Preservation has long been considered a fundamental responsibility of research libraries. Data on preservation activities by its members has been collected by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) since 1987, but changing digital technologies and the research, teaching, and learning environments in which research libraries are engaged…

Though the core mission of a university library--to provide essential support for teaching and research remains unchanged--the library cannot escape budgetary constraints. It has to compete for resources with other departments and programs in the university. Times are hard, with some states currently reporting unprecedented budget deficits with…

To make sure the details of Guantanamo endure, Mark P. Denbeaux and some colleagues are creating a Guantanamo Bay Detention Center archive. It will be a repository of the records and first-person accounts of hundreds of defense lawyers who have worked on detainee cases. With the fate of many detainees still in limbo--the Obama administration is…

This essay updates the two articles that were previously published in the Winter 1975/1976 and 1984 issues respectively of "Education Libraries," and featured the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Test Collection. At the time of the writing of the 1975/1976 article, the collection was known as The ETS Test Collection. However, since the collection…

This research is concerned with the pragmatic performance characteristics of competing information technologies (ITs) and services in the university research center, as measured by user demand and choice. Technologies and services studied include: (1) mediated search service operating at cost recovery, open to all; (2) end-user service collecting…

This survey was conducted to determine to what extent ARL (Association of Research Libraries) libraries permit food and drink to be consumed in library facilities, whether there has been a shift in recent times toward a liberalization of policy and practice, how restrictions are enforced, and whether there are particularly successful strategies…

This research extends the "Purdue studies" of research library growth, presenting results that include library statistical trends during a 35-year period, 1951-1985. It serves to update Purdue's 9-report series (1965-1973) and is a validation study of Purdue's growth forecasts, 28 of which were published in 1965, then revised in 1971.…

This kit is based on a review of the organization charts of 71 member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) gathered in January 1991, compared with an earlier SPEC Kit published in 1986, and contains charts of 29 of the libraries. A summary of the chart analyses presents information about the titles of library directors,…

In order to develop guidelines for the selection of journals by the Center for Research Libraries, a study was done of the use made of the Center's Journal Access Services (JAS), which supplies photocopies of journal articles to member institutions from the Center's collections and from the British Library Lending Division (BLLD). Based on a…

To investigate the experience of American and Canadian university libraries with remote access catalogs, self-administered questionnaires were sent to the 137 directors of all Association of Research Libraries (ARL) libraries and all libraries of Canadian degree-granting institutions. The study was designed to: (1) survey Canadian and U.S.…

This SPEC kit is based on a June 1987 survey of approval plan use by 94 members of the Association of Research Libraries. It reports on the current practices of these libraries, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using approval plans, and the effect of increased library materials costs and library automation on such plans. It is noted…

Discussion of cooperative activities among libraries focuses on cataloging of Latin American materials among research libraries. Differences in motivation for cooperation in acquisitions and in cataloging are discussed; and a study is described that examined which libraries were providing online cataloging, and differences between OCLC and RLIN…

In 2002, the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee commissioned the National Library of Australia to analyse the uniqueness and overlap of Australian university library collections, comparing library collections in each state, using the National Bibliographic Database…

This article describes the current distance education environment for university libraries and the distance education library services for faculty and students. The authors surveyed selected Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members to determine current services and the changes in distance education library services since the 1996 ARL SPEC…

ARL is the bimonthly report on research library issues and actions from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). ARL reports on current issues of interest to academic and research library administrators, staff, and users; higher education…