Digital Library Services and Electronic Resources

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.

Providing library resources to the learner, at the point of need, is the focus of the University of Wisconsin Colleges Library Course Page Project. Each course has a dynamically created library course page, which provides learners with these materials. We will present features and implementation information, as well as how the program has been received.

Lulu is a web-based self-publishing service, providing online access to the tools an individual needs to design, publish, and print original material, including books, brochures, reports, calendars, and posters. Self-publishing offers an alternative to traditional publishing by allowing authors and creators of content to decide what gets published and in what form, allowing anyone to publish a book inexpensively and much more quickly than with traditional publishing. Faculty can use the service to publish more timely textbooks and other material for courses, and by having access to the tools of production, students can see and understand the processes involved.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

The authors discuss recent studies conducted to gage the academic librarian's and faculty member's view on the increasing use and offering of electronic resources. One could conclude from the studies that the "transition to an electronic environment poses significant strategic and management challenges for higher education" and that there is a "need for libraries to take leadership in helping academia's transition to the new environment".

The collective expertise of digital libraries in making available the diverse literatures of science and artistic expression, in concert with the increasing sophistication of commercial partners and the development of distributed, interactive forms of publishing, require libraries to chart the engineering of new architectures for teaching, learning, and research. Digital libraries must work to forge the new collaborations required to enable and build these services.

Faculty and librarians partner to embed personalized library assistance into online courses.