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To provide librarians with a better understanding of what makes online content truly accessible and to increase awareness of the current common accessibility issues found in library web sites and vendor supplied electronic resources.

A through and in-depth literature review takes a look at the web accessibility problems historically found in library web sites. It then briefly explains the basics of web accessibility and delves more deeply into structural content access, which is the hallmark of true accessibility. The simple mechanics as well as the pros and cons of traditional methods of providing keyboard access to web content is discussed. The chapter then provides a gentle introduction to HTML5 and the Web Accessibility Initiative-Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA), current use, techniques for use, and application opportunities. The chapter also provides the research results of a broad examination of the basic structural accessibility state of many current database providers.

The research shows that the accessibility of library web sites is improving; however many library vendor database products still have significant accessibility problems.

Through the practical accessibility explanations, the chapter points out the ways librarians can use this knowledge to work with users and communicate with product providers regarding the accessibility of library resources.

This chapter provides a rich resource for understanding and implementing web accessibility, particularly as it applies to keyboard navigation and the new accessibility features in HTML5 and WAI-ARIA.

Academic libraries have been moving toward a culture of assessment by curating data and making future decisions based on these data. Managing all of the data collection can be a cumbersome task with heavy time commitments. For technical services departments, this culture shift presents new challenges for management of data, job descriptions, and workflows or procedures. Pennsylvania College of Technology's Madigan Library welcomes these challenges by recognizing the goals of its institution to create critical thinking students of the twenty-first century by assessing the effectiveness of library resources, especially ones that can be accessed in a digital format. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the various quantitative and qualitative methods a library can incorporate to collect data of e-resources, organize that data into comprehensible formats, and share results and make recommendations for future collections in an ongoing, holistic assessment format. Following the college's curriculum goals, this chapter will show how the Madigan Library collects data and assesses e-resources, online teaching resources, acquisitions workflows, and other aspects of the library with ongoing assessment and data collection. Managing data and making decisions within these departments are discussed.

When a new student enrolls in his/her first class, the ELRC emails a welcome letter outlining the services and resources available to NCU students. The welcome letter includes information on how to access the virtual library site and how to contact a reference librarian. A new student receives the link to the ELRC after establishing a user name and password. The ELRC produces a Learning Resources Handbook, available on the website or in hardcopy upon request. The manual outlines policies and procedures, and introduces resources available through the ELRC. The website provides research tips and how-to pages on database use, Internet searching, research guides, links to online catalogs, general reference tools, Dissertation Center, and FAQs. Additional online tutorials cover study skills and information for students new to the Internet. The Dissertation Center includes strategies on dissertation research, formatting guides, writing resources, dissertation tutorials, and links to other dissertation resources. Course-related subject guides provide links to resources of interest to those enrolled in a particular course. Mentors or students may suggest sites through “Add-a-Resource,” an online form. Learner Affairs and the ELRC provide step-by-step orientation to the web site via telephone to students requesting assistance.

The author takes a comprehensive look at the accessibility of e-resources for all people, including those with disabilities, in the context of collection development (CD).

Employing a combination of research methodologies — policy analysis, content analysis, and phone survey—the author explores the extent to which the needs of people with disabilities are considered.

Several professional library organizations recommend accessibility-sensitive selection and procurement procedures. However, not all students enrolled in library school programs might learn about the issue. Few books on the subject cover the issue adequately. Nationwide, CD policies requiring conformance to accessibility standards are the exception; and when librarians meet to make decisions about the selection of specific e-resources, the needs of people with disabilities are rarely on their radar screens.

Researchers conducting similar surveys in the future might want to not only select a statistically more representative sample of academic libraries but also widen their focus and include both accessibility and usability in their investigations.

Textbook authors and course instructors in the area of CD need to address accessibility and usability. Librarians need to raise the issue with database and e-book vendors during license negotiations.

The acquisition of e-resources designed to be accessible and usable for all will enable people with disabilities to participate more fully in our information-driven society.

The data collected provide for a broad discussion of the extent to which the needs of people with disabilities are considered in connection with CD.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.