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Selection is the heart of good library collection building. This article reviews a variety of print and online sources of materials in an attempt to acquaint librarians with new selection tools. Traditional print sources, such as publisher’s catalogues and monthly magazines, are discussed as part of the larger attempt to locate both core and specialized materials. Private and association online sites are reviewed. In addition, three sites for literature that are freely available in digital format are reviewed for their content. While these sources represent only a sampling from the plethora of those available, the scope of these reviewed sources may encourage new ways of thinking about locating relevant materials efficiently.

Literacy is a global problem that concerns librarians and educators. This article provides resources for individuals who want to develop literacy projects. It comprises many descriptions of literacy organizations, grant sources, and book aid groups, both global and local. Many resources are available for literacy project developers. Those in this article will stimulate project developer’s thinking and planning regardless of country.

The paper seeks to provide an overview of the Sofia 2006: Globalization, Digitization, Access and Preservation of Cultural Heritage Conference held in Bulgaria, in November 2006.

The paper presents a description of the environment and social setting of the conference together with a selection from the conference content and comments regarding the future of the conference.

This was the largest Globenet conference to date, with participants from more than 30 nations.

This brief conference report will be of value to library and information professionals worldwide.

Proposes encouraging librarians to be more informed about the value of collection evaluations.

Three examples of collection evaluation methods (user‐centered evaluation, physical assessment, and specific subject support) are explored.

Many strategies are available for evaluating collections, regardless of the kind of library or size of the collection. Evaluation allows librarians a more thorough knowledge of what already exists, what may be needed, and whether collection development goals are being achieved.

Methods of meaningful collection evaluation are shared so that librarians may create an evaluation that will provide useful information to them in their library setting. Implications for successful future collection management, financial resource management, and effective format selection are discussed.

Discussion that includes the “assessment of specific subject support” and “assessing and building specific subject collections” encourages librarians to recognize their major and minor collections, creatively assess those collection areas, and involve techniques or individuals who might guide them to specific subject materials.

This conceptual paper aims to discuss a few concerns in the title categories of literacy, aliteracy, and lifelong learning and illuminates the scholarly concern about a global population increase of people who either are unable to read or are uninterested in reading.

The juxtaposition of discussion about the three title categories and conclusions excerpted from the literature about these categories shows the predicament of the person today who is ill‐prepared in basic literacy. The predicament includes the individual's lack of ability to read, write, or reason; but also their limited capacity for successfully engaging technology or future lifelong learning. A discussion of marginalized populations relates how marginalized groups are unable to participate fully in their societies. Regardless of economic, gender, religious, or other reasons for group marginalization, members of these groups often suffer from illiteracy as well.

It is concluded that librarians who encourage development of reading and writing can make significant contributions to the profession, local cultures, and the global community.

This paper focuses on the immediate and long‐term problem of illiteracy. It is intended to motivate librarians across the globe by providing information about the effects of illiteracy on individuals or marginalized groups.

The purpose of this paper is to offrer a reflective look at PASCAL (Preservation and Access Service Center for Colorado Academic Libraries) in the larger context of off‐site storage facilities and practices

The article includes an analysis based on five key points of cooperative repository projects that were made by Vattulainen. The five points are applied to this case study of PASCAL, a shared collaborative off‐site storage facility.

Concerns are discussed in the five key areas: Concept of ownership, Provision of buildings, Management of repositories, Relegation decisions and User needs,

This article contributes a case study to the discussion of collaborative off‐site storage, with implications for both the immediate region and for larger networked systems that may exist in the future.

Although libraries provide quiet and well‐equipped places for students to seek and use information, the trend librarians are seeing is a decline in the number of people coming to the library. In contrast, they are seeing a dramatic increase in the use of remotely accessed research databases. From these two trends emerges the concept of disintermediation, where library users seek and retrieve information without the assistance of the librarian, and the realization that librarians are no longer present when users need help in developing successful search strategies and evaluating the information they find. Librarians are not present at that teachable moment. To overcome the effects of disintermediation, librarians need to evaluate their services and recreate their instructional strategies in innovative ways so that they are available to the users of information wherever those users are.

To guide students' thinking about joining professional associations.

A few representative professional organizations are explored. Aspects such as organizational structure, history, culture, professional focus, and size are discussed.

Many more professional associations exist and encourage student participation than most students are aware of when they enter the profession.

Students can compare professional associations to find those most suited to their professional interests. These may not be the most local or well known national organizations.

This is an attempt to help students recognize that professional organizations exist regardless of their niche interest, and despite the larger and more general associations that may be given local emphasis.

This paper notes that the rapid rate of demographic change in the United States of America population means that librarians must integrate Spanish language materials into their collections now if they have not already done so. It attempts to compile a current collection of high quality resources that will assist librarians in their Spanish language collection building. The paper takes an inclusive perspective and no distinction is made between Chicano, Puerto Rican, Filipino, and other geographic or cultural sub‐groups of Spanish speakers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the overall quality of the Louisville Free Public Library's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender collection.

The study implements an inductive check‐list method. Where other check‐lists compare a list to the collection, ignoring the number of items which do not appear on the list, an inductive method takes a sample of the entire collection, and compares it with several evaluative lists, demonstrating what percentage of the collection is not considered “desirable” by common evaluative lists.

The results found that 31.9 percent of the LFPL's GLBT collection can be found in the evaluative lists used. Previous inductive evaluations suggest that this number indicates a quality core GLBT collection.

A sample collection was chosen using GLBT‐related subject headings; however, evidence shows that a portion of the actual GLBT collection (perhaps as much as 37.5 percent) lack appropriate subject access control. This results in a potentially flawed sample.

This study provides public librarians with a standard by which they can evaluate their GLBT collections and their library's attempt to meet the needs of a frequently underrepresented minority.

Very few inductive evaluations have been published, and almost none has been published studying GLBT collections. The paper attempts to fill that gap, and provide a deeper standard by which GLBT collections can be evaluated.