Mining Social Tagging Data for Enhanced Subject Access for Readers and Researchers

Social tagging enables librarians to partner with users to provide enhanced subject access. This paper quantifies and compares LC subject headings from each of 31 different subject divisions with user tags from Amazon.com and LibraryThing assigned to the same titles. The intersection and integration of these schemas is described and evaluated

Using eclectic digital resources to enhance instructional methods for adult learners

Purpose – To demonstrate that adult learning can be improved through the use of eclectic digital resources to enhance instructional methods rather than through learning skills in isolation. Design/methodology/approach – During the past two decades, a significant research has focused on adults as learners. Many adults take classes for skills improvement, job advancement, and personal understanding. The demand for training programs to help workers keep current and competitive is growing. It is likely that more adults from all walks of life will be continuing their education in a variety of settings. For example, librarians do instruction for their communities in the areas of internet searching, electronic database use, and personal computing skills. Many of their students are adults, including other library staff members, community members, and non-traditional students. Findings – A learning program that includes digital resources helps provide the opportunity for instructors to help their students make connections and form relationships across the boundaries of classroom, discipline, skill, and background. By incorporating an eclectic assortment of digital resources into computer/internet-related training an instructor ensures that adult learners are better able to connect what they have learned in life and are learning in the classroom. Research limitations/implications – Relies on availability of internet access. Practical implications – Librarians are frequently in the position of providing computer/internet-related training for a wide variety of audiences, including adults. Originality/value – Librarians are perfectly poised to combine sound pedagogy with their expert knowledge of available digital resources to promote adult achievement in technology education. An instruction program integrated with evocative digital resources provides the opportunity for instructors to reduce anxiety and to help their students make connections and form relationships across the boundaries of classroom, discipline, skill, and background

Libraries in the USA as Traditional and Virtual ‘Third Places’

Traditional “third places” provide physical places for human contact and social experience outside of the home or workplace/school. Institutions as disparate as fitness centers, libraries, and beauty salons are examples of third places: locations where people gather and often talk about things that are important to them. Libraries have a long tradition of connectedness and community that has put them in the forefront of traditional third places. As library Web sites are created and evolve, the sense of place provided by physical third places will become increasingly important online. Much about connectedness and community online can be learned from the concept of third places and their importance in real life and in cyberspace. The traditions inherent in libraries as physical third places provide predictions, projections, and inspirations for continued good service in the online presence of libraries

Serials Collection Management in Recessionary Times: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

Difficult economic times often require that librarians make difficult decisions during a period of great stress. Declining budgets compete with rising expectations, along with ever changing licensing and service models from publishers and vendors. Serials librarians struggle to maintain and expand accessibility in an increasingly complex environment. Depending on the direness of the situation, the options can be threatening. During an economic downturn, the ideal of collection expansion can turn into a struggle to maintain current access along with the imperative to cancel important serial titles

Bohemianism and Cyberspace: Why the Internet Had to Happen

Change can be evolutionary or revolutionary, and new economic and social orders form following major political upheavals. A pattern has developed for young people to rebel against order and, by doing so, to bring about chaos. One of the aftershocks of the worldwide political revolutions of the late eighteenth century was the gradual evolution of a new cultural identity, bohemianism, which began in the 1830s. Bohemianism gave a name to the philosophy of doing your own thing. Prior to this time, the term bohemian was often a synonym for a vagabond or a gypsy, a reference to the Romany Gypsy tribe that originated in the kingdom of Bohemia. The great wars of the early and mid-twentieth century engendered new waves ofbohemianism. Living life unconventionally was the basis for each of these movements, but their public faces took disparate forms such as the Lost Generation and the German Wandervogel in the 1920/30s, America\u27s societal dropouts, the Beats, society\u27s child, the Hippie, and most recently, the Punks and the Goths

Virginia\u27s Money Follows the Person Demonstration

Educational Objectives 1. Describe Virginia\u27s Money Follows the Person Demonstration project, including the new services available to individuals through Virginia\u27s Medicaid-funded home and community-based waiver program. 2. Explain how Virginia\u27s Money Follows the Person Demonstration project, being administered by the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS), would assist an individual in transitioning from a long-term care facility to the community. 3. Illustrate how someone might experience the MFP processes from pre-transition through post-transition

University undergraduate students and library-related privacy issues

New technologies increase the ability to capture and retrieve data about library usage patterns and users. Collecting, analyzing, and using patron data, however, may raise concerns among library users about their online privacy and how the data collected might be used to their advantage or disadvantage. This article examines undergraduate students\u27 knowledge and perceptions of online privacy issues, their opinions regarding who should collect and retain information about them, for what purposes, and under what circumstances

Assessing Technology-based Projects for Promotion and Tenure in ARL Academic Libraries

Little is known about how technology-based projects (computer soft­ ware, articles in electronic journals, Internet-based materials, videotapes and audiotapes) are reviewed for promotion and/or tenure purposes in academic libraries. Reviewers might evaluate projects with traditional criteria or attempt to revise criteria to accommodate computer-related work. To address this issue in more detail, the authors conducted a study to assess how technology-based projects are evaluated in the promo­ tion and/or tenure process for academic librarians in Association of Re­ search Libraries. Survey results show that, while projects, particularly World Wide Web–based materials, are being evaluated in some ARL academic libraries, little has been developed as a core set of measures or assessments for promotion and/or tenure decisions

Edward and Minne Allen: Iowa Citizens, World Citizens

Edward and Minne Allen were citizens of the world who made their home in Iowa. They dedicated their long and active lives to education, community service, and social justice. They met in Berlin in a time of violence and lived out their lives in Ames working for peace

Managing Meaning: Language and Technology in Academic Libraries

Professionals in academe today are faced with an ever-increasing number of technological advances, and few feel the effects of these changes more than library professionals. With each change comes a new vocabulary that has the potential to cause communication rifts between departments in academic libraries. Through a comprehensive literature review and a selective survey of administrators of information technology, public services, and technical services in academic libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries, the authors show how the new terminology has affected communication among professionals in these positions, specifically in the context of technological decision-making, and ideas are put forth for ways to overcome this problem