Progressive Trends in Electronic Resources Management Among Academic Libraries in Hong Kong

Due to recent technology advancement and particularly ubiquity of smart devices, user needs and habits of using library materials are also changed towards electronic resources, which facilitate anytime anyplace access as well as easier information search. For library management, digital resources facilitate long-term preservation together with savings of space and human costs. This lead to a trend of rapid development of digitization and electronic resources, leading to lots of changes in academic libraries. However, there are few studies providing a holistic view of this important trend, especially in metropolis of the East. To explore this trend, we interviewed four librarians in different departments from different universities in Hong Kong for a qualitative analysis on various aspects such as digital versus print, user expectation changes, and new management problems. Emerging issues of e-resources highlighted by the libraries includes acquisitions policies, budget implication, copyright, and access restrictions, consortium collaboration, manpower issues, workflow, and library system changes. We further discuss the practical implications of our findings, which are supportive to those disparate in other literature.postprin

Definition of collections, standards and procedures for restrospective digitisation

This paper is the result of (literature) research and expertise acquired by digitisation projects in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB). The project described is part of the DELTA project, a joint project of Dutch university libraries together with Pica, which focuses on integration of existing and new local and central services into one integrated end-user service. Aim of this (sub)project is to establish a common working procedure within each library and between libraries to improve interoperability, exchange of expertise and to provide the basis for combining dispersed collections in a virtual digital library. During the project selection criteria were developed, five scholarly core journals of international reputation and use were selected, an organisation model was developed, costs were estimated, and decided was to work according to a simple hybrid model e.g. microfilming and digitisation of articles: the backfiles will be scanned in 400-600 dpi and made available in PDF, and the tables of contents in HTML. The articles will be catalogued in the central Pica database and are accessible via the Online Contents (OLC) database and PiCarta, an integrated, multimaterial database offering access to online resources and electronic documents. Copyright will be cleared individually with the Dutch publishers. Part of the project is to develop draft license agreements with different kind of publishers. Archiving will be integrated into the DNEP (Deposit of Dutch Electronic Publications) service of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. THE DELTA PROJECT A group of Dutch University libraries together with Pica, the centre for library automation & online information services decided last year to develop a new generation of integrated services for endusers to enable them to access and use a Virtual Research Library. For this purpose they established a consortium, called DELTA (Dutch Electronic Library Technology Association

Interdepartmental Collaboration to Promote OER to Faculty

Heather Crozier, Electronic Resources Librarian, Heterick Memorial Library, Ohio Northern University Student debt is a compelling issue and many institutions are investigating solutions to ease the financial burdens of their students. Increasing the use of open educational resources benefits students by reducing course costs. Adopting OER in the classroom allows faculty more freedom in choosing instructional tools. Faculty also benefit from open access publishing by increasing their exposure. However, on the campus of a small, private institution, attendance at workshops to spread awareness and increase the use of these materials was minimal. Faculty had the perception that free resources could not be the same quality as traditional resources. In order to dispel this myth, the Electronic Resources Librarian and Educational Technology Manager collaborated to create custom one hour sessions for individual departments, leveraging library/faculty liaison relationships and the expertise of the office of educational technology. In the session, faculty learn more about open access publishing options, the value of open educational resources, the quality of many open educational resources, and where to find these resources. The session uses the course management system to both disseminate the information shared in the session and create a forum for departments to share resources with each other. Through the CMS, faculty gain access to vetted resources. All attendants have editing privileges within the site after the workshop, allowing them to curate course-specific lists for sharing and future reference. Pilot sessions have been well received and wider implementation is planned for the next academic year

A peer-to-peer network to support scholarly communication

The number of scientific journals and thereby the number of published articles grew with an enormous rate in the last century (e.g. Price 1986; Henderson 2002). In the second half of the 20th century the system seemed to abut against its boundaries, because in relation to research budgets, library budgets did not grow fast enough to cover all the scientific output produced. Price increases well above the inflation rate set by commercial publishers that bundle disproportionately high market power – especially for journals in the Science-Technical- Medicine-Sector in the last thirty years – intensified the situation even further. This situation is known as the serial crisis. New Information and Communication Technology (ICT) driven publication models are established and seem to be a promising way out of the crisis because they reduce distribution costs significantly. Especially the open access (OA) movement that advocates free electronic access to scientific output is subject to a fierce public debate. In this paper we will detail problems associated with OA and suggest a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) system that supports electronic scholarly communication as a tool to address the economic problems mentioned above

Advanced Text Searching of Electronic Information Related to Forensic Discovery

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding production of electronic evidence, together with court rulings and penalties, have highlighted the need for timely and accurate production of electronically stored responsive evidence. Key criteria to the legal requirements include costs to produce, identification of responsive information and identification of privileged information within the responsive information. Currently the primary two methods of compliance are manual review of the documents and electronic Boolean text searches. Text searching technology has been studied for over fifty years generating literally thousands of documents and books for a literature review. The focus of the literature includes accuracy of searching, optimization of searching, and completeness of searching. Some of the literature is based on a specific field of interest such as library cards or patent filings, but most is either generic or relates to either peer-to-peer searching or Internet searching. The documents related to the field of electronic evidence are very limited in number and presented no new search techniques directly. We identified and classified the search techniques from the literature study after consideration of the applicability to electronic evidence. Using electronic evidence from actual litigation cases, the techniques were implemented to identify the thoroughness of the documents identified in the population and the related costs (time) required to identify such documents. The results from the various techniques were compared along with the costs to identify the "best" text searching method. Based on the results, we recommend implementation of a combination of the techniques to allow responsiveness to different requirements based on the legal circumstances

Meeting new demands : The role of the library as a centre for education and research

The world is increasingly hungry for information. The demand for better access to information is even more marked in higher education than in society as a whole and, as research becomes more specialised and at the same time more interdisciplinary, the range of information sought by all engaged in higher educa­tion is expanding. Libraries are faced with the problem of the timely and adequate supply of information held not only in conventional printed and manuscript docu­ments but also in electronic data in vari­ous formats including on-line data. An ever greater number of users seeks these materials. The paperless society which was forecast by some to accompany the revolution in information technology has yet to arrive and new approaches are needed in respect to how the library copes with the continued growth of material and demand. Libraries are increasingly constrained by escalating costs. More significantly, they are still constrained by unrealistic aspirations towards some ideal of self-sufficiency, by out-dated practi­ces, and by lack of a clear strategic development plan which will promote new concepts of service and exploit new methods of access to information. This paper seeks to explore the impact of this demand for information upon the academic library, and to consider how the academic library can develop in these changing circumstances to meet with increasing effectiveness the infor­mation needs of scholars, researchers and students. It examines the need for new organisa­tional structures to enable the library to influence the strategic planning and allo­cation of resources in support of its role at the centre of a learning and research institution. It recognises that as teaching methods change to become more learn­ing centred, the library must have both the authority and the vision to meet its responsibility for providing easy access to all forms of information. It must organ­ise better access in the context of a real­istic awareness of cost, value for money, and an effective service to its users. The author considers how the library should modify its collection develop­ment and service policies in the light of information technology. It is critically im­portant that new policies should be set in place that are built on a better assess­ment of user needs, informed by greater collaboration between the user and the librarian. This implies a major change in conventional practice, and attitudes. It requires change in the perceived role and responsibilities of the librarian. These responsibilities include not only the man­agement of resources, but also the con­tribution the librarian needs to make to the development of the educational and research objectives of the university. The development of the library staff as experts in providing access to information and effectively managing the dissemination of information throughout the university is an essential part of any new policy. New priorities must be set to achieve new objectives. The paper explores what yet needs to be done if the library is to achieve the vision that it lies at the heart of all learning, that it renews and augments the knowledge of all teachers and researchers, and that it provides access to information that is indispensable to lifelong learning throughout a wider community

Meeting new demands : The role of the library as a centre for education and research

The world is increasingly hungry for information. The demand for better access to information is even more marked in higher education than in society as a whole and, as research becomes more specialised and at the same time more interdisciplinary, the range of information sought by all engaged in higher educa­tion is expanding. Libraries are faced with the problem of the timely and adequate supply of information held not only in conventional printed and manuscript docu­ments but also in electronic data in vari­ous formats including on-line data. An ever greater number of users seeks these materials. The paperless society which was forecast by some to accompany the revolution in information technology has yet to arrive and new approaches are needed in respect to how the library copes with the continued growth of material and demand. Libraries are increasingly constrained by escalating costs. More significantly, they are still constrained by unrealistic aspirations towards some ideal of self-sufficiency, by out-dated practi­ces, and by lack of a clear strategic development plan which will promote new concepts of service and exploit new methods of access to information. This paper seeks to explore the impact of this demand for information upon the academic library, and to consider how the academic library can develop in these changing circumstances to meet with increasing effectiveness the infor­mation needs of scholars, researchers and students. It examines the need for new organisa­tional structures to enable the library to influence the strategic planning and allo­cation of resources in support of its role at the centre of a learning and research institution. It recognises that as teaching methods change to become more learn­ing centred, the library must have both the authority and the vision to meet its responsibility for providing easy access to all forms of information. It must organ­ise better access in the context of a real­istic awareness of cost, value for money, and an effective service to its users. The author considers how the library should modify its collection develop­ment and service policies in the light of information technology. It is critically im­portant that new policies should be set in place that are built on a better assess­ment of user needs, informed by greater collaboration between the user and the librarian. This implies a major change in conventional practice, and attitudes. It requires change in the perceived role and responsibilities of the librarian. These responsibilities include not only the man­agement of resources, but also the con­tribution the librarian needs to make to the development of the educational and research objectives of the university. The development of the library staff as experts in providing access to information and effectively managing the dissemination of information throughout the university is an essential part of any new policy. New priorities must be set to achieve new objectives. The paper explores what yet needs to be done if the library is to achieve the vision that it lies at the heart of all learning, that it renews and augments the knowledge of all teachers and researchers, and that it provides access to information that is indispensable to lifelong learning throughout a wider community

Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries, 1980-2000: A Historical Perspective

published or submitted for publicatio

LIFE: bibliography

The following bibliography came out of the research which formed the first phase of the joint British Library-UCL LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) project. The references are not an exhaustive review of digital preservation activities, they are a reflection of the aims of the LIFE project. Any suggestions for additions or comments can be emailed to [email protected]

Why Print and Electronic Resources Are Essential to the Academic Law Library

Libraries have supported multiple formats for decades, from paper and microforms to audiovisual tapes and CDs. However, the newest medium, digital transmission, has presented a wider scope of challenges and caused library patrons to question the established and recognized multiformat library. Within the many questions posed, two distinct ones echo repeatedly. The first doubts the need to sustain print in an increasingly digital world, and the second warns of the dangers of relying on a still-developing technology. This article examines both of these positions and concludes that abandoning either format would translate into a failure of service to patrons, both present and future