Survey of Web Developers in Academic Libraries

A survey was sent to library web designers from randomly selected institutions to determine the background, tools, and methods used by those designers. Results, grouped by Carnegie Classification type, indicated that larger schools were not necessarily working with more resources or more advanced levels of technology than other institutions

Teaching Patrons to Fish: The Educational Value of Cancelling Requests for Locally Available Materials

Expansive document delivery service for locally available materials is becoming increasingly popular, but is a learning component lost with the implementation of this service? In this study, the authors compare data from two institutions, one that provides an unadvertised document delivery service without instruction, and another that cancels requests for locally available materials with an instructional component. The behavior of each institution\u27s patrons over a 4-year period is analyzed and found to differ at statistically significant levels. These findings will be useful for interlibrary loan policy makers who are considering whether to implement document delivery for locally available items

Stability Implications of Bendixson’s Criterion

This note presents a proof that the omega limit set of a solution to a planar system satisfying the Bendixson criterion is either empty or is a single equilibrium. The proof involves elementary techniques which should be accessible to senior undergraduates and graduate students

Turnaround Time Between ILLiad’s Odyssey and Ariel Delivery Methods: A Comparison

Interlibrary loan departments are frequently looking for ways to reduce turnaround time. The advent of electronic delivery in the past decade has greatly reduced turnaround time for articles, but recent developments in this arena have the potential to decrease that time even further. The ILLiad ILL management system has an electronic delivery component, Odyssey, with a Trusted Sender setting that allows articles to be sent to patrons without borrowing staff intervention, provided the lending library is designated as a Trusted Sender, or this feature is enabled for all lenders. Using the tracking data created by the ILLiad management system, the turnaround time for two delivery methods, Ariel and Odyssey, was captured for two different academic institutions. With the Trusted Sender setting turned on, Odyssey delivery was faster than Ariel for the institutions studied

A novel interaction between nutrients and grazers alters relative dominance of marine habitats

Copyright © 2005 Inter-Research.Strong top-down control by grazers is considered a moderating influence on the negative effects of elevated nutrients on marine algae. Little experimental work has been done in a system that has weak grazing pressure (weak top-down control), which is also subjected to elevated nutrients. We experimentally elevated nutrient concentration to test (1) the effects of nutrient enrichment on algal assemblages in the presence and absence of canopies (Ecklonia radiata) and (2) the interactive effects of nutrients and molluscan grazers (meso-grazers) on algal assemblages in the absence of canopies. We established that the loss of canopy-forming algae is likely to be a key precursor to nutrient-driven changes of assemblages of benthic algae, because nutrients had no effects on algal assemblages in the presence of canopy-forming algae. In the absence of canopy-forming algae, space was monopolised by filamentous, turf-forming algae, and it was only in the presence of grazers that nutrients caused a change to the relative covers of algal habitat that monopolise canopyfree space. When grazers were present at natural densities, elevated nutrients reduced the monopoly of turf-forming algae in favour of foliose algae. These results demonstrate a novel interaction between nutrients (bottom-up control) and grazing pressure (top-down control), which are fundamental to predictions about management of human activities that continue to reduce densities of herbivores and increase nutrient availability on temperate coasts.Bayden D. Russell and Sean D. Connel

Polyenamines from aromatic diacetylenic diketones and diamines

The synthesis and characterization of several polyenamine ketones are discussed wherein conjugated diacetylenic diketones and aromatic diamines are used as a route to the formation of high molecular weight polyenamine ketones which exhibit good mechanical properties and can be cast into creasible films. Typical polymerization conditions involved the reaction of stoichiometric amounts of 1,4- or 1,3-PPPO and a diamine at 60 to 130 C in m-cresol at (w/w) solids content of 8 to 26% for a specified period of time under a nitrogen atmosphere. Novel polyenamine ketones were prepared with inherent viscosities as high as 1.99 dl/g and tough, clear amber films with tensile strengths of 12,400 psi and tensile moduli of 397,000 psi were cast from solutions of the polymers in chloroform. In most cases, the elemental analyses for the polyenamine ketones agree within + or - 0.3% of the theoretical values

Assembly and maintenance of subtidal habitat heterogeneity: synergistic effects of light penetration and sedimentation

Copyright © 2005 Inter-Research.I experimentally separated the positive and negative effects of light penetration and sedimentation on the assembly and maintenance of 3 subtidal habitats whose heterogeneity characterizes much of the world’s temperate coastline; encrusting (non-geniculate) coralline algae, articulated (geniculate) coralline algae and filamentous, turf-forming algae. The ability of encrusting corallines to monopolize and retain space without overgrowth depended on the presence of shade (positive effect) if sediment deposition was below that observed on coast characterized by high rates of sedimentation (negative effect). In contrast, the growth and persistence of articulated corallines depended on the absence of shade (negative effect) and high levels of sediment accumulation observed on human-dominated coast (positive effect). The recruitment of filamentous-turfs was facilitated by full light, but was not strongly affected by sedimentation. Instead, filamentous-turfs tolerated heavy sediment accumulation, a factor thought to explain the concomitant increase in spatial dominance of algal-turfs and loss of canopy-forming algae on reefs with heavy sedimentation. Importantly, different habitats will assemble or be maintained to match the environmental conditions in which they are most extensive, demonstrating the key role of physical factors associated with habitat- formers (kelp forests) and human-dominated coast (heavy sedimentation). These results also demonstrate that an appreciation of the integrated roles of physical processes may assist the development of predictive models about the assembly and maintenance of heterogeneity of natural communities, and their potential disruption by humans.Sean D. Connel

Predicting ecosystem shifts requires new approaches that integrate the effects of climate change across entire systems.

Most studies that forecast the ecological consequences of climate change target a single species and a single life stage. Depending on climatic impacts on other life stages and on interacting species, however, the results from simple experiments may not translate into accurate predictions of future ecological change. Research needs to move beyond simple experimental studies and environmental envelope projections for single species towards identifying where ecosystem change is likely to occur and the drivers for this change. For this to happen, we advocate research directions that (i) identify the critical species within the target ecosystem, and the life stage(s) most susceptible to changing conditions and (ii) the key interactions between these species and components of their broader ecosystem. A combined approach using macroecology, experimentally derived data and modelling that incorporates energy budgets in life cycle models may identify critical abiotic conditions that disproportionately alter important ecological processes under forecasted climates