This research examines the development of virtual libraries in Commonwealth libraries in Australia in 1998-1999. The background to the study lies in some of the current issues in the information sector, and government responses to those issues. The study begins by considering the nature of the Australian Commonwealth Government, reviewing what government libraries are and whom they serve, and examining the future trends expected to affect Commonwealth libraries. The current state of virtual library research is then reviewed, and the need for research in the Commonwealth library sector examined. The author reviews the virtual library concept as expressed in the literature in the field, determines what a virtual library is, and gives consideration to why virtual libraries are being developed. The issues that affect and are affected by virtual library development are then examined. Based on this, a model of virtual libraries is formulated, along with a brief consideration of the possible application, importance and problems associated with each element of the model. The research design and methods that were used to gather information for this study are then outlined, along with the inherent limitations of the research model. Following this, the findings from a survey of virtual library development in Commonwealth libraries are discussed. The author then conducts some analysis of these responses, and makes comparisons between different Commonwealth library responses, as well as comparisons with virtual library studies conducted in American and Australian academic libraries. The research concludes by attempting to reach some conclusions about Commonwealth virtual library development and the validity of the proposed model of virtual libraries. Flowing from this, recommendations are made for further research in this field.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 1980. / Typescript (photocopy). eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-100).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northwestern University, 1964. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-249).

Thesis--Rutgers.

The survey arose from a need felt by the senior librarians to monitor the actual use of the library and also the opinions and attitudes of library users after a year in the new premises, with a view to highlighting problems and improving services. Structured interviews were carried out with academic staff, medical staff and groups of students from both medical and health sciences faculties. Recommendations are made for improving library services and reducing noise levels.

This Code of Ethics intends to promote activism on the part of the librarian to advance intellectual freedom and access issues to the community. Libraries are in danger. The danger lies in a few specific areas: in the accessibility of information via the Internet so people do not feel they need to come to a library for information; privacy violations by the government in the name of security; low pay which drives potential librarians to the private sector in search of higher paying jobs; a sense of atrophy in the administration of libraries; rising costs and the corporatization of libraries; and the pressure to compete with retail bookstores in customer service and other quantifiable measures. (Roberto and West, 2003) Librarians must do whatever they can, no matter how small or large the contribution, to fight for their rights and the rights of patrons. Activism is most commonly believed to be picketing, marching, and petitioning; things that are seen on the nightly news. But librarians can be activists on a much more simple level. By becoming a member of every organization in their particular field, reading as much related material as possible, and simply being aware of what is going on in our profession, librarians can become a much more powerful group of professionals.

Public libraries place importance on information technology for the delivery of quality services. One aspect of quality services is knowing the usage in the electronic information resources (EIRs) among the users. This study was carried out to investigate the use of the EIRs at the Penang Public Library Corporation (PPLC). The findings revealed that EIRs services provided by PPLC are being regularly used by the users. It was noted that the younger group relied more on the EIRs. The most preferred EIRs were Internet (51.9%) and OPAC (43.2%). The preference of Internet was higher among school students with 25% users and college students with 17.2% users, whereas preference of OPAC was higher among the professional group with 30% users. It was determined also that most of the users who used Internet were for information searching. For OPAC, they seemed more likely to use title search in searching library materials and they learned to use the OPAC by themselves. The usage of other EIRs were less popular with Electronic Journals (19.1%), Online databases (16.0%) and CD-ROMs (7.4%). It is recommended that PPLC must strive aggressively to promote the less popular EIRs that are provided but seldom used by the library users. PPLC also needs to improve its training programme in order to help users to enhance the use of EIRs.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, Univeristy of Arizona / In an effort to assist medical researchers and professionals in accessing information necessary for their work, the A1 Lab at the University of Arizona is investigating the use of a natural language processing (NLP) technique called noun phrasing. The goal of this research is to determine whether noun phrasing could be a viable technique to include in medical information retrieval applications. Four noun phrase generation tools were evaluated as to their ability to isolate noun phrases from medical journal abstracts. Tests were conducted using the National Cancer Institute's CANCERLIT database. The NLP tools evaluated were Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Chopper, The University of Arizona's Automatic Indexer, Lingsoft's NPtool, and The University of Arizona's AZ Noun Phraser. In addition, the National Library of Medicine's SPECIALIST Lexicon was incorporated into two versions of the AZ Noun Phraser to be evaluated against the other tools as well as a nonaugmented version of the AZ Noun Phraser. Using the metrics relative subject recall and precision, our results show that, with the exception of Chopper, the phrasing tools were fairly comparable in recall and precision. It was also shown that augmenting the AZ Noun Phraser by including the SPECIALIST Lexicon from the National Library of Medicine resulted in improved recall and precision.

Longer version of the paper published in the printed conference proceedings / Public libraries place importance on information technology for the delivery of quality services. One aspect of quality services is knowing the usage in the electronic information resources (EIRs) among the users. This study was carried out to investigate the use of the EIRs at the Penang Public Library Corporation (PPLC). The findings revealed that EIRs services provided by PPLC are being regularly used by the users. It was noted that the younger group relied more on the EIRs. The most preferred EIRs were Internet (51.9%) and OPAC (43.2%). The preference of Internet was higher among school students with 25% users and college students with 17.2% users, whereas preference of OPAC was higher among the professional group with 30% users. It was determined also that most of the users who used Internet were for information searching. For OPAC, they seemed more likely to use title search in searching library materials and they learned to use the OPAC by themselves. The usage of other EIRs were less popular with Electronic Journals (19.1%), Online databases (16.0%) and CD-ROMs (7.4%). It is recommended that PPLC must strive aggressively to promote the less popular EIRs that are provided but seldom used by the library users. PPLC also needs to improve its training programme in order to help users to enhance the use of EIRs.

This paper describes an Afghanistan digital library initiative of building an Integrated Library System (ILS) for Afghanistan universities and colleges based on open source software. As one of the goals of the Afghan eQuality Digital Libraries Alliance, the authors applied systems analysis approach, evaluated different open source ILS, and customized the selected software to accommodate users' needs. Improvements include Arabic/Persian language support, user interface changes, call number label printing and new ISBN-13 support. To our knowledge, the ILS is the first big academic libraries in the the world running on open source software.