Here’s an interesting development. Wouldn’t it be great if we weren’t devoting so much time and energy to multiple licenses? Wouldn’t it be neat to have a common understanding of what’s acceptable (including things like interlibrary loan and e-reserves) when acquiring e-content for our libraries? Aren’t scholarly publishers and libraries potential allies? Can’t we all [...]

Some people seem to think that serendipity and digitization are at odds with each other. For example, here’s a reviewer commenting on the newYale Book of Quotations: I suspect that the continuing digitization of libraries will diminish the number of serendipitous discoveries made by those of us who now spend hours sifting through stacks of [...]

Spring Break is behind many of us and the end of the semester is rapidly approaching. It is a time when everyone looks forwarded to warmer weather, graduation, and days out on the quad. Also, for some reason, it is also the most popular time to trial databases from publishers. Over the course of my [...]

Dang! I just saw this perfect book for my paper, but the library doesn’t have it. I could wait several days for it to come through interlibrary loan, purchase a downloadable e-version for thirty-five smackers (yeah, like that’s gonna happen), or . . . forget it, I’ll just change my topic. Ouch. If we could [...]

In researching an article about Facebook use that appears in the latest issue of University Business, the author interviewed college students about Facebook and their use of this social network. Some of the answers are revealing. When asked if they think college faculty or administrators (librarians could fit into either category) should use Facebook or [...]