowledge used to begin with grand theories. Now it begins with massive amounts of data. Welcome to the Petabyte Age." Computing technology is sufficiently complex at this point…

Five papers examine the adoption of resource based learning at Charles Sturt University (Australia). "Literature Searches and Distance Education: Whose Problem?" (Stephen Parnell) discusses the question of who should accept responsibility for the intellectual content of literature searches; the library is at the center of a resource…

This publication brings together for the first time in a single volume the status of public library standards in the United States. Based on a master's thesis submitted to the Department of Library Science at The Catholic University of America by Mrs. Marian Magg, the study has been brought up to date and also expanded. This bulletin provides not…

A study of the current provision of digitized collections for researchers in the UK higher education sector was carried out through desk research, a Web-based questionnaire of research libraries and interviews. The study identified a great deal of digitized material in the sector and there has been considerable expenditure of UK public funds in…

What impact does the academic library have on student persistence? This study explores the relationship between traditional library input and output measures of staff, collections, use, and services with fall-to-fall retention and six-year graduation rates at Association of Research Libraries member libraries. When controlling for race/ethnicity…

"ARL Statistics 2007-2008" is the latest in a series of annual publications that describe collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities for the 123 members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Of these, 113 are university libraries; the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries. Data reported…

This document presents results of the 2005-06 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Law Library Statistics Questionnaire. Of 113 ARL university libraries, 75 responded to the survey. Results for each library are presented in the following data tables: (1) collections, including volumes in library, volumes added, monographs purchased, current…

Podcasting has taken off in leaps and bounds, having been adopted by many groups for many different purposes from disseminating television programs to making university lectures available. The popularity of podcasting inspired Curtin University Library to develop its own podcast series at the end of 2005. This paper indicates the success of this…

Getting acclimated to campus life is overwhelming to most freshmen, making library orientation low on their priority list. The author teams up with two college librarians in action. Michael Pasqualoni, Instructional Services Librarian at Syracuse University Library, taught IST 200 last Fall. He relied on an arsenal of media tools to keep students…