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The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of first-year undergraduates' (n = 5,368) use of academic library resources in their first year on their degree completion or continued enrollment after four years of study. Propensity score matching techniques were used to construct treatment (library users) and control (library nonusers) groups with similar background characteristics and college experiences. The results suggest that using the library at least one time in the first year of enrollment significantly increased the odds that students would graduate in four years or remain enrolled after four years as opposed to withdrawing from the university. First-year students who used electronic resources and books also had significantly improved odds of graduation over withdrawing, while students who used electronic books and took a library instruction course had significantly improved odds of remaining enrolled over withdrawing.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether there are relationships between first-year college students' use of academic libraries and four academic outcomes: academic engagement, engagement in scholarly activities, academic skills development, and grade point average. The results of regression analyses suggest students' use of books (collection loans, e-books, and interlibrary loans) and web-based services (database, journal, and library website logins) had the most positive and significant relationships with academic outcomes. Students' use of reference services was positively associated with their academic engagement and academic skills, while enrollment in library courses was positively associated with grade point averages.

Blogs are a hot topic in academia. A search on "blog" in the "Chronicle of Education's" Web site returns nearly two hundred articles, covering such topics as the dangers an impolitic blog can do to an institution's leaders (Read, 2006) or the blogger's career (Tribble, 2005) and the mutual use of blogs by instructors to lambaste students (Lipka, 2006) and vice versa (Bartlett, 2005). Just as journalists think of blogging as a form of journalism (Grossman, 2004) and young women view blogs as a form of diary (Gumbrecht, Nardi, Schiano, and Swartz, 2004), the archives of the "Chronicle of Higher Education" show that many people in academia view--and judge--blogs as forms of academic production or a vehicle for scholars to become public intellectuals. In this article, the authors discuss the use of blogs in higher education, including how students and instructors use blogs, the value of blogs in this setting, and privacy and security implications. They conclude with information on how the University of Minnesota library system has implemented a blogging program called UThink to enhance its services. (Contains 1 table.)

Describes CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts that are available on the Web and explains how librarians can use them to make Web pages more interactive. Topics include CGI security; Perl scripts; UNIX; and HTML. (LRW)