School library websites are a necessity. The earliest adopters have now had almost 10 years for development and redesign. Many sites have gone through numerous iterations with major improvements each time. Issues of cost, time, technology and training have made the discussion more a matter of deciding what to include and how to structure the sites…

When Tamara learned that she and her husband were expecting a baby girl, Tamara remembers the doctor telling her "the odds were high" her daughter would inherit her bipolar disorder. As it turned out, her daughter, Lindsay was also formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder after her 11th birthday. Tamara turned to Internet to find someone who…

The extant picture-learning research does not address confusing word pairs that are not concrete (e.g., in and into). In this study, university students viewed 11 timed Web pages containing information on confusing word pairs. Each page addressed one word pair and distinguished the words with examples (example group), examples and rules (rule…

About 18 months ago, we at the reference desk of the Vigo County Public Library (VCPL) in Terre Haute, Ind., noticed a troubling fact. Many of our small, local, nonprofit agencies did not have Web sites, making it difficult to locate and share information about these groups with the community. We began to ponder that if we, as information…

Educators have been wrestling with copyright issues for some time. In fact, in developing the S.O.S. for Information Literacy site, the project team had to face the issue with respect to how to handle all those lesson plans in the database and all the images, clipart, and materials that educators upload to the database as support materials for…

Purpose: Aims to investigate the way that the semantic web is being used to represent and process social network information. Design/methodology/approach: The Swoogle semantic web search engine was used to construct several large data sets of Resource Description Framework (RDF) documents with social network information that were encoded using the…

In 1993, the language section of the Swedish Migration Board initiated the production of documents they called "language analyses" to aid in the processing of asylum seekers. Today, 11 years later, 2 privately owned companies in Stockholm produce these documents. These companies have produced language analyses not only for the Swedish…

Blogging offers an alternative and sometimes superior way to communicate with library patrons. It provides an opportunity to speak more directly to them, and it does so in a manner that is more comfortable and convenient for all involved. A library's Web site may be the only interaction that patrons have with the organization, so it makes sense to…

In order for patrons to make the wisest use of the library, they must be both computer and information-literate. Librarians are faced with the challenge of designing programs that fit the literacy needs of the community. Academic and school librarians may find that their users are mostly students who are familiar with computers, but need help with…

A five-month research study at Cornell University Library (CUL) confirmed the strategic importance of a library presence in faculty-created course Web sites. It sparked specific recommendations to support the seamless integration of the CUL digital library within the virtual learning environments created by faculty.

EMBER was a European project aiming to develop bioinformatics teaching materials on the Web and CD-ROM to help address the recognised skills shortage in bioinformatics. The project grew out of pilot work on the development of an interactive web-based bioinformatics tutorial and the desire to repackage that resource with the help of a professional…

This paper discusses the benefits of using Web-based worksheets for library instruction in a variety of library settings, including classroom presentations, hands-on labs, and at a distance. Web-based worksheets have been used successfully in the Haskayne School of Business MBA program and the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of…

Stephen Downes visits Robin Good's Master NewMedia, a Web site dedicated to Web 2.0 in both thought and deed. The site both utilizes the design principles and technologies central to the concept of Web 2.0--relentless referencing, cross-referencing, and linking to a wide variety of articles from across the Web; a fluid and often chaotic…

Educators are becoming increasingly interested in alternatives to learning management systems (LMS) Blackboard and WebCT. Stephen Downes's column Places to Go turns to one internationally popular open source LMS--Moodle. Downes takes the reader through Moodle's Web site, which is simultaneously a Web site about its LMS and an example of what its…

Much is expected of today's school library media specialists with the many technological advances found in schools and library media centers. Oftentimes school library media specialists are spread thin in order to serve their patrons, and yet the public's demands for fast and quick access to information never stop. It pays for the school library…