Discusses the information economy and the economics of education for information professions. Topics include the diversity of academic disciplines for information professional education, supply and demand in professional areas, costs of education, lifelong learning, and expenditures for schools with American Library Association accredited Master's…

Presents a preliminary report on a survey of the American Library Association accredited schools of library and information science to determine the extent to which courses dealing with the economics of information are taught. The elements of a model syllabus for an economics of information course are presented. (Author/LRW)

Includes abstracts of 18 special interest group (SIG) sessions. Highlights include natural language processing, information science and terminology science, classification, knowledge-intensive information systems, information value and ownership issues, economics and theories of information science, information retrieval interfaces, fuzzy thinking…

Discusses research with neural networks in the area of finance. Highlights include bond pricing, theoretical exposition of primary bond pricing, bond pricing regression model, and an example that created networks with corporate bonds and NeuralWare Neuralworks Professional H software using the back-propagation technique. (LRW)

Discusses quality in end-user documentation for computer applications and explains four approaches to improving quality in end-user documents. Highlights include online help, usability testing, technical writing elements, statistical approaches, and concepts relating to software quality that are also applicable to user manuals. (LRW)

Discussion of the reassessment of undergraduate education focuses on the element of critical thinking. Topics include language and reasoning, the power of stories and narrative structure, critical thinking and bibliographic instruction, enrichment reading and academic libraries, reasoning in an image and electronic culture, and the role of the…

Considers the role of books and reading in undergraduate education. Highlights include the future of books in American colleges, including reader interaction and new communications formats challenging printed text; literacy and the undergraduate, including new information technologies; and the role of reading in a liberal education and in lifelong…

Discusses the integration of information and technological skills into the undergraduate curriculum. Topics include information literacy; the role of the academic library in higher education reform; information literacy criteria for undergraduates; and examples of successful curriculum integration programs at Earlham College, the University of…

Discusses the role of the academic library in training undergraduate students in research methods. Highlights include changes resulting from the electronic dissemination of information; the tradition of apprenticeship, journeymen, and master; information and knowledge; electronic scholarship; layers of learning in research in an electronic…

Describes several projects that integrate the Internet and specific Internet resources into undergraduate teaching and learning. Problems are discussed, including trying to retrieve specific and useful information, questions of reliability and accuracy of information, the need to become more user friendly, and demands on libraries for training and…

Discusses library user education in terms of content, impact, and limitations. Evaluation studies of library instruction are discussed; future possibilities are examined, including lifelong learning and the impact of change on libraries; and the Gateway to Information, an online user help system developed by the Ohio State University Library, is…

Examines the nature of faculty culture and how certain aspects of it impede bibliographic instruction efforts. It is suggested that continued initiatives by librarians to understand and to reach out to faculty are needed to increase widescale acceptance by faculty of bibliographic instruction. (Contains 126 references.) (Author/LRW)

Discussion of the development of undergraduate libraries focuses on Harvard's Lamont Library. Topics include financial issues, including sources of revenue, computerization, and personnel costs; technological changes, including hypermedia and the virtual library; and organizational changes, highlighting the merger of libraries at Cornell…

Describes a new general studies program developed at Berea College (Kentucky) that includes seven courses with faculty-approved goals relating to communication and research. Highlights include the connection between liberal education and the library; course-integrated library instruction designed collaboratively by instructors and librarians; and…

Provides a brief overview of focus groups; discusses the use of undergraduate focus groups on two campuses of the University of California library system; describes methodologies used, including interviews and questionnaires; and describes new directions the libraries were led as a result of student input. (Author/LRW)