Features of the Month

Administered by the Business Reference and Services Section of the Reference and User Services Association, Emerald is sponsoring two grants, each worth $5,000. These grants will be awarded to two applicants seeking support in conducting research in business librarianship. Read this announcement for more details!

This book aims to give professionals involved in supporting and teaching PhD students an insight into the problems they face, so that they can better serve their information needs. Niels Ole Pors, Professor, Royal School of Library and Information Science, gives us his review.

Enormous technological advances are pushing the boundaries of the information landscape and providing information seekers with new ways to find and access information. This paper explains how the activities of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative contribute to improving the delivery of library information services. Examples of innovative strategies, programmes and activities designed to advocate for, inspire, and enable successful resource sharing are provided.

This paper discusses strategies for a new library employee seeking to deal with difficult people at work, when the difficult people are his/her own colleagues. It provides a description of several types of situations that may arise, and general strategies for dealing with them.

At a time when both university libraries and digital learning environments are fast evolving, this book offers an expert overview of the various factors, components, and processes involved within these technology-assisted learning and teaching environments.

Google+ is a new service that is already being looked at and used by librarians. This paper provides brief descriptions of the elements of Google+, as well as helpful tips on how to find other librarians, to gain the most potential out of this service.

This paper aims to provide quantitative and qualitative data on students' use of mobile devices and to consider the benefit of academic mobile library services to students

Do you know the next Instruction Section Ilene F. Rockman Instruction Publication winner? The Ilene F. Rockman Instruction Publication of the Year Award honours the late Dr Ilene Rockman, a nationally recognized leader in information literacy. The Rockman Award recognizes an outstanding article or book on instruction or information literacy in an academic library environment, published within the last two years.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are subjects that one rarely finds in information science literature. Being an Information Innovator is aimed at information professionals who may not have had much formal contact with literature on innovation, but are faced with the need for innovation in their organizations. As such it is a book that was long overdue and may yet become standard reading for all forward-looking information professionals.

Owing to the rapid pace of development and innovation in information technology, the dedicated electronic book (e-book) reader has become a new trend in reading. However, at present there is only a limited understanding of what factors drive user attitudes/willingness to use this new device for reading. This paper explores what factors drive users to use dedicated e-book readers for reading.

One of the hottest topics in today's libraries is patron-driven acquisition (PDA) of electronic books (e-books). PDA is a relatively recent move designed to meet immediate needs rather than predict future use by allowing users to trigger access to e-books from a corpus of titles selected by the library. This paper offers a balanced perspective of the popular PDA trend.

"Bedbugs love books". These words, written by Toronto Star columnist, Joe Fiorito, have many library staff and administrators shaking their heads in painful and knowing agreement. He continues, "I love the library. It is full of people writing and researching at the computers, wandering among the stacks, or seeking a relief from the hest. Many people take books home". And therein, of course, lies the problem regarding the transportation of these critters back to the library, in the books, or in the backpacks and bags we are carrying ...