This paper describes the introduction and integration of the organization of electronic resources into the library and information science curriculum. The description is based upon the experience of the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill although it is representative of practices at other schools. It identifies courses throughout the curriculum which have the organization of electronic resources as a major focus, those with some coverage, and courses with a peripheral relationship to the topic. It also identifies other means by which the topic can be included in a student’s program.
This article reports on five separate studies designed for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to develop and test methodologies for evaluating the products of large databases. The methodologies were tested on literatures of the medical behavioral sciences (MBS). One of these studies examined how well NLM covered MBS monographic literature using CATLINE and OCLC. Another examined MBS journal and serial literature coverage in MEDLINE and other MBS-related databases available through DIALOG. These two studies used 1010 items derived from the reference lists of sixty-one journals, and tested for gaps and overlaps in coverage in the various databases. A third study examined the quality of the indexing NLM provides to MBS literatures and developed a measure of indexing as a system component. The final two studies explored how well MEDLINE retrieved documents on topics submitted by MBS professionals and how online searchers viewed MEDLINE (and other systems and databases) in handling MBS topics. The five studies yielded both broad research outcomes and specific recommendations to NLM.
Catalo$ng is one of the most timeconsuming tasks per{brmed in libraries. It is not surprising then that, since the introduction of'computers into library operations, there have been numerous attempts to automate the cataloging process. The early use of'computeri to create catalog records that were used most often to produce cards fbr card catalogs has been largely supplanted by the creation ofbibliographic records that are used to populate online catalogs. The most challenging aspect ol'cataloging is to determine the content of the bibliographic record rather than to create the record itsel{. This is where research in expert systems and related areas plays an important role.
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