Journal of Web Librarianship
Volume 1
Number 2
2007
EDITORIAL
What’s in a Name?
Jody Condit Fagan
SOCIAL EYES
Libraries’ Place in Virtual Social Networks
Brian S. Mathews
GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
The National Library of Jamaica’s NLJdigital Project
Sarah Beasley and Candice Kail
ARTICLES
Developing Collections of Web-Published Materials
Inga K. Hsieh, Kathleen R. Murray, and Cathy
Nelson Hartman
Librarians and archivists face challenges when adapting traditional
collection development practices to meet the unique characteristics of
web-published materials. Likewise, preservation activities for web-published
materials must be undertaken at the outset of collection development lest they
be lost forever. Standards and best practices for web-collection development
are still emerging, and librarians are struggling with the often daunting
financial, staffing, and infrastructure challenges posed by collecting and
preserving these materials. The results of a needs assessment with librarians,
information providers, and academic researchers informed the identification of
key collection development activities for web-published materials. This
research was conducted as part of the Web-at-Risk project, a collaborative
effort of the
KEYWORDS: Web archives, digital archives, web collections, collection development, web preservation, digital preservation
The Availability of Faculty Publication Databases from Library Web Pages
Barbara
A. Blummer
Faculty publication databases or author bibliographies offer libraries
an opportunity to provide services to users. Initially these databases remained
initiatives of special libraries in the health-sciences fields. Librarians used
the publication information derived from these databases to compile lists for
annual reports. However, the advent of new technologies, especially the web,
prompted numerous libraries to develop faculty publication databases for their
institutions. The author conducted a survey of various listservs
to discover the history and development of these databases. The results
illustrate the popularity of web-based faculty publication databases. The
motivation for their creation varied, but most respondents emphasized the
desire to highlight the research activities of their institutions. In addition,
the content of materials included in the databases and the definition of
faculty also varied, depending on the type of library. Librarians reported a
wide range of software employed in the development of these databases
highlighting their creation by librarians with various levels of programming
skills. Moreover, additional features included in these projects underscore the
potential for librarians to provide added value from this service. Finally,
while institutional repositories seemingly present similar content, publication
databases differ in their focus on a citation format that offers a solution to
items without copyright permission for full text accessibility.
KEYWORDS: Faculty, author,
publication lists, bibliography, institutional repositories, web pages
Academic Library Websites: Balancing University Guidelines with User Needs
Emmett Lombard and
Lesley A. Hite
This article considers two components identified as essential to
effective academic library websites — satisfaction of user needs and adherence
to university website guidelines — and how they sometimes contradict one
another. A literature review is provided, followed by results of a survey the
author created and distributed that measures a librarian’s perception of his/
her school’s web administration scenario. The author concludes with suggestions
for balancing university web guidelines and user satisfaction.
KEYWORDS: Web administration, university guidelines, page templates, user satisfaction, academic libraries, survey, Likert Scale
COMMUNICATIONS
A Global Library in a Local Society —
Susanne Buus-Pedersen
REVIEWS
Professional
Phillip M. Edwards, Review Editor