Information Practice in Science and Technology

Book excerpt: Examine the vital issues facing sci-tech libraries in today's economic and technological climate! This book addresses current challenges and changes in science and technology libraries—and shows how librarians are handling them in difficult financial times. It examines issues related to closing and merging libraries, online collections maintenance and costs, assistance/outreach geared toward specific groups of library patrons, and the gathering of usage statistics in the electronic environment. You'll also find specific descriptions—and a general overview—of new technologies and case studies of the impact of new technologies on sci-tech library management. Handy tables and figures make the information easy to access and understand. Presenting a wide variety of problems and solutions, Information Practice in Science and Technology will help you understand the needs of users regarding current information technologies and how to meet them. From the editor: “Among the critical challenges facing sci-tech libraries (and actually all libraries) are the need to perform detailed collection assessment and evaluation, particularly in regard to e-resource collections; the need to examine and provide appropriate public services; and the need to develop strategies for the adoption of new information technologies. This book addresses these key issues and attempts to provide both perspective and insight into these problems.” Information Practice in Science and Technology examines: how merging academic departmental libraries can both improve services and smooth the transition to increased use of digital information the process of developing, managing, and providing access to an electronic collection—a case study from the University of Notre Dame, with special attention paid to licensing and publisher agreements how a limited Web interface can be enhanced and become a digital portal to a library's print collection—a case study from the Grainger Engineering Library at the University of Illinois how libraries can support academic faculty research in cross-disciplinary subject areas how to address the specialized subject area information needs of meteorologists and geologists outreach methods that the University of California uses to better connect with library patrons and demonstrate the services that the library offers Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)—the new technology for archiving and linking electronic information how to gather and benefit from usage statistics, with attention to electronic databases, statistics gathered from public library terminals, and transaction log usage statistics for electronic reserves the proposals to provide all government documents through an electronic distribution system—and what that will mean to sci-tech libraries