Information Technology and Libraries articles from March 1998

Information Technology and Libraries archives from March 1998

Editorial: Inhaling the Spore
March 1, 1998... Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler's history of the enigmatic Museum of Jurassic Technology,(1) begins with the strange history of Megaloponera foetens, an unusually large Cameroonian stink ant that is known both for its ability...

Library Consortia and Information Technology: The Past, the Present, the Promise
March 1, 1998... Looking Backward As the year 2000 rapidly approaches (much to the terror of many information technologists still confronting the "Millennium Problem"), more and more is being written about the promise and potential problems of the...

The Washington Research Library Consortium: A Real Organization for a Virtual Library
March 1, 1998... Library consortia can be organized according to a variety of models ranging from loosely affiliated "buying clubs" to tightly integrated virtual or actual organizations. One of the most closely integrated consortia in the United States is the...

Testing Common Assumptions about Resource Sharing
March 1, 1998... Introduction For the past eighteen years I have been involved with one of the more established and successful resource-sharing projects. Member institutions of the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO), through the use of...

Megasystem Collaboration: Cross-Continent Consortial Cooperation
March 1, 1998... Libraries in the late twentieth century are beset and besieged by challenges never before encountered. The demands for their services are overwhelming; their financial requirements staggering; their transitions to technology daunting....

Hanging Together to Avoid Hanging Separately: Opportunities for Academic Libraries and Consortia
March 1, 1998... We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.--Benjamin Franklin A Short History of an Important Development Perhaps the most important development for academic libraries during the current decade has been the move...

Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information
March 1, 1998... Publishers today increasingly act globally to provide electronic information, and it is incumbent upon libraries to act globally to express their market positions on the pricing and other terms and conditions related to the purchase of that...

The Internet Unplugged.
March 1, 1998... The Internet Unplugged by Michael Banks. Wilson, Conn.: Pemberton Press, 1997. 251p. $29.95 (ISBN 0-910965-24-2). Tools designed for the typical Internet user have stabilized to the point where a book on the subject is now useful for more...