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Internet resources for children's and young adult library services are just now coming into their own. This is not surprising: Though over one-third of all public library patrons are under [...]

The Censors Had Their Moment. . . It's been a long, cold winter: snowstorms, floods, train wrecks, and then the Telecommunications Act. When we weren't shoveling three feet of new [...]

When I put out an online call for information about grants and the internet, Theodore Allan of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Libraries responded, 'About two years ago I [...]

Not long before she died, my Grandma Jennie proudly introduced me to her own new recipe: gefilte chicken, a dish modeled on gefilte fish. It was delicious--smooth, lightly seasoned ovals [...]

A home page sitting on an individual Internet account can be a low-cost entry point for providing an attractive, personalized menu that staff and public can access either at the [...]

Welcome to the first installment in American Libraries'new column on how librarians are using and creating resources on the internet. Perhaps some background is in order to explain who I […]

There's a saying from the early days on the net: 'You own your own words.' You can't say AL=LJ with any seriousness (Francine Fialkoff, 'The 'Annoyed Librarian' Strikes Again,' Editorial, [...]

Blogging is turning information into a conversation, and contributing to this are hundreds of personal and organizational library blogs (what I call the 'biblioblogosphere'), ranging from Mary Minow's practical-minded LibraryLaw [...]

I find it deliciously ironic that in this incredibly tough budget year, lavish corporate enterprises such as WorldCom and Enron collapsed, while the outfit I work for--the little old Librarians' [...]

This is my last column as 'the' Internet Librarian. I decided a few months ago that it was time to move on. It's not that I'm unhappy (I'm not) or [...]

Bummed out by CIPA, e-rate, busted budgets, or patrons fighting over computers? Refresh your appreciation for the amazing electronic world with these stories in response to my online request for [...]

Full disclosure: I'm deeply involved in the project I'm going to discuss in this column. The bad news is that this involvement no doubt colors my objectivity. The good news [...]

'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,' Samuel Johnson First of all, I'm a hawk. I believe we should be in Afghanistan, I'd like to see bin Laden oh, [...]

This month's column was prompted in part by a question posed to me by a Gentle Reader whose library has a very special patron who has copied the library's Web [...]

Despite the filtering requirements added by the Children's Internet Protection Act, librarians who have previously filed for the e-rate should continue to do so (unless they're completely burned out on [...]

That line about 'Amazons with laptops' from Blaise Cronin's article is pretty cool. If it seems to pop up out of nowhere, floating weirdly among the rest of his stumbling [...]

I almost never review books in this column--a wry irony for a columnist for American Libraries. But unless you completely outsource training or have dedicated staff to provide it, for [...]

The response of librarians to September 11 has been the ultimate rebuke to these terrible events. There is nothing good about what happened. But you can be very proud to [...]

The rapid onset of a near-ubiquitous online environment has led librarians to ask important questions, such as how we support the information have-nots of an informated society with our increasingly […]

Shortly before going on vacation, I went to library discussion lists Publib and Web41ib and posted a quick question about offering e-mail to patrons. Out of nearly 70 responses from […]

With respect to collection development, many of us are straddling two worlds. We still park in front of the television, highlighter in hand, to mark up the latest review magazine; [...]

Two years ago I had the privilege of interviewing Marvin Scilken for a column ('Desperately Seeking Marvin,' June 1997, p. 116). Among his many claims to fame, Marvin, during and [...]

The 1998 NCLIS report on public libraries and the Internet (available at www.nclis.gov/what/survey98.pdf) says 'only a third' of all public libraries have the technology necessary for graphics, sound, and video. [...]

Last month's column discussed some methods for allocating time at Internet workstations, from sign-up sheets to special software that manages time control to cataloging computers as if they were books. […]

The question is not whether there is good medical information on the Internet, but how to winnow it from the vast acres of chaff blowing across the digital prairies. One [...]

This summer a post about interlibrary loan on NYLINE, the Internet discussion list for New York State librarians, caught my eye. The Ramapo Catskills Library System (RCLS), a public library […]

You may think catalog cards are a thing of the past. However, when I put out an online call for favorite digital tools, no fewer than three people wrote to [...]

'Acronym Soup' (Sung to 'Three Little Maids from School' from The Mikado) By Thomas Dowling (digital muckety-muck at Ohiolink and frequent poster to Web4Lib) Three-letter acronyms can be Very confusing [...]

According to the 1997 Survey of Public Libraries and the Internet, the good news is that over 70% of public libraries in the United States were connected to the Internet [...]

I clicked on a link in a Web-based OPAC, and seconds later heard Mario Savio's voice through my computer's speakers as he addressed a 20th-anniversary rally commemorating the beginning of [...]

Do you meet as a group, or do you use e-mail to communicate one-on-one? These two prevailing types of Net-based continuing education (CE) - also called synchronous and asynchronous - [...]

Our frustration with the telecommunications discounts is that we're investing a lot of labor in an unknown. We don't know if and when we'll actually get the discounts, confusion still […]

My editor warned me not to make this too schmaltzy, but he needn't have worried. Within minutes after I put out an online call for examples of how the Internet [...]

Compared to competing 'digital library' projects from the computer-science community, the Everglades Digital Library (EDL) is humble. It doesn't have terabytes of data or glitzy Java tools bouncing across an [...]

Cyber Kids, a program for children and the Internet at the Canton (Mich.) Public Library, is the kind of success story that reminds us why we became librarians in the […]

Internet Scout, a project staffed by librarians and dedicated to electronic reader's advisory services (located at http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/), recently received a $3-million grant from the National Science Foundation. What are we […]

A funny thing happened on my way to interview Marvin Scilken, an articulate, urbane retired librarian and editor of the ever-useful Unabashed Librarian, (subtitled "The 'How I Run My Library […]

There's been plenty of hullabaloo lately surrounding Internet filtering software packages. These programs, designed to block access to specific Web sites, have been touted as plug 'n' play panaceas for [...]

The bad news is the same as the good news: Every day more and more people are connecting to the Internet. According to January 1997 estimates, there are 57 million […]

Increased cataloging requirements, changing URLs, and conflicting and changing cataloging standards make many of us wary of cataloging Internet resources (including paper-based resources with Internet equivalents). However, the changing information […]

I know they probably didn't teach you this in library school, but vendor relations are the most important part of collection development; and this is even more true when you [...]

On my list of resolutions for this new year is to read more library-oriented electronic journals. These are terrific tools for keeping our brains well-oiled and up to snuff with [...]

Girding your loins THE INTERNET ADVOCATE http://silver.ucs.indiana.edu/ ~ lchampel/netadv.htm "First, learn the Internet" is the advice I heard most often from school library media specialists who successfully introduced the Internet […]

For all but the most technically adept librarians, attempting to select databases or services for library use that comply with the Z39.50 ANSI standard for information retrieval is a lot [...]

Z39.50: Beyond Your Wildest Dreams Z39.50 sounds, well, dull. It's a computer protocol and an ANSI standard. But sit up and take notice. Z39.50 makes possible two things we librarians […]

Are you already scrambling to keep up with developments related to the Internet? Hold on to your hat: Java is here. Java isn't just another pretty interface; it's a harbinger [...]