Discusses the public's growing ignorance about the value and capability of libraries. Topics include information skills, including measuring accuracy and authenticity of computer-based information; false expectations; the information explosion; and the need for a new literacy that includes information literacy, cultural literacy, computer…

Announces a pledge by the Texaco Foundation to the National Digital Library (NDL) Program of the Library of Congress to make "America from the Grass Roots" available on the World Wide Web. The presentation is comprised of four collections that focus on rural Southern, African American, Hispanic, and American Indian musical traditions.…

Offers insight into electronic text. Discusses seven characteristics of electronic text that have an impact on the notion of literacy and literacy instruction. Discusses repositories of electronic text, and describes a small sampling of sources for free electronic texts on the Internet that are easily accessible to teachers and useful for literacy…

As question answering services in the commercial sector proliferate, libraries are innovating with new forms of electronic reference (e-reference). The Library of Congress' Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) extends worldwide. Discussion includes reference service developments; "reclaiming" users; growth of library interest…

Identifies a working set of standards by which to assess individual digital reference services (Internet-based human-mediated information services) and to define membership within a collaborative network of digital reference services. The standards are designed for the Virtual Reference Desk AskA Consortium. (Author/LRW)

Outlines a planned panel discussion on electronic books and DRM (Digital Rights Management). Highlights include publisher's choice of format to protect content; institutional needs; circulating library materials to authorized users; integrating the electronic collection with the rest of the collection; integrating DRM with current library…

Describes the Questia subscription-based online academic digital books library. Highlights include weaknesses of the collection; what college students want from a library; importance of marketing; competition for traditional academic libraries that may help improve library services; and the ability of Questia to overcome barriers and…

Reviews international efforts to develop the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. Examines the need to amplify access to current scholarship. Concludes that universities need to develop and support Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) initiatives to provide broader access to their research and provide students with the…

Describes the evolution and progress toward a uniquely integrated library and computer services unit at Kenyon College. Discusses its focus on constituencies; merging of the divisions; benefits for students, faculty, administrative units, and the institution; meeting challenges; and generalizing from the model. (EV)

One opinion piece and five articles in this issue discuss: digital preservation infrastructure; accomplishments and changes in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative in 2001 and plans for 2002; video gaming and how it relates to digital libraries and learning technologies; overview of a music retrieval system; and the online version of the…

Discusses how a Supreme Court decision last year in "The New York Times Company v. Jonathan Tasini" has led publishers to make massive purges of archival material in newspaper databases, rendering them unreliable for many scholars. (EV)

Argues that special collections in an electronic environment will continue to be important because of the continuing value of artifactual documents and that special collections librarians may have new roles with respect to intellectual property and the merging of special and general digital collections. Discusses special collections on the…

Argues that unless issues of machine help and human help are given explicit attention by the library profession, the disappearance of human help in patron assistance without input is likely. Discusses convergent commercial- and academic-sector trends, implications for the profession, and three policy alternatives. Presents a patron self-help…

Consideration of metaphors related to the Internet focuses on the information superhighway, virtual communities, and digital libraries. Highlights include the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998; the Uniform Commercial Code; equality; privacy; communication; authorship; open software; information management; user fees; library collections; and…

Discusses the Internet Knowledge Manager (IKM) which provides an understandable way of representing knowledge, as readable software agents. Gives an example of writing and running an IKM agent for transfer pricing in corporations. Describes how the technology works. Concludes that the IKM could trigger new ways of performing knowledge management,…