The Catalog vs. The Homepage: Best Practices in Providing Access to Electronic Resources

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Forwarded from the UK's jisc-e-collections list as of possible interest.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 09:55:05 +0100
From: Ian Winship <ian.winship@UNN.AC.UK>
To: JISC-E-COLLECTIONS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: The Catalog vs. The Homepage: Best Practices in Providing Access
to Electronic Resources

<forwarded by Ian Winship, University of Northumbria>

In late June 2002, I posted a message asking how libraries are providing
access to electronic resources. At the time, Georgia Brisoce, Cheryl
Nyberg and I were preparing for a presentation on July 23 at the American
Association of Law Libraries annual meeting titled "The Catalog vs. The
Homepage: Best Practices in Providing Access to Electronic Resources."

I'd like to thank the many people who answered my questions and shared
experiences, advice, insights, and URLs of sites that do a particularly
good job of providing access to electronic resources. The responses
validated our conclusions that there are no hard and fast "best practices"
at present -- the best you can do is make decisions that will serve your
particular patrons in the best way (given your resource limits). Often the
best way to serve your patrons is by providing a combination of access via
the catalog and the web page, since redundancy improves the patron's
chances of finding needed information. Thus, providing access to
electronic resources is not a clearly defined "either/or" proposition.

Our PowerPoint presentation and other information from the program are now
available on the web at:

<http://lib.law.washington.edu/_cheryl/cathome.htm>

The items on the web site include:

*       PowerPoint slideshow
*       Selected Web Sites of Interest (more information about and
	links to websites featured during the presentation)
*       updated bibliography

The information on the web site is brought to you by:
       Georgia Briscoe (University of Colorado Law Library),
       Karen Selden (University of Colorado Law Library), and
       Cheryl Nyberg (University of Washington Gallagher Law Library)

                                Thanks again!

                                Karen

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen Selden, Catalog Librarian
University of Colorado Law Library
402 UCB
2405 Kittredge Loop Drive
Boulder, CO 80309-0402

303/492-7535 (voice)    303/492-2707 (fax)
Karen.Selden@Colorado.EDU
The University of Colorado Law Library's Home Page is at:
  http://www.colorado.edu/Law/lawlib/index.html