Merging Special Collections with GIS Technology to Enhance the User Experience

This analysis evaluates how PhillyHistory.org merged their unique special collection materials with geospatial-based progressive technology to challenge and educate the global community. A new generation of technologically savvy researchers has emerged that expect a more enhanced user experience than earlier generations. To meet these needs, collection managers are collaborating with community and local institutions to increase online access to materials; mixing best metadata practices with custom elements to create map mashups; and merging progressive GIS technology and geospatial based applications with their collections to enhance the user experience. The PhillyHistory.org website was analyzed to explore how they used various geospatial technology to create a new type of digital content management system based on geographical information and make their collections accessible via online software and mobile applications

Serving the Needs of Homeless Library Patrons: Legal Issues, Ethical Concerns, and Practical Approaches

While cognizant of their social mission, public libraries often still have found it challenging to serve one of their most marginalized constituencies - the homeless. However, bound by legal mandate as well as American Library Association (ALA) core values of access, democracy, and serving the public, libraries must find ways to serve the needs of poor and homeless patrons. This paper describes the demographics and characteristics of homelessness, explores legal and ethical issues with regard to library services, identifies selected model library programs that serve this population effectively, and provides practical guidance and recommendations to public libraries and librarians struggling with this matter, including how to draft patron codes of behavior that are consistent with legal guidelines. Serving the poor and homeless is both a challenge and an opportunity to put the American Library Association’s core values into practice. In so doing, public libraries model the democratic principles they would have their patrons emulate, not only demonstrating but creating the kind of society for which they stand

A Generic Alerting Service for Digital Libraries

Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. Proprietary and mediating alerting services fail to fluidly integrate information from differing collections. This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the differing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service. Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services for digital libraries, their design and use is greater than one may anticipate. We also show that, conversely, the requirements for an alerting service have considerable impact on the concepts of DL design. Our findings should be of interest for librarians as well as system designers. We highlight and discuss the far-reaching implications for the design of, and interaction with, libraries. This paper discusses the lessons learned from building such a distributed alerting service. We present our prototype implementation as a proof-of-concept for an alerting service for open DL software

Academic Libraries in Transition: Current Trends, Future Prospects

Academic libraries are in transition because of changes in the context of higher education. Changes in the world of information are even more radical: the displacement of paper, the primacy of the search engine, the emergence of the digital lifestyle, and innovative patterns of scholarly communication. Decreasing reliance on local collections is transforming the library as a physical destination.Traditional measures of library success have begun to be replaced. Given the superiority of other information professionals’ data management skills, the role of academic librarians will shift toward the enablement of learning.This environment of upheaval will pose both opportunities and challenges for academic librarians

The Integrated Library System of the 1990s: The OhioLINK Experience

No embarg

Evaluating Digital Libraries: A Longitudinal and Multifaceted View

published or submitted for publicatio

Emerging challenges in academic librarianship & role of library associations in professional updating

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Cataloging Virtual Reality Artworks: Challenges and Future Prospects

In 2019, Pepperdine Libraries acquired two virtual reality artworks by filmmaker and artist Paisley Smith: Homestay and Unceded Territories. To bring awareness to these pieces, Pepperdine Libraries added these works to the library catalog, creating bibliographic records for both films. There were many challenges and considerations in cataloging virtual reality art, including factors such as the nature of the work, the limits found in Resource Description and Access (RDA) and MARC, and providing access to these works. This paper discusses these topics, as well as provides recommendations for potential future standards for cataloging virtual works