Information and learning commons are now common in libraries. How to make the commons appeal to all students as well as faculty staff, is the area need to explore further. To ensure the commons are well received and use, some innovative ways can help.

This article provides some ways to make use of the information commons for both students and academic staff. Besides providing IT equipments in these commons, some ideas on education collaboration between library and faculty can be explored.

[Source: Information and learning commons, faculty and student benefits. Jon Bodnar. New Library World, Vol. 110 No. 9/10, 2009, pp. 403-409]

For the past year, with the financial crisis, everywhere in the world is retrenching and retraining the staff. However, not much has been heard of keeping the motivation of staff high so that at the current tough times, staff can pull themselves through this crisis for better future.

This paper outlines and describes what need to be done to keep staff motivation in the library world. Some simple and easy methods that can be employed to motivate the staff. We need to push ourselves forward.  

[Source: WHAT’S NEW IN LIBRARIES: Keeping staff motivated in tough times. Elisa F. Topper. New Library World, Vol. 110 No. 7/8, 2009, pp. 385-387.]

With the increase usage of technology and Internet, Libraries have to keep pace and moving forward.

This paper is a report on the 29th IATUL Conference on “Digital discovery: strategies and solutions” held in Auckland, New Zealand in April 2008.

The meeting covered a lot of library-related aspects such as digital strategies and policy, digitalisation, e-research development, e-science support, web 2.0, etc.

[Source: Digital discovery: strategies and solutions: Report on the 29th annual Conference of the International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) held in Auckland, New Zealand, 21-24 April 2008. Reiner Kallenborn and Carolin Becker. New Library World, Vol. 110 No. 5/6, 2009, pp. 280-290]

Many Libraries are revamping their websites and services so as to catch-up with the technologies available. They are trying new things that are not possible previously. One thing that is always on-going is to make searching simple and easier by able to combine multiple resources together for searching – Federated search.

In this paper, authors using the HAM-TMC Library as an example and explained the implementation of a discovery tool.

[Source: Discovering discovery tools: Evaluating vendors and implementing Web 2.0 environments by Dean James, Michael Garrett and Leah Krevit. Library Hi Tech, Vol. 27 No. 2, 2009, pp. 268-276]

IT tools have been developed to help library to organise, manage, promote library systems or services to the users. A tool is getting noticed around the academic libraries world – LibraryThing -an online personal cataloging tool!

In this article, authors share their experience of implementing LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) at the Claremont University Consortium’s libraries. It further explained the set-up of the tool for use. The pros and cons of the tool are also discussed.

[Source: LibraryThing for libraries at Claremont by Jezmynne Westcott, Alexandra Chappell and Candace Lebel. Library Hi Tech, Vol. 27 No. 1, 2009, pp. 78-81]

Information literacy is important to students in schools. With a understanding on this matter, students will find it useful when they are doing research for their assignments and projects.

This paper provide the findings on the use of current technologies to develop online information literacy tutorials in academic libraries. The author survey 372 online tutorials on the library web sites and discussed the different type of information literacy tutorials created. Useful also to know the types of software tools available to develop online tutorials.

[Source: Information literacy online tutorials: An introduction to rationale and technological tools in tutorial creation by Sharon Yang. The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 4, 2009, pp. 684-693]

When one think of digital copies, copyright issues will be thought of. As the proliferation of Internet, digital contents are added every minute online! Some cop

In this paper, the author identified the different types of digital content creation, namely: born digital, turned digital and gained digital. The copyright issues associated with each of these types of digtial content  are also discussed. Also discuss is the copyright laws in India with reference to digital content. Particularly useful to those who need to understand copyright issues relevant to the digital library.

[Source: Digital content creation and copyright issues by G. Mahesh and Rekha Mittal. The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 4, 2009, pp. 676-683]

For the past years, there is an increase in the use of online survey tools in collecting statistics on a particular subject such as for project report, research study, analysis study, etc.

The article describes how online survey can help in collection development for academic library. The survey is sent to Physics faculty in University of Minnesota. The online survey tool is used to capture the physics faculty’s book  recommendations by listing books, sorted by call numbers.

The results showed that it is effective in using the survey to collate books for ordered. It also showed that the fund allocated matched the cost of total books selected in the survey.

[Source: Engaging faculty through collection development utilizing online survey tools by Kristi Jensen. Collection Building, 28/3 (2009), pp 117-121]

Those who has been to a library (public or academic) should have used the library system (OPAC) to search for books, printed journals/magazines, etc. But, how useful is OPAC in terms of functions and features that enable users to find or locate useful materials for borrow and browsing?

The article investigated usability features of Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) using New Zealand academic libraries as the study subjects. The study discussed and analysed what current library’s OPACs have to offer and what new or innovative features good to have in the future to enhance user experience.

[Source: The evaluation of New Zealand academic library of OPACs: a checklist approach by Truong Dai Luong and Chern Li Liew. The Electronic Library, Vol 27, No. 3, 2009, pp376-393]

Library select books based on their previous years purchase or by recommendations from users or librarian picked up their books. How relevant is the collection build up by these methods? How well spend the fund in building collection based on these?

In this article, the author describe how an online survey with the related faculty members in an academic environment helped to purchase books which build up the relevant subject collection. It is found that by doing survey with the faculty did help to narrow down the error in purchasing irrevant materials for the teaching and research purpose.

[Source: Engaging faculty through collection development utilizing online survey tools by Kristi Jensen. Collection Building, 28/3, (2009), pp 117-121]