EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Digital Library Services

Free and Open Source Options for Creating Database-Driven Subject Guides

ckeller — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:32:39 -0500

This article reviews available cost-effective options libraries have for updating and maintaining pathfinders such as subject guides and course pages. The paper discusses many of the available options, from the standpoint of a mid-sized academic library which is evaluating alternatives to static-HTML subject guides. Static HTML guides, while useful, have proven difficult and time-consuming to maintain. The article includes a discussion of open source database-driven solutions (such as SubjectsPlus, LibData, Research Guide, and Library Course Builder), Wikis, and social tagging sites like del.icio.us. This article discusses both the functionality and the relative strengths and weaknessess of each of these options.

Top ten assumptions for the future of academic libraries and librarians: A report from the ACRL research committee

ckeller — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:57:46 -0600

"In 2006 the ACRL Executive Committee asked the ACRL Research Committee to determine ten assumptions about the future that would have a significant impact on academic libraries and librarians. In the ensuing months, members of the Research Committee reviewed previous similar reports; surveyed ACRL committees, councils, and sections; conducted literature reviews; and reviewed the ACRL Environmental Scan of 2003. What emerged was a long list of statements that, after deliberations, was shortened to the ten most pertinent assumptions. These assumptions identify present conditions that the committee feels will have a significant impact on how academic libraries and librarians plan for the next ten years."

In Google's Broad Wake: Taking Responsibility for Shaping the Global Digital Library

drupal — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:41:16 -0500

The author discusses how the Google Library Project has brought digital libraries into the spot light, including a new focus on negotiations concerning digital library resources.

Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library

drupal — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:31:31 -0600

Martha L. Brogan's Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library is a major contribution to the Digital Library Federation's (DLF) suite of work that focuses on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). With generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, DLF has harnessed deep OAI expertise from the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Emory University to prototype "next-generation" OAI services informed by advisory panels of scholars and technical experts; to build registries of providers to aid in the creation of new OAI-based services; and to formulate best practices for sharable metadata that focus what we have learned collectively for innovative library services. The best practices work has received intellectual and practical support from our colleagues at the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), a service of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Digital Library as Network and Community Center: A Successful Model for Contribution and Use

drupal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:56:32 -0600

The following article describes work on implementing a community DL model through a set of services that enabled geoscience education projects to collectively build the Teach the Earth educational digital library. The focus is on three aspects of this work: 1) facilitating community publishing, 2) creating a navigational and organizational framework that integrates the work of all included projects into a DL, 3) and identifying the ways in which the network centric DL that results from these efforts meets users' needs by complementing their natural search behaviors.

Strategies and Frameworks for Institutional Repositories and the New Support Infrastructure for Scholarly Communications

drupal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:06:20 -0600

"Institutional repositories (IRs) are proliferating as they become an indispensable component for information and knowledge sharing in the scholarly world [1]. As their numbers increase worldwide, a new phase of IR development is emerging. Moving beyond their initial functions, IRs no longer serve solely as a place to store, organize, and access content. With rapidly changing technologies, users now desire and expect transportable content that can be utilized within various digital environments and reused in multiple formats, and they need forums for the rapid exchange of ideas with both on-campus and external communities. In response, universities and the libraries hosting IRs are looking for ways to weave their repositories into the "information fabric" of their campuses' academic and business processes and catalyze changes in scholarly communications more broadly."

College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources

drupal — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:36:32 -0500

College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources examines the information-seeking habits and preferences of international college students. This report is a companion piece to the December 2005 OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

Coming Together around Library 2.0

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:27:24 -0500

'Library 2.0' is a term that provides focus to a number of ongoing conversations around the changing ways that libraries should make themselves and their services visible to end users and to one another. Through white papers, articles, blog posts, podcasts, presentations and more, at Talis we are taking part in this increasingly global conversation. Library 2.0 is more, though, than just a stimulus to conversation. The phrase captures notions of disruptive change, and promises to challenge both the ways in which we consider our library services and the forms in which they are offered to potential beneficiaries.

Libraries and the Long Tail

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 12:01:16 -0500

Some thoughts about libraries in a network age.

Digital Library Initiatives: Next-Gen Libraries

drupal — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:11:10 -0600

As digital repositories continue to evolve, keep your eye on these projects. They may serve as the models for your own digitization initiatives.