[Article]: Open access e-book collection on Central Asia in selected digital archives

With the development of the open access initiative, besides journal collections, e-book collections are also available in open access for all public and academics.

The paper studied the open access e-book collections in various digital archives in social science aspects on Central Asia. It involved searching in the selected digital archives and the first 50 hits result lists from these archives were recorded and compared. The results showed that there is good collection of open access e-books on Central Asia.

Source: Fayaz Ahmad Loan, (2011) “Open access e-book collection on Central Asia in selected digital archives”, Collection Building, Vol. 30 Iss: 3, pp.126 – 130

[Article]: Enhancing gifts-in-kind assessment and processing with digital photography

Book gifts have been a great source for collection building for any library. Traditionally, the process of evaluating the gift collection involved time, manpower and distance travelled to the donor premise.

This paper explored the use of digital photography as a tool in helping to evaluate the initiate part of the gift collection. With the proper photography tools, images taken can be used for assessment among a group of librarians or key-holders and also for brief bibliographic information creation, promoting and use of the accepted gift collections.

Source: David Bindle, Catherine Boden, (2011) “Enhancing gifts-in-kind assessment and processing with digital photography”, Collection Building, Vol. 30 Iss: 2, pp.94 – 97

[Article]: Serving the whole person: popular materials in academic libraries

To add or not to add popular titles aka non-academic titles to academic library collection has always in the debateable among the librarians.

While an academic library mission goal is to provide research and support to the faculties with quality academic materials, it is also as important to provide some leisure reading materials to the library users. This is to not-overloaded the users with only academic stuff.

This paper provides a case study over the period of 37 months on steps for academic librarians to use in building popular materials collections. The study showed that popular materials are well-used among all library users.

Source: Ann W. Hallyburton, Heidi E. Buchanan, Timothy V. Carstens, (2011) “Serving the whole person: popular materials in academic libraries”, Collection Building, Vol. 30 Iss: 2, pp.109 – 112

[Article]: Archiving in the networked world: metrics for testing

With the proliferation of electronic materials from publishers, the long term digital archiving systems are getting more popular to help to preserve digital materials. There is a need to test the viability of these digital archiving systems and also adopt some benchmarks and metrics to enable decision on the performance of these systems.

In this paper, the author spells out three types of testing for the digital archiving system: Public, Private and Semi-public. It is discussed in greater details for public and semi-public testings.

Source: Michael Seadle, (2011) “Archiving in the networked world: metrics for testing”, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 Iss: 3, pp.557 – 564

[Article]: Libraries as places of invention

The Library has been revolving to keep up with the new changes in the current century. Many new ways and new inventions have been introducing into the library environment.

The paper looked at the changes that have been made for the past 15 years or so. The case study libraries are the Australia libraries. Studied showed that library has been transformed into new space for people to collaborate and the use of new technology tools to enhance the learning environment.

Source: Annie Talvé, (2011) “Libraries as places of invention”, Library Management, Vol. 32 Iss: 8/9, pp.493 – 504

[Article]: Ebooks in libraries: an overview of the current situation

With more e-book version coming into the market and the ease of purchase & e-book readers availability, we shall see more e-books in our lives. However, there is a need to create e-books awareness to the users of the libraries. There are still some pending e-book issues yet to be resolved by the library in terms of licensing, different platforms, cost models, etc.

The paper discussed the findings of three e-book surveys from ebrary done in three years from 2006-2008. It also provided the viewpoint from academic libraries, public libraries and ebook suppliers.

Source: Linda Ashcroft, (2011) “Ebooks in libraries: an overview of the current situation”, Library Management, Vol. 32 Iss: 6/7, pp.398 – 407

[Article]: RFID: the big player in the libraries of the future

RFID tags has been called the smart card of the book. The use of RFID in the libraries will grow in the future. To make good use of the RFID, new idea of building a RFID-based system in library searching is discussed in this paper.

It also examines the current technology and developed RFID-based systems in existing literature for this purpose. Four cases are reviewed in various industries and libraries.

 [Source: Yahia Zare Mehrjerdi, (2011) "RFID: the big player in the libraries of the future", Electronic Library, The, Vol. 29 Iss: 1, pp.36 – 51]

[Article]: An evaluation of second-generation ebook readers

With the proliferation of ebooks available in the market, portable or mobile ebook readers are needed. It is expected that there are still some issues to these ebook readers, but with the improving technology, hopefully, these issues will be minimal or resolved.

The paper is a study on the second-generation ebook readers. It looked into the usability, functionality and best experience for the users. Technical and aspects physical of the devices are also compared.

 [Source: Chris Gibson, Forbes Gibb, (2011) "An evaluation of second-generation ebook readers", Electronic Library, The, Vol. 29 Iss: 3, pp.303 – 319]

[Article]: Blurring the boundaries between our physical and electronic libraries: Location-aware technologies, QR codes and RFID tags

The use of QR codes and RFID tags in academic libraries are getting more and more popular. However, the use of them is still very fundamental such as borrowing of books, stock circulation and control.

As the cost of their uses need to be justified beyond the above-mentioned purposes, this paper looks into different uses and benefits of RFID tags. Maybe in the near future, academic libraries can have more extensive use of the RFID tags.

[Source: Andrew Walsh, (2011) "Blurring the boundaries between our physical and electronic libraries: Location-aware technologies, QR codes and RFID tags", Electronic Library, The, Vol. 29 Iss: 4, pp.429 – 437]

[Article]: Serving the whole person: popular materials in academic libraries

In an academic environment, the collection development fund is usually used for purchasing academic materials. Many academic libraries think that popular and materials should be collected at public libraries.

However, in order to encourage library users to visit the physical library, it may be good to purchase some popular materials.

This paper offers another view of purchasing and collecting of such popular materials in academic libraries. It provides a case study format with supporting statistical and analysis.

 [Source: Serving the whole person: popular materials in academic libraries by Ann W. Hallyburton, Heidi E. Buchanan and Timothy V. Carstens. Collection Building, 30/2 (2011) 109–112]