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A total of 1641 questionnaires were mailed in March 1990 to members of the US Medical Library Association and the European Association of Health Libraries and Librarians, requesting information on the status of automating the processing of serials and books. Of the 1641 questionnaires mailed, 626 (38%) valid responses were received for analysis. Depending on geographic area, between 37% and 46% of the medical libraries surveyed process all serial functions manually. A greater number of US libraries have automated all procedures for processing serials (11% as opposed to 9% in Canada and 8% in Europe). A greater proportion have automated some procedures (42% in Europe and 40% in both the US and Canada). Between 23% and 34% process all book functions manually. A greater proportion of Canadian libraries have automated all book functions (26% as opposed to 14% in the US and 13% in Europe). A greater proportion of European libraries have automated some book functions (58% as opposed to 47% in the US and 34% in Canada). Personal computers are used more often than the mainframe/minicomputers to process both serials and books. Not all libraries use the same system throughout for automating all library functions, and a number of libraries ‘mix and match’ multiple systems or use systems which are specific to a geographic location. The most frequently used systems on the personal computer and mainframe/minicomputer for processing serials and books are given by function within geographic location.

This paper aims to show how an illegal repository of literature, the Z-library, relates to and influences its users and how this relation is unique due to the illegal nature of the platform. The paper utilizes the idea of gamification to exemplify how to motivate users to contribute to a large shadow library in order to create the “world's largest e-book library,” sans “librarians.”

The study makes use of an ethnographic approach. It interrogates the functions of the website through intensive use—a close reading of sorts. The data provide a foundation for illustrating how illegal text repositories function at a surface level and how their design appeals to their user-base.

The paper provides a thorough and non-biased overview of how a “black open access” or “shadow library” site provides its users with pirated literature. It suggests that the lynchpin sustaining their functionality is a gamification of piracy designed to motivate a fragmented collective of individuals who work primarily for personal reward, rather than altruistic goals.

Due to the design of the study, the findings are not universal or applicable to all illegal repositories of text. Readers and researchers are encouraged to apply the concept introduced here to other cases.

This paper includes implication on the perception of literature piracy, how pirated literature is distributed and who performs the labor required to sustain illicit text repositories.

This paper provides a novel conceptual basis to study literature piracy.

The paper performs a thought experiment on the concept of a record based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and library system functions, and concludes that if we want to develop a functional bibliographic record we need to do it within the context of a flexible, functional library systems record structure. The article suggests a new way to look at the library systems record that would allow libraries to move forward in terms of technology but also in terms of serving library users.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how social media can be an effective tool for academic libraries to support their communities in the digital environment and relay information about their cultural functions.

This paper involves a literature review to discuss the implementation of academic libraries’ cultural functions through social media account. This paper also observes some academic libraries’ accounts that use social media to carry out their cultural functions.

Social media provides opportunities for academic libraries in performing and developing their cultural functions. Academic libraries already use social media to deliver and communicate their cultural functions. However, some challenges might arise and necessitate a review of the library’s resources and the skills of library professionals.

This paper fills the lack of empirical studies analyzing the implementation of academic libraries’ cultural functions through social media accounts and contributes to the literature about the cultural functions of libraries in the digital environment. This paper can help those academic libraries wanting to leverage, bring innovation and increase their cultural functions in the digital environment through their social media accounts.

The user interface, in broad terms, is the medium through which the user and the information come together. The types of searches a public access catalog (PAC) can perform are defined by the indexing strategy and retrieval software. The way the user's interest is communicated to the retrieval software and the way the results are communicated to the user is, by a more narrow definition, the interface software. Both the kinds of searches that can be performed by a variety of CD‐ROM PACs and how their workstations are used to accomplish the searches are considered.

This article follows on an investigation conducted by the Unit for Library and Information Research of the Human Sciences Research Council in 1981 for the Department of National Education. The article is limited to a consideration of the aim and functions of national library services. Matters such as the organisation and management of these services, the pros and cons of centralisation and decentralisation in particular circumstances, bringing services into line with modern demands, problem areas in existing services, the raison d'être of national library and information advisory councils alongside the management councils of national library services, legislation of these services, etc. have been excluded from the discussion.

This paper provides functional performance data drawn from an analysis of the capabilities and functionality of three major library automation systems – HORIZON, INNOPAC and VTLS. The assessment was based on vendor input as well as on feedback from libraries of different types from different parts of the world. Objective criteria based on a numerical scoring scheme was used to assess system performance in six major functional areas: acquisition, cataloguing, circulation, public access catalogue, reference and information services and serials control. The functional performance data is expected to be useful for libraries looking for new systems as well as those already computerised and interested in enhancing their present systems. In addition, data on the extent of the utilisation of system capabilities by libraries should also be of interest to system vendors.

In this information age, demonstrating the significance of physical libraries is increasingly important. The roles and functions of libraries have been discussed using the concept of the library as place in interdisciplinary perspectives. However, the overall structure of the concept is inadequate because there are multifaceted arguments; how the concept has changed is not clear either. The purpose of this study is to clarify the whole picture of the roles and functions of the library as place in public libraries and to show the transition of the roles and functions.

Qualitative content analysis and time-series analysis were conducted using 175 related articles that mentioned the roles and functions of the library as a place.

An overall of 2,966 codes about library as a place was extracted and organised into a conceptual model, comprising 3 symbolic infrastructures (Wisdom, Heritage and Community), 11 categories (Intelligence, Creativity, Novelty, Culture and History, Neutrality, Equality, Empowerment, Publicness, Privacy, Sociability and Friendliness) and 30 subcategories. The study found that concepts of the library as place have developed rapidly since the 1990s, and roles have diversified from traditional ones.

The conceptual model of the library as place in this study, which integrates diverse perspectives such as physical spaces, activities and symbols, is the first of model's kind.

Research into the library as place investigates the role of public library buildings as destinations, physical places where people go for various reasons ranging from making use of the library's resources and services or seeking to fulfill an information or reading need to less easily identified reasons that may include using the library's building as a place to make social or business contacts, to build or reinforce community or political ties, or to create or reinforce a personal identity. This study asks: How are one rural US public library system's newly constructed buildings functioning as places? The answer is derived from answers to sub-questions about adult library users, user, and staff perceptions of library use, and observed use of library facilities. The findings are contextualized using a framework built of theories from human geography, sociology, and information studies.

This case study replicates a mixed-methods case study conducted at the main public libraries in Toronto and Vancouver in the late1990s and first reproduced in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2006. It tests methods used in large urban settings in a rural, small-town environment. This study also expands on its antecedents by using thematic analysis to determine which conceptualizations of the role of the public library as place are most relevant to the community under investigation.

The study relies on quantitative and qualitative data collected via surveys and interviews of adult library users, interviews of library public service staff members, structured observations of people using the libraries, and analysis of selected administrative documents. The five sets of data are triangulated to answer the research sub-questions.

Thematic analysis grounded in the conceptual framework finds that public realm theory best contextualizes the relationships that develop between library staff members and adult library users over time. The study finds that the libraries serve their communities as informational places and as familiarized locales rather than as third places, and that the libraries facilitate the generation of social capital for their users.