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In recent years, libraries have made efforts to create games, often for the purpose of information literacy instruction. Games can provide an interactive alternative to traditional instruction by introducing research tools and resources while also teaching problem solving skills within a collaborative learning environment. Despite the benefits, the limited resources of most libraries make it difficult to build games that appeal to a generation of students accustomed to games like World of Warcraft. It is a challenge to find a balance between the right format and the available skills and assets. The desire to create an engaging game within the confines of existing resources led the University of Alabama Libraries to create the Web-based alternate reality game Project Velius. Serving the research needs of faculty and more than 30,000 students, the University Libraries are a vital part of Alabama's oldest public university. University of Alabama librarians leveraged popular social media sites and applications, including Facebook and YouTube, along with the story-driven alternate reality game format, to build a game that would engage undergraduate students. The game's two main goals were to provide informal information literacy instruction and highlight important library resources, balanced with the desire to provide a fun and interesting game experience. In the creation and execution of Project Velius, the librarians-turned-game developers learned much about this new medium, including the complexity of writing a compelling story, the importance of precisely tracking player progress, and the need for an easily re-playable game. Looking forward, the successes and shortcomings of this initial project will guide the plans and, through this article, hopefully help colleagues understand some of the challenges and rewards. (Contains 4 figures.)

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries is exploring options for collaborative services and collection analysis for federal government publications in order to improve public access to those collections. The Collaborative Federal Depository Program has developed “Centers of Excellence” (COE), representing multiple complete collections of publications for each federal agency. Working together to create a distributed print retention program, southeastern depository libraries agreed to collect, maintain, and provide access to publications for specific government agencies. The authors discuss the development of the COE model and the expected impact of a regionally based distributed print archive for government documents, and provide an implementation case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, libraries have made efforts to create games, often for the purpose of information literacy instruction. Games can provide an interactive alternative to traditional instruction by introducing research tools and resources while also teaching problem solving skills within a collaborative learning environment. Despite the benefits, the limited resources of most libraries make it difficult to build games that appeal to a generation of students accustomed to games like World of Warcraft. It is a challenge to find a balance between the right format and the available skills and assets. The desire to create an engaging game within the confines of existing resources led the University of Alabama Libraries to create the Web-based alternate reality game Project Velius. Serving the research needs of faculty and more than 30,000 students, the University Libraries are a vital part of Alabama's oldest public university. University of Alabama librarians leveraged popular social media sites and applications, including Facebook and YouTube, along with the story-driven alternate reality game format, to build a game that would engage undergraduate students. The game's two main goals were to provide informal information literacy instruction and highlight important library resources, balanced with the desire to provide a fun and interesting game experience. In the creation and execution of Project Velius, the librarians-turned-game developers learned much about this new medium, including the complexity of writing a compelling story, the importance of precisely tracking player progress, and the need for an easily re-playable game. Looking forward, the successes and shortcomings of this initial project will guide the plans and, through this article, hopefully help colleagues understand some of the challenges and rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in federal government in the U.S. It says that Web 2.0 and social networking sites are used in government by bridging connection between the elected officials and their constituents. It mentions that the Web 2.0 technology is widely used in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign to gather support for Barack Obama. It adds that federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency entertain comments on their blogs and have Twitter accounts.

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including library collaboration, digital library collections, and using online social network websites Twitter and Facebook.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses articles on Japanese Latin American captives of World War II, intellectual property rights, and the government's role in marriage.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Thomas Adamich which describes how Pennsylvania depository librarians are using Facebook in managing traditional depository communication and collection management and another by Karen Munro and Jesse Silva on Web 2.0 and Docs 2.0.

The article discusses various social networking tools. It includes Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and MySpace. The author mentions that these tools have privacy policy and preferences. In addition, she presents the advantages and disadvantages of social networking services such as confusion between personal and professional lives and danger of intrusion to others' profiles. Reminders in using and joining social networking sites like the purpose of utilizing one or more services, are also included.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses topics featured in the issue including the Government Documents Roundtable, State and Local Documents Task Force initiative, and usage of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries disposition database.

The article presents an introduction to the Winter 2011 issue, highlighting its central focus on papers by government information students and citing contributions by Quaid Long, Nine Q. Rose, and Sarah Hughes.

The article discusses various topics published within the issue, including the importance of virtual communications for regional and selective depository libraries, the effectiveness of government document instruction to assess undergraduates for librarian information and the significance of treaty resources for promoting government information resources.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Vicki Tate on Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) archives, one by columnist Stephen Woods on his perspectives and tracing of statistical resources from print to web, and Rebecca Hyde on government calculators in Federal Documents Focus.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editors discuss new topics that appeared in the 2010 issue of "Documents to the People" (DttP), an illustration on the use of digital government information for research by Debbie Rabina and the cover photo taken by Sarah Ball.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses an article on Cloud Computing and Tech Watch by Amy West, a tribute to Margaret T. Lane by Barbara Miller, and a wrap-up of the Annual Conference.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editors discuss unitary executive theory by Becky Byrum and Cheryl Truesdell, improvement of federal government instruction by Marilyn Von Seggern and B. Jane Scales and rebuilding of documents collection by Rebecca Blakeley.

The article offers information on the changes on the journal "Documents to the People".

The article offers a look on the Web-at-Risk project to harvest and preserve born-digital government and political information. According to the author, the Web-at-Risk project is funded by a grant received from the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The purpose of the said project is to build tool that will allow librarians to capture and preserve Web-based government and political information. The project is comprised of programmers, developers, and curators. It points out that the role of Web-at-Risk curators is to develop collection plans and test the capture tools built by the Web-at-Risk team.