The impact of consortia purchasing of periodical publications on the document supply service

Purpose – This paper aims to show the impact of consortia purchased periodical publications on document supply services. These services have undergone considerable changes over the last five years, first decreasing but now recovering. Design/methodology/approach – First, this paper reviews the most recent specialised literature, focusing mainly on the impact of electronic journals in libraries, their effects, and proposed actions. Second, as an example of this new behaviour, presents the document supply service data, as collected in one hospital’s health-science library in the last four years. Findings – As evidenced by the literature, the users’ acceptance of electronic journals has undoubtedly been excellent. Consortia purchasing projects have become a basic tool that expand collections, support cooperative technological development, and require negotiating skills from librarians. But these mass purchases do not seem to be the ideal solution for libraries, they entail losing freedom when choosing the collection and often make library collections homogeneous by publisher. Originality/value – Reflects on what possible causes have led to the current situation and the current way to manage the collection.Publicad

Digital Library Evaluation: Toward an Evolution of Concepts

published or submitted for publicatio

The Virtual Library : changing roles and ethical challenges for librarians

In this age of Information Technology, there have been so many opportunities for the Librarians for involvement in an information-based society including electronic and multimedia publishing, Internet based-information services, global networking, web based digital resources etc. The base of recorded information is growing at an accelerating rate, in increasing varieties of formats (texts, numeric, graphic, video, audio, image, electronic, etc.). Virtual Library can be defined as the Internet based Digital Library. The concept of “Virtual Library” is that any person who has a computer by which he can make connection to the library networks can access not only the resources of the library but also access variety of information that is available nationally and internationally through networks, like Internet, Intranet without being physically present in library. This article explains what is meant by a Virtual Library and to build a virtual library in what way the Librarians have to change their roles to face the challenges of modern Information Technologies in the changing environment. Also this article, discusses about the changing role of librarians, the skills needed to build a virtual library and how the virtual information should be collected, managed, preserved and disseminated to the millennium users

A taxonomy of multi-industry labour force skills

This paper proposes an empirical study of the skill repertoires of 290 sectors in the United States over the period 2002–2011. We use information on employment structures and job content of occupations to flesh out structural characteristics of industry-specific know-how. The exercise of mapping the skills structures embedded in the workforce yields a taxonomy that discloses novel nuances on the organization of industry. In so doing we also take an initial step towards the integration of labour and employment in the area of innovation studies

The selection, appraisal and retention of digital scientific data: dighlights of an ERPANET/CODATA workshop

CODATA and ERPANET collaborated to convene an international archiving workshop on the selection, appraisal, and retention of digital scientific data, which was held on 15-17 December 2003 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Portugal. The workshop brought together more than 65 researchers, data and information managers, archivists, and librarians from 13 countries to discuss the issues involved in making critical decisions regarding the long-term preservation of the scientific record. One of the major aims for this workshop was to provide an international forum to exchange information about data archiving policies and practices across different scientific, institutional, and national contexts. Highlights from the workshop discussions are presented