Purpose -This paper aims to report on a successful implementation of a current awareness service designed to inform teaching faculty and liaison librarians as to the status of library materials they have ordered. Design/methodology/approach -The paper looks at the methods employed by the authors, which simplify maintenance of lists of new titles by providing a single, consistent access point to new resources. The dynamic pages are compiled by using the OPAC as a platform: connecting with a Z39.50 protocol, passing keywords and phrases along via the URL query string, parsing the data with PHP, and rendering the data on the web with a combination of PHP and JavaScript. Findings -The OPAC-as-platform method of rendering the departmental acquisitions pages has solved every problem that had existed up to this point. With very minor changes to cataloguing workflow, the technical services department now has a low-maintenance system in place for notifying teaching faculty and liaison librarians of new arrivals. Originality/value -The project demonstrates cooperation between public services, systems, IT, and technical services to enhance library services to users. It also demonstrates the value of and potential for cataloguing as a means to deliver innovative services.

Purpose -The paper's aim is to provide insights into issues encountered in maintaining library technologies and electronic collections on a limited budget and with limited personnel. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses real-world experiences and evidence from the body of literature to provide commentary on the importance of clearly defined missions and goals in an era of shrinking budgets and changing user expectations. Findings -Having a clearly defined library mission statement with underlying goals and outcomes is vital in this time of accountability and assessment in higher education. Librarians must be mindful of the need to connect the goals and outcomes to the overall institutional goals in order to provide measurable and meaningful value. Originality/value -The paper examines one library's struggle to establish an identity in an era where traditional methods of determining value are no longer suitable. The article uses dialogue from departmental meetings coupled with evidence from the library literature to state the importance of finding and communicating value in an era of accountability."Before we make any wholesale changes to our collections, services, policies, procedures, and even the arrangement of our furniture, it's vital that we come to some conclusions as to who we are and what we want to be". Those were the words of one of my own colleagues at a recent department meeting, one in which there were several rather heated exchanges regarding the future direction of our academic unit. Specifically, we were discussing a collective and comprehensive effort to weed our collection of roughly 300,000 bound volumes, many of which were purchased prior to 1975 and have never once circulated. This weeding project is one of the recommendations in a plan developed by my department's Planning Committee, a group formed following a rather contentious takeover of 3,000 square feet of library space in order to build an 85-seat math emporium. That is correct, the Planning Committee was formed only after contingencies from outside the library made the decision to take over the space; another case of reactivity as opposed to proactivity and a symptom of not knowing who we are and what we want to be.This knowing and understanding of that most fundamental question is an awareness that is a product of a well thought-out mission statement based upon institutional values, visions, outcomes, and goals. We have a mission statement, one that is more than those relics of the past wherein a department simply states its intentions to support the greater mission of the university. Ours reads as follows: "The mission of the Edinboro University libraries is to serve the information needs of the university community and to support the teaching and research programs of the The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm BL 26,1 4

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into issues encountered in maintaining library technologies on a limited budget and with limited personnel. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses real-world experiences and data to report on the costs associated with the provision of high-volume print capabilities in an active academic computing area in a large university library. Findings -While advances in technology have changed higher education greatly, students and instructors alike still depend heavily on the printed page. Moreover, easy access to high-volume printers seems to encourage indiscriminate printing and wasteful behavior. Originality/value -This paper offers insights and real world experiences encountered in an active computing facility. It presents data on printing and provides some suggestions for reining-in waste associated with unnecessary printing.

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