More than eight in ten Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, and six in ten used their local public library. At the youngest end of the spectrum, high schoolers in their late teens (ages 16-17) and college-aged young adults (ages 18-24) are especially likely to have read a book or used the library in the past 12…

In this column, the author discusses how the management of e-books has introduced, at many libraries and in varying degrees, the challenges of maintaining effective technical services workflows. Four different e-book workflows are identified and explored, and the author takes a closer look at how particular variables for each are affected, such as…

Purpose: Presently, searching the internet for learning material relevant to ones own interest continues to be a time-consuming task. Systems that can suggest learning material (learning objects) to a learner would reduce time spent searching for material, and enable the learner to spend more time for actual learning. The purpose of this paper is…

Sixteen scholarly papers and twenty abstracts comprise the content of the eighteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate various issues related to Chinese language localisation in Evergreen, an open source integrated library system (ILS). Design/methodology/approach: A Simplified Chinese version of Evergreen was implemented and tested and various issues such as encoding, indexing, searching, and sorting…

This paper examines the experience of one institution, the University of Maryland Libraries, as it made organizational efforts to harness existing workflows and to capture digitization done in the course of responding to patron requests. By examining the way this organization adjusted its existing workflows to put in place more systematic methods…

This article explores the geography of virtual questioning by using geographic information systems to study activity within the Florida Electronic Library "Ask a Librarian" collaborative chat service. Researchers mapped participating libraries throughout the state of Florida that served as virtual "entry portals" for users as…

Almost everything is now available online. What is good about this is that in most circumstances, libraries are no longer limited to serving users within just physical spaces. This proves to be a wonderful benefit for users, but sometimes it does not always work out as expected. Those familiar with setting up electronic resources know the…

According to the recent survey of Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), one of the several top trends in publishing nowadays is the licensing liberalization among publishers. Licensing options now abound and there are various price points for libraries considering new collections. One such example is how SAGE offers…

This paper describes the development of resources for a unit of work for the English National Diploma in Information Technology. These on-line resources are designed to support a personalised learning environment that maximises opportunities for students to achieve greater control of their own learning and progression. The resources are designed…

This article has three main objectives: i) to describe the use patterns of electronic and traditional resources in Portuguese academic libraries; ii) to estimate the value of the Portuguese electronic scientific information consortium b-on by using two alternative valuation methodologies; iii) to relate the use patterns with the valuation of b-on.…

This study surveyed 1,234 empirical studies on giftedness, gifted education, and creativity during 1998-2010 (April), using PsycINFO database and targeted journals as main sources, with respect to main topics these studies focused on, methods they used for investigation, and the conceptual spaces they traversed. Four main research topics emerged…

This publication follows the tradition of publishing selected papers from Pacific Islands Association of Libraries, Archives and Museums (PIALA) annual conferences. The volume begins with a listing of the members of the PIALA 2007 Planning Committee, the Officers and Executive Board, and Acknowledgements, followed by the Pre-Conference Workshop…

Education for Library and Information professionals in managing the digital environment has been a key topic for discussion within the LIS environment for some time. However, before designing and implementing a program for digital library education, it is prudent to ensure that the skills and knowledge required to work in this environment are…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the accessibility and use of web-based electronic databases on the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) portal by physicians in the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Aro--a psychiatry health institution in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach: Collection of data was through the use of a three-part…