The paper presents the findings of a small-scale study undertaken at a UK university. The purpose of the research was to investigate the perceived impact and value of the Academic Library Liaison service at the university. This was considered to be a critical issue of concern, in the light of drivers threatening the UK higher education library sector to de-professionalise -or worse, remove -such services. A mixed methods approach was adopted, combining an online questionnaire disseminated to academic staff, resulting in 29 responses from three academic departments, and in-depth interviews with eight members of academic staff. The results indicate that although academic staff do value the service provided by Academic Liaison Librarians (ALLs), there is scope to increase awareness of the range of services on offer. The study also demonstrates that academic staff prioritise the contribution that ALLs can make through the possession of in-depth subject knowledge, IT skills and well-developed communication skills, and through the provision of advice on copyright matters and assistance with institutional repositories. This holds implications for curriculum design on the part of LIS educators.

Ruth Stubbings and Ginny Franklin, Loughborough University AbstractFor over twenty years libraries in Higher Education have been attempting to enhance students' information literacy skills through the teaching of best practice in literature searching. Content of information literacy courses often include the mechanics of how databases work, and more importantly, the higher-level thinking skills, such as problem solving and critical evaluation, underpinning the research process. This paper looks at the work in the development of information literacy competencies run by the academic library at Loughborough University in the UK. This study, which was undertaken by the library at Loughborough University, focuses on the impact of its information literacy programmes, and in particular, it examines the mixed success brought about by the embedding of information literacy education into subject modules. Three main strategies are presented in this paper to fully contextualize the outcome of such provision and promote collaboration between library and faculty staff. Examples here include the attempts made by library staff to encourage the integration of information literacy into the curriculum through the use of learning outcomes, through the delivery of Personal Development Portfolio (PDP) practices, and the employment of preventive strategies against plagiarism.

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It is doubtless the concern of many teachers of general chemistry how to attack the problem of iron and steel. T o neglect the problem means a chance lost to r&m numerous chemical principles and a n opportunity wasted to put into w e knowledge pra~iously studied. To organize the material suitable to the purpose has been the writer's difficulty. The school texb are of necessity limited in their discussions. Most of the technical works are too difficult for the beginner and the popular ones tend to submerge the chemistry in details of construction, etc. The @per represents a n effort to ptlt into brief s@ce the work of considerable reading, obsemtion of factories, and senreral years of experience in attempting to teach the topic to boys in a technical high school.