In consideration of our international readership, the following summaries of this month's feature articles are provided first in English, then in French and Spanish.
Taming the Wild Web Page:
A Web Consultant Tells All
by Shelly T. WestPondering the effectiveness of your presence on the Web? With the recent Internet explosion, there are now billions of places to go on the Web. Your site is now just one of many. How do you ensure that your site gets the attention it deserves? The easiest way to get attention is to be useful. Excellent resources for information are always welcome, particularly when they provide a one-stop spot for unique of heretofore uncataloged subjects. Whatever the subject matter, a site must do something: inform, assist, entertain, or otherwise occupy the mind. Being useful is one of the four pillars of an excellent site. This, along with three other aspects--change, organization, and appearance--should be applied to any site, regardless of size or content.
Managing Scientific Journals in the Digital Era
by Carol Tenopir and Donald W. KingThe explosion of electronic publishing presents special librarians with a challenging new opportunity. Scientific and other scholarly journals--a particularly important resource in organizations served by special libraries--are in a state of flux. Special librarians must take a lead role in assisting with difficult decisions concerning access and use of articles throughout their organizations. To assume this role, special librarians should apply their unique knowledge of 1) how information is acquired and used by their community; 2) the availability of alternative media, sources, and pricing options; 3) the economic trade-offs among these alternatives; and 4) what is generally best for the entire organization. Findings from SLA's 1995 Steven I. Goldspiel grant, shared here by the grant recipients, will explore all of these issues.
1997/98 Candidates for SLA Office
This special feature highlights biographies, photographs, and a short interview with each candidate running for SLA Office for the 1997/98 term. This year's slate of candidates include: L. Susan Hayes, Oak Arbor Publishing, Delray Beach, FL, and Donna W. Scheeder, Library of Congress, Washington, DC for president elect; Lyle W. Minter, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and Richard E. Wallace, A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company, Decatur, IL, for treasurer; Anne K. Abate, Dinsmore & Shohl, Cincinnati, OH, and Ty Webb, Hybritech Inc., San Diego, CA, for chapter cabinet chair-elect; Richard P. Hulser, IBM Corporation, New Haven, CT, and Laurence R. Walton, Mallinckrodt Chemical, Inc., St. Louis, MO, for division cabinet chair-elect; and Monica Ertel, Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA, Cynthia V. Hill, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA, Karen Holloway, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Reston, VA, and Mary E. Marshall, LEXIS-NEXIS, Dayton, OH, for director.
50 Years of Silent Service:
Inside the CIA Library
by Susan L. WrightThe CIA Library, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, builds and maintains the agency's primary collection of open source materials and serves as the main repository for unclassified as well as classified documents. Now, for the first time since the library's creation, information professionals are finally able to reveal unique aspects of the agency's library, as well as some of what its like to work in a secret organization. In a new spirit of openness, librarians at the CIA Library share with Information Outlook the types of collections maintained, the range of materials included in these collections, and how they are used. These information professionals also share some of the measures taken at their library to ensure confidentiality in this closed atmosphere.
Information Outlook Table of Contents
Copyright © 1997 SLA. All rights reserved.
This page was updated on January 30, 1997.