After a summary of background knowledge useful in searching for information, the authors cover extensively the sources available to the researcher interested in locating educational data or conducting a search of bibliographic materials. They list reference books, dictionaries, almanacs, yearbooks, subject matter summaries; and sources for…

Full displays of bibliographic records for 5 monographs were analyzed in 36 library online catalogs and compared with International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) and traditional catalog-card displays. Sampled characteristics included completeness, visual layout, data sequence, label specificity, and integration of description and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of a 2006 survey of UK Higher Education OPACs in order to provide a snapshot of cataloguing practices for e-books. Design/methodology/approach: The OPACs of 30 UK HE libraries were examined in July/August 2006 to determine which e-books were catalogued, and the level of cataloguing…

This paper analyzes librarians' reactions to the Open OCLC WorldCat. A detailed survey was sent to ARL libraries to explore what, if anything, the libraries are currently doing to prepare for these changes and how they plan to cope with the probability of having all their records open to the whole world. Survey findings indicate that most of the…

This manual was compiled for use by staff and graduate assistants working in the OCLC Cataloging Section of the Automated Services Unit, Technical Services Division, University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign. Although the procedures described are institution-specific, their applications could be adapted to accommodate copy cataloging…

Prepared for users of OCLC terminals at the Michigan State University library, this manual provides a brief description of the contents of the OCLC database, instructions for constructing search requests in OCLC, guidelines for interpreting OCLC search results, a key to "reading" the OCLC screen, an overview of typical terminal responses…

Describes a project in which OCLC retrospectively converted more than 27,000 serial titles held by the University of Massachusetts Library at Amherst. Details of the reasons for choosing OCLC, the contract between the library and OCLC, and the effectiveness of the project in meeting the library's goals are discussed. (Author/CLB)

A card catalog system for ordering required and supplementary reading for foreign language courses is described as an important aid in individualized instruction. (CHK)

Discusses and compares some online catalog systems actually in operation in terms of self-service usability; number, choice, and formulation of access points; record content and display; database content; connections to technical processing and circulation; number and location of terminals; equipment and software features; and cost. (Six…

Findings of a project to convert a single LC class from cards to machine readable tapes at a two-year college suggest that an in-house retrospective conversion is feasible for academic libraries. A high conversion hit rate, implying minimal original cataloging, will keep project costs and duration low. There are five references. (RAA)

Describes the Request for Proposal (RFP) issued by the Library of Congress for an integrated library system to help in the areas of inventory control, acquisitions, binding, cataloging, circulation, collection development, online catalogs, preservation, serials management, production of products, and the computer year 2000 problem. (LRW)

An experiment at the College of Charleston (South Carolina) library examined whether using Blackwell's Library of Congress Machine Readable Cataloging with books without the CIP upgrading would be worthwhile in terms of cataloging productivity and efficiency; it also looked at additional costs involved with the CIP upgrading. (AEF)

When the Higher Education Library Information Network of Rhode Island transferred members' bibliographic data into a shared online public access catalog (OPAC), 10% of the University of Rhode Island's monograph records were missing. This article describes the consortium's attempts to retrieve records from the database and the effectiveness of…

Thirty-one public library users were observed searching the Web and/or a Web-based on-line catalog. Four user categories were identified, distinguished by number of search approaches employed. Results indicate experience and motivation, elements of situational goals and mental models, work in tandem to determine search approaches, Web sites…

Considers issues and concerns relating to the integration of archival and manuscripts records into library bibliographic and retrieval systems. Differences in the nature of library and archival materials are discussed, library functions and archival functions are compared, and archival uses of authority files are described. (six references) (LRW)