Reference

Communicating Research" explores how changing technologies affect academic research practices. The book begins with the rise of electronic media and fundamental changes in the dissemination of research. It then outlines the problems and concerns of researchers, librarians, and publishers: inadequacies of copyright laws, the rise of interlibrary loan practices, and the unchecked broadcast of working papers. These problems lead to a discussion of research practices across scholarly disciplines and an investigation of the biases and intentions of practitioners. The book includes historical data and observations on the current scene in order to make predictions about the future. "Communicating Research" draws conclusions about the ways that differing norms, such as the differences in the ways chemists and sociologists conduct, write, and publish their research, affect publication trends. The book also looks closely at the efficiency of publication strategies and their effectiveness in reaching the researchers' targeted audiences. Meadows uses two avenues to explore the communication of research findings. One is the medium used to convey the message; the other is the needs of the research community. He offers a solid base of analysis for understanding researchers, their biases, their assumptions about the communication, and the publishers. It explains variations in the reviewing processes for books and journals. It tailors communication and publishing insights for researchers, and offers superior historical information.

Computer technology together with political and economic pressures for interlibrary cooperation are having far-reaching effects on online systems for bibliographic control. This work is a compendium of the current thought on how catalogs of the future can best take advantage of machine capabilities in a networking environment. "The Conceptual Foundations of Descriptive Cataloging" comprises the proceedings of a conference of the same name held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1987. The conference stimulated visionary thinking about the future direction of systems for the bibliographic control of information, particularly the future of those systems applying the Anglo-American codes for descriptive cataloging. It presents the general principles underlying the design of bibliographic databases and includes the shape of bibliographic databases in the forseeable future. It covers topics such as the impact of technology on catalogs and catalog codes, design objectives for online catalogs, standardization and integration in bibliographic control, and access to bibliographic information in the online age.