College & Research Libraries
May 2008, Volume 69, No. 3
Abstracts
Every Library’s Nightmare? Digital Rights Management, Use Restrictions, and Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources
Kristin R. Eschenfelder
PDF version
This study explored use restrictions found in licensed scholarly resources from the fields of history/art history, engineering, and health sciences. The analysis developed a framework of use restrictions that distinguishes between soft restrictions—which discourage use—and hard restrictions—which strictly prevent use. Soft restrictions include: extent of use, obfuscation, omission, amalgamation, frustration, and warning. The study concludes that these soft restrictions are relatively common in licensed scholarly resources. Further, while hard restrictions are less common, they are not unknown. The study questions whether librarians should be doing more to challenge use restrictions.
Status of Approval Plans in College Libraries
Beth E. Jacoby
PDF version
The author surveyed college libraries in the United States to determine their use of approval plans as a method of acquiring printed books for their collections. Survey results indicate recent trends over a five-year period, including shelf-ready books, e-notifications, and virtual approval plans as well as impending use of approval plans for e-books. Findings show a correlation between the size of the library book budget and the likelihood of having an approval plan. The author also presents results from an informal survey of domestic approval plan vendors on the status of the scholarly monograph market and its effect on approval plan use. While the number of books acquired through approval plans may have decreased slightly, overall approval plan use in college libraries has not declined. The approval plan continues to evolve and is an effective, time-saving tool for librarians pressed for time in a rapidly changing digital world.
What’s in a Name? Using Card Sorting to Evaluate Branding in an Academic Library’s Web Site
Peter Hepburn and Krystal M. Lewis
PDF version
Libraries are pressed to effectively promote use of the tools they provide users as well as their role in creating, selecting, and purchasing them. Applying “brand names” generated within the library is one promotional strategy. Usability testing at one academic library demonstrated how the card sorting technique can be used to evaluate branding efforts. The study found that library users do not recognize or comprehend library brand names in the absence of a consistent approach to branding even if they do use the services that have been branded.
Adjusting to the Workplace: Transitions Faced by New Academic Librarians
Joanne Oud
PDF version
This article discusses the experiences of new academic librarians as they adjust to the workplace. In the process of organizational socialization, new employees face surprises and differences from their pre-existing expectations about the job. A survey of new librarians at Canadian university libraries was done to discover what these surprises were so that more effective training and orientation programs can be developed. Findings included several areas of high and low pre-existing knowledge and difference from expectation, including job skills and organizational culture. Implications for developing training programs are discussed.
Transition to Electronic Resources in Undergraduate Social Science Research: A Study of Honors Theses Bibliographies, 1999–2005
Leslie Kriebel and Leslie Lapham
PDF version
This citation analysis assesses use of print and electronic resources in advanced undergraduate research at Wellesley College. Using four years of social science honors theses bibliographies, the proportionate use of electronic versus print sources is determined. Consistent discipline-based patterns in resource use are identified to inform future instruction and digital collections policies. Findings reveal: (1) an explosion in use of nonperiodical, nonbook Web sources; (2) a rapid decline in the use of print journals; and (3) a persistent lack of use of e-books. The authors argue that greater emphasis on starting research with scholarly indexes and bibliographies is a fruitful corrective to recent overdependence on random Web searching and will also better ground students in solid research practices as transitions in the scholarly publishing world continue.