Improved Access to Information: Portals, Content Selection, and Digital Information

Connect patrons with the information they seek with these promising electronic tools!

Improved Access to Information: Portals, Content Selection, and Digital Information focuses on how you can improve access to information using electronic reference resources. This book features nine of America’s leading library administrators who give their perspectives, observations, and stipulations on how to meet the research needs of patrons in a digital age. This timely resource is relevant to senior library administrators in the process of developing electronic tools and services.

Improved Access to Information addresses the current library issue of how to utilize scarce resources to provide an ever-increasing amount of electronic information to an ever-expanding user base. The use of portals and their advantages are discussed in detail and from the different perspectives of information providers and users. Several authors offer instructive graphs, tables, and other illustrations to emphasize their findings.

In Improved Access to Information, you’ll learn more about:

• the variety of groups that libraries serve
• cooperative collection development
• the balance of print and electronic resources
• the evolvement of collection development in libraries to the concept of knowledge development
• the implementation of portals in research libraries
• the factors influencing the selection of electronic resources
• digitizing unique collections for preservation and improved access

The product of the 2003 University of Oklahoma Libraries annual conference, Improved Access to Information offers library administrators new approaches for overcoming the proliferation of electronic information and making it readily available to users. This book will help you provide essential research services to your users and secure your patron base.

Dean of the University Libraries at the University of Oklahoma, is an internationally recognized leader and consultant in the library administration and management field. Dean Lee is a past member of the Board of Directors, Association of Research Libraries, the ARL Office of Management Services Advisory Committee, and the Council for the American Library Association. His works include The Impact of Rising Costs of Serials and Monographs on Library Services and Programs; Library Material Costs and Access to Information; Budgets for Acquisitions: Strategies for Serials, Monographs, and Electronic Formats; Vendor Evaluation and Acquisition Budgets; The Role and Future of Special Collections in Research Libraries; Declining Acquisitions Budgets; Access, Ownership, and Resource Sharing; and Electronic Resources and Collection Development, He is Editor of the Journal of Library Administration