Information Technology Planning provides librarians and electronic resource planners with innovative suggestions and strategies for creating the digital library for the twenty-first century. Full of information on technological advances and resource assessment, this book explores the best ways to make your library accessible to users and discusses user-centered decision-making techniques. With Information Technology Planning, you’ll choose the appropriate electronic resources for your library to best serve the needs of your patrons.

Examining electronic resource redesigning and implementation, this book offers you examples of how other institutions, such as Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, the University of Arizona Libraries, the Central Library of Multnomah County, Oregon, and the University of Rochester Libraries, are working to supply relevant and vast amounts of information to their patrons. Information Technology Planning provides you with many methods and suggestions that will improve your institution’s electronic resource capabilities, including:

• understanding the basic needs of a digital library--database development, online public access catalogs (OPACs), networking, hardware and wiring, licensing, authentication, and security--and how to choose the right resources for your institution
• using a 13-category planning checklist that examines database selection, pricing, and funding issues for implementing shared research databases in a consortium environment
• combining internal reviews, heuristic reviews, usability testing, and field testing to measure the usability of a web page
• examining the benefits of outcome-based education (OBE) to schools and librarians, such as increased learning and designing a curriculum based on the resources of a specific institution
• questioning issues such as convenience, funding, information needs, licensing, and satisfaction of students/faculty when deciding upon delivery services for electronic resources
• applying the eight “rules of thumb” for cost effectiveness when choosing delivery options for electronic bibliographic databases
• acknowledging the immediate and future potential perils of computers and too much information
  
  Offering you many proven methods and procedures, this book contains question-and-answer sections, appendices, research, and an example patron evaluation to assist you in choosing and evaluating which resources will work best for your library. From Information Technology Planning, you’ll receive the necessary groundwork for reorganizing and enhancing your library’s digital resources in order to effectively meet patron demands well into the next century.