Digital Commons Network^™

Thinking About Linking, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

LINKING TO FULL TEXT THROUGH link resolver technology and the OpenURL standard has made electronic journals a cornerstone of library collections. Users expect that full text will always be a click or two away and it brings the library catalog, indexing and abstracting databases, and full text into an integrated system. The impact is great as major and smaller players embrace linking to all types of digital materials.

Moving History Forward, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

CURRENT EVENTS, CURRENT awareness, and faster news mean the immediate present often dominates our worldview. But for many researchers, history informs the latest hot topic.

Visualizing Search, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

EXPECT MORE SEARCH SYSTEMS to incorporate visualization and other sophisticated search and display techniques. They not only give a system a distinctive look, they also help users get deeper into results and stimulate thinking about search strategies. Instruction librarians can use these tools to move students and researchers beyond just plain search and retrieval.

Some traditional systems are now adopting new search tools that go beyond text results. They incorporate clustering and visualization into search display that sidesteps long lists of document titles and the tendency of users to select just from the first ten results and stop there. These …

Building Bridges, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

MY CAREER AS A LIBRARIAN, LJ columnist, researcher, and teacher has been about building bridges--bridges between librarians and publishers, students and knowledge, and research and practice--which is probably why I was selected to deliver the NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture. Established in 1965, the lecture commemorates NFAIS founder G. Miles Conrad and honors people who have made significant contributions to information science (www.nfais.org). It isn't often that a librarian gets such acknowledgment from the information industry.

The work of librarians and information industry professionals is about connecting users to the information they need. …

The Value Of The Container, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT ELECtronic journals? That was the question raised by Michael Gorman, the outspoken president of the American Library Association (ALA), at a session on "Future of Libraries" at the recent Online Information Meeting in London. "What we want is articles," said Gorman, calling the idea of putting them together in things called journals "irrelevant."

"We don't need e-journals," said the controversial Gorman. Articles should be put together by "our interests, not the editor's." The real problem, according to Gorman, is that there is no viable economic model. "Buying all articles [including those no one reads] is …