Designing and building new or renovated space is time consuming and requires politically sensitive discussions concerning a number of both long-term and immediate planning issues. The Medical Library Association's fourth annual survey of library building projects identified ten health sciences libraries that are planning, expanding, or constructing new facilities. Two projects are in predesign ...

Librarian in Charge of Library, Faculty of Dentistry, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Master Student, Department of Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Islamic Azad University of Hamedan, Hamedan, Iran Assistant Professor, Department of Library Science and Information, Qom Payame Noor University, Qom, Iran *Corresponding Author; E-mail: simaesmaeilza...

On September 3, 2003, the Medical Library Association adopted a policy statement on the role of expert searching in health sciences libraries. The policy highlighted the need for more thorough literature searching following the unfortunate death of a healthy research volunteer in a clinical trial that might have been prevented by a more complete literature review [1–3]. In light of this policy,...

Planning a new health sciences library at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a tremendous challenge. Technology has radically changed the way libraries function in an academic environment and the services they provide. Some individuals question whether the library as place will continue to exist as information becomes increasingly available electronically. To understand how libraries ...

2 INTRODUCTION 3 PERSPECTIVES ON DIGITAL LIBRARIES 4 Research vs. Practice 5 Community Building Efforts 7 Framing the Issues 8 DEFINING DIGITAL LIBRARIES 11 Digital Libraries as Content, Collections, and Communities 11 Research-oriented Definitions 12 Defining Elements of Digital Libraries 16 Digital Libraries as Institutions or Services 17 Digital Libraries as Databases 19 INTO THE DIGITAL FUT...