Libraries must increasingly accommodate bibliographic records encoded with a variety of standards and emerging standards, including Dublin Core, MODS, and VRA Core. The problem is that many libraries still rely solely on MARC and AACR2. The best-trained professionals to lead librarians through the metadata maze are catalogers. Catalogers…

An online community is a group of people who connect with one another over time and through space using the Internet as their primary medium. Online communities also act, albeit through text. They organize political action, introduce to-be spouses, and create new products and tools. This article discusses how one librarian used online communities…

When Valerie Allen decided she did not want to be a Montessori teacher any longer, she began work on her MLIS. Immediately she learned concepts she could apply to her new job as information specialist for the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN. While the LIS…

When Mary Ellen Icaza became Electronic Services Librarian at Montgomery County Public Libraries, she noticed that the readers' services information on the library web site was invisible, even to librarians. "And if staff can't find it," she says, "customers can't." She set out to help people find that material-and to turn a…

This case study describes the process of proposing and implementing a wiki for use in an academic library setting, based on the process used by Iowa State University Library. Using the Iowa State University Library Wiki as a model, this article lays out the decisions necessary at each step of the process of establishing a new wiki. Control of…

This article outlines a pilot project to offer a personalized online library service to Open University MBA alumni. A review of the literature and results of a desktop analysis of other UK Higher Education alumni library services are included. Content procurement and systems issues are considered along with the underlying organizational, resource…

This article discusses the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), a plan that is quickly gaining the support of library organizations around the globe. The FRBR Study Group was appointed by International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and issued its final report in 1998. The report redefines the basic unit of…

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…

The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) serves a dispersed patron base, and its library has developed, over time, a circulation system for distributing physical research materials to its patrons throughout the United States. This article discusses the development of this system and its associated interface/database management system…

Lippincott Library's Historical Corporate Annual Reports Collection contains useful primary sources of information for several disciplines, including applied accounting and business history. They also are reflections of the societal and cultural mores of the times. Unfortunately, these reports are fragile, difficult to locate, and hard to access.…

Most school librarians do not think of copyright compliance and facilities planning in the same breath. Yet the design of space--physical and virtual--can discourage or promote compliance, or even help police it. Placement of and access to equipment, traffic patterns, signage, and student workspace all may influence copyright-compliance behavior…

The purpose of this research project was to gather information to give personality and a demographic profile to Bible college libraries and to assure them that they have identity and purpose in the 1990's. This research project is an attempt to update information on American Association Bible College libraries and give a face and some personality…

The extreme flexibility of the MARC format coupled with the simplicity of a batch-oriented processing system centered around a sequential master file has enabled the University of California, Berkeley, library to gradually build an unusually large serials data base in support of both technical and public services. (Author)

Presents an inexpensive search system which would be very easy to adapt to a library's data processing requirements and would give a smaller library the opportunity to go on-line. (Author/PF)

Compared with 1968, trends in the educational system in information science in 1972 indicate a curriculum shift from traditional librarianship to an emphasis on computerization and automation. (Author/PF)