PurposeThe primary aim of this study is to determine the uses and prevalence of temporary librarians in libraries at four‐year universities during the current economic downturn. The paper also seeks to determine the temporary librarians' conditions of employment.Design/methodology/approachThese objectives were achieved by surveying a representative sample of four‐year institutions in both the authors' state and nationwide.FindingsThe study found that, as in several previous surveys, temporary librarians are still being used sparingly. They are used to fill vacancies due to open positions or faculty leaves of absence, special projects, grant‐funded projects, fellowships and sometimes to offer spouses of teaching faculty an employment opportunity. They are employed in both technical and public services roles, but not in managerial positions. They are expected to have the same education as full‐time librarians, are compensated similarly and sometimes also receive benefits. Conditions for contract renewal included employee performance, availability of funding and perceived need for the continuation of their duties.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was limited by a small pool, so results may not be generalizable to a larger population. Because of many of the participants being in the same state, there may be unintentional consistency in the responses.Practical implicationsThis study may provide guidance to administrators in making decisions on the future use of temporary librarians, both in how many to hire and in what ways to employ them.Originality/valueThe value in this study lies in the fact that it updates previous studies by generating current data on the topic.

Open source discovery layers offer the ability to extensively customize every aspect of the search experience for a local user population. However, discovery layers have primarily been discussed in the professional literature in terms of the installation or configuration process. In this paper, three catalogers present a case study of an open source discovery layer implementation with a focus on the problems and solutions from the cataloging perspective. E ast Carolina University (ECU) is the third largest school in the North Carolina system, with almost 27,000 students.1 As of January 27, 2015, the university "employs nearly 2,050 full-time, part-time, and temporary faculty."2 These faculty and students are supported by more than 3,500 staff members. 3 In fall of 2014, 27,511 students were served by ECU Libraries, a system that consists of a main library (Joyner Library), Laupus Health Sciences Library (Laupus), and the music library. 4 These three very different libraries have a wide range of discovery challenges, from multiple classification schemes and subject vocabularies to differences in desired MARC fields in a brief record display to varying requirements for metadata granularity depending on the subject areas or collections. Such a wide array of needs requires a sophisticated and robust discovery tool that offers maximum potential for users to find and access the information they seek. ECU Libraries has been using the e-Library software from SirsiDynix's Symphony line of products for its OPAC since 2009. A 2013 internal assessment of e-Library identified problems that fell into three broad areas: poor relevancy ranking, an inflexible user interface, and cumbersome functionality.5 Because of the proprietary software's limitations, local customization and improvement of the relevancy of search results ranged from difficult to impossible to implement. Desired features, such as customized bibliographic displays for each library or highlighting search terms in record displays, could not be accommodated. The e-Library interface also failed to consistently index certain MARC elements; for example, the music library found that uniform titles in the 240 field were indexed differently from the same uniform titles found in the 700 field.To supplement the traditional OPAC, the libraries were tasked in 2009 with reviewing and recommending a discovery tool. 6 The decision was made to implement ProQuest's Summon product. While e-Library is used for traditional OPAC tasks such as title or call number browsing, placing holds, and tracking course

Conversion from sustained-release bupropion to immediate-release bupropion appears to be safe. Single 200-mg doses of immediate-release bupropion can apparently be administered to some patients without inducing excessive adverse effects, including seizures. Marked reduction in drug acquisition costs can be achieved with this conversion.