Gregory A. Crawford, Glenn McGuigan, and Debra Mattern Kephart. "The ownership of presidential campaign biographies by libraries: an empirical study." Collection Building 27, no. 3 (July 1, 2008): 108-112. http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed January 19, 2010). One piece of data shown in the article discusses how the publication of presidential campaign biographies has increased significantly since the 2000 election. The authors write that the standard number of biographies published leading up to presidential elections has averaged 27.13 with a standard deviation of 35.32 due to the increased volume lately. Despite the fact the number of biographies has increased, the authors state that some libraries have not actively collected these books. For a patron to gain access to most of these biographies they have to use interlibrary loan. While this is not ideal, at least there still is access. This article would be relevant on how libraries collect material on presidents as a whole, not just the campaigns. It provides an example as to how to perform a study on presidential biography collections. This article shows the methods of researching the literature of presidential campaign biographies and its limited availability in libraries across the country.

Blansett, J. (2008). Digital Discrimination. Library Journal (1976), 133(13), 26-9. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database. The data in this article was collected to evaluate how libraries are addressing disabilities online. An example of data collected in this report was that of the 56 American Library Association (ALA) accredited library and information science (LIS) schools studied, only 47 percent of LIS schools and 60 percent of their libraries were fully accessible in terms of W3C web accessibility guidelines. This article is helpful to researchers seeking information on online accessibility. This article may also be relevant to a study on accessibility and website development. The article may also be useful to researchers evaluating success with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) and section 508 of the 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Comeaux and Schmetzke’s research indicates that while LIS schools and libraries had made substantial headway over a four year period, they were still falling short. The researchers suggest if standards outlined in Section 508 of the 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 were considered improvements in online accessibility could be substantial.

Ruffin, A., Cogdill, K., Kutty, L., & Hudson-Ochillo, M. (2005). Access to Electronic Health Information for the Public: Analysis of Fifty-Three Funded Projects. Library Trends, 53(3), 434-452. Retrieved on January 18, 2010 from the Professional Development Collection database. This article describes how the collaborative efforts among medical libraries, public libraries, and community organizations aided in the expansion of access by clients to more reliable, electronic health-related information. In 2000, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) funded 53 nationwide projects to assist public libraries in working with other organizations in the expansion of reliable consumer health information (CHI) to their clients. Researchers used surveys of the participants in the projects as well as the reports submitted by the organizations to evaluate the results of the projects. Forty-two of the funded projects involved the efforts of at least two types of organizations (for example, eighteen projects consisted of academic health science and public libraries and sixteen projects consisted of hospital and public libraries). Thirty-eight projects successfully focused on content specific minority and ethnic audiences. The collaboration resulted in the availability of healthcare-related web content for under-served clients, higher visibility of each library in the community, and the successful compliance of the mission of the public and medical libraries. Since my interest lies in medical librarianship, this article would be a good resource on how a medical library could collaborate successfully with public librarians to reach a larger number of under-served in a community. This article would also aid a public library in determining how to meet the ever-growing requests for CHI from their clients. Literature review: Collaboration among medical or academic libraries, local organizations, and public libraries can increase the reliability of consumer health information (CHI) presented to the general or under-served public in an electronic format. Each organization brings the knowledge, experience, and competencies to which the goal of reliable healthcare content for the public can be addressed (Ruffin, et. al., 2005).

Celia Huffman and Robert J. Rua, “EBSCOhost: Measuring the Effectiveness of Homework Centers in Libraries” 6, no. 3 (Winter 2008): 25-29. This article looks at how libraries can fill a community need by starting after school homework help centers. In addition they discuss how to collect data to help with funding the program through grants and donations. For the 2007-2008 school year they found that 818 students came to the homework center for a total 12,225 times. According to parent surveys 79% indicated that their child's grade(s) had improved. While the authors do not make a direct statement about their results, the reader can infer that they believe strongly in their program. I think the strongest stance this article makes is in pushing libraries to start collecting data to support their programs. In addition to providing information for starting a similar program, it also provides researchers with ways to collect both qualitative and quantitative data, with hopes that future groups will benefit from their experiences.

Kingsley, I. (2008). The usability of academic library website indexes: An investigation. The Indexer, 26(2), 71-78. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database. Ilana Kingsley, a web librarian and assistant professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, conducted two research studies in 2005 and 2006 on the usability of website indexes versus other navigation tools such as site maps and browsing. The studies considered both quantitative and qualitative data. In the 2006 study, for instance, 35 participants were to navigate a mock-up academic library website in order to find answers to questions within three-minute time limits; 79 out of 93 questions (85%) were answered successfully when the participants were primarily free to choose any search method, while 72 out of 74 questions (97%) were answered successfully when participants were to use only the website index. As an example of qualitative data, in the 2005 study, comments from participants included conclusions that the index used in the study was well-designed in comparison to many of the website indexes used prior to the study. The author contends that indexes improve website navigation in both speed and accuracy. This article may be relevant to studies on library reference collections and how their locations within libraries along with how user awareness of these collections may affect a user’s search for information. Given that my topic is on the present role of bibliography in information access, the methods used in these studies may help me design my research approach. The article reveals both supportive findings and challenging dilemmas (e.g., though these studies indicate faster and more successful searching when using online indexes, participants still express partiality toward Google-like search tools and other methods because of, for instance, prior experiences with badly-designed online indexes). Thus, the author encourages better design of, education about, and more research on website indexes.

I haven't figured out how to reply to a specific post. In response to the article by Kingsley, I. (2008). The usability of academic library website indexes: An investigation I can see the data in this study being relevant to research done for software or website design as it relates to user preferences and behaviors regardless of the field. Regarding how the quantitative data is represented, I find it interesting that a different number of total questions were used to test (93 in the first, and 74 in the second) and wonder about the purpose behind that.

Celia Huffman and Robert J. Rua, “EBSCOhost: Measuring the Effectiveness of Homework Centers in Libraries” I would be interested in seeing the comparison of grades between students attending the program versus those that did not attend the program. It might also be relevant to compare standardized testing scores of students attending the program versus those that did not attend. That type of data might be useful to collect in support of this type of program.

I was fascinated to read about Mary Ann's article on presidential campaigns biographies and its increased popularity with publishers (based on the larger number produced) and the lack of interest from librarians. Would presidential libraries be interested in these types of publications or maybe those potential presidential candidates that are beginning their research on successful and unsuccessful campaign tactics. Political news reporters might find these books helpful when determining how a campaign went off track.

Angela's article on how online sites address how users with disabilities can access information. In addition to researchers and website developers, I think that browser developers and W3C standards teams would be interested in learning how to help online content producers meet these requirements. Library board members might be interested to learn how (or if) their individual library meets these ADA guidelines. Would help a library meet their mission statement and bring good will to the community.

Mitchel's article on homework centers in libraries would also be of interest to school communities and school boards who are trying to increase the scores and graduation rates of students in order to get more funding. Teachers would appreciate the assistance as their time is continually going to be stretched as class sizes increase. Also, public libraries that want to increase their presence in a community would benefit by meeting a potential mission statement goal.

Peter's article on indexes on academic websites might prove useful to developers who are trying to design automating indexing tools as well as those manual indexers out there and how they might improve content and metadata used during indexing.

Your posts and your discussions look great, you are on the right track.

This is in response to pjbrooks' comments on my article. The article that I cited looked at all types of libraries including presidential libraries. I think you have some insightful comments on how presidential biographies would be useful to candidates and journalists alike. To successfully run a campaign it is important to always look at the past. As for journalists it is important to know the past and share that information with those who read or watch the information that they put forth.

Response to Angela’s article: It appears that the data in this article focused on library and information schools and how they address online disabilities. It would be interesting to see what the data would be for public libraries and how the numbers compare. Do library and information schools provide better resources for those with disabilities or do public libraries?

Response to pjbrooks: It appears that this article includes a focus on minorities and under-privileged people; therefore, it is a good resource for those doing research on what these two groups of people are looking for in a library. What types of information are they seeking out? This would definitely help a researcher analyzing this question.