Where library budgets are concerned, there is every evidence now, after three years, that research libraries have arrived at "the new normal." That is, they do not expect a return to systematic and regular additions to Association of Research Libraries' (ARL) budgets in order to support ever-increasing prices that are out of proportion to…

Abortion is a highly-charged, emotional topic which often appears in the news, particularly during the confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee. Community College students continue to ask reference librarians for print resources dealing with this controversial issue. Often we turn to the reliable series "Current Controversies," "At Issue,"…

"Road Tripping Down the Digital Preservation Highway" follows the continuing adventures of Peter Palmer, erstwhile librarian at Bellaluna University and manager of the library's and University's digital content, as he journeys down the Digital Preservation Highway. Palmer's problem this month was somewhat more philosophical. As manager of the…

A desire for more functionality seemed to clash with the fiscal reality of limited funds, but after investigating alternatives, Mount Saint Mary College was able to provide its faculty and students with a more useful and function-rich electronic resource management through a move to a hosted open source service. (Contains 8 figures.)

Librarians are using learning styles as a tool to engage students and enhance their teaching. However, a review of the literature reveals that learning styles theory is complex and problematic. It is important to base our practice on sound pedagogy. This critical examination of learning styles explores the issues surrounding them and what they can…

Approximately 1.4 million school-aged children entered their families through adoption. As such, adoption represents a real and complex social issue with which young children--adopted or not--can grapple. Adoption picturebooks provide a medium by which children can explore this complicated concept. This manuscript analyzes a standard library…

The impact of Web 2.0 upon culture, education, and knowledge is obfuscated by the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 applications and technologies. Web 2.0 is commonly conceptualized in terms of the tools that it makes possible, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia. In the context of information literacy instruction, Web 2.0 is frequently conceptualized…

Recent surveys indicate that many colleges and universities have reached a pivotal moment in assessing the function and future development of their institutional repositories. Other surveys convey that archivists are participating in the development and implementation of institutional repositories at a variety of levels and have contributed to the…

This paper is a practical and personal perspective on the challenges faced by special collections in an increasingly digital environment, and the strategies employed to promote their unique resources to the academic and wider communities, including the value of promoting heritage through reconstructing collections and the place of expertise in the…

Now, more than ever, public and school libraries struggle to main- tain their relevance in the age of instant access, electronic databases, and Google. While print collections continue to grow, many collections are drowning in obsolete, unused, and unwanted materials. And while most libraries keep up with deselection in an intelligent manner, many…

As high school enrollment continues to rise, the need for effective librarianship serving young adults is greater than ever before. "Young Adults Deserve the Best: Competencies for Librarians Serving Youth," developed by Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), is a document outlining areas of focus for providing quality library service…

This document explores the transition from an analog to a digital environment for knowledge access, preservation, and reconstitution, and the implications of this transition for managing research collections. The volume comprises three reports. The first, "Can a New Research Library be All-Digital?" by Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry,…

The authors compare Spanish faculty use of library services and the interest they express in value-added services and improvement actions. The results are based on data from a survey of 546 faculty in the field of science and technology. The study differentiates between the areas of pure science, engineering and architecture, and life sciences.…

This study takes a multidimensional approach to citation analysis, examining citations in multiple subfields of engineering, from both scholarly journals and doctoral dissertations. The three major goals of the study are to determine whether there are differences between citations drawn from dissertations and those drawn from journal articles; to…

Introduction: This paper discusses the person-in-environment framework, which proposes the inclusion of environmental factors, alongside personal factors, as the explanatory factors of individual-level information behaviour and outcome. Method: The paper first introduces the principles and schematic formulas of the person-in-environment framework.…