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Google Scholar was released as a beta product in November of 2004. Since then, Google Scholar has been scrutinized and questioned by many in academia and the library field. Our objectives in undertaking this study were to determine how scholarly Google Scholar is in comparison with traditional library resources and to determine if the scholarliness of materials found in Google Scholar varies across disciplines. We found that Google Scholar is, on average, 17.6 percent more scholarly than materials found only in library databases and that there is no statistically significant difference between the scholarliness of materials found in Google Scholar across disciplines.

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Randomly selected undergraduates at BrighamYoung University, Brigham Young University-Idaho, and Brigham Young University-Hawaii, all private universities sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, participated in a study that investigated four questions regarding federated searching: (1) Does it save time? (2) Do undergraduates prefer it? (3) Are undergraduates satisfied with the results they get from it? (4) Does it yield higher-quality results than nonfederated searching? Federated searching was, on average, 11 percent faster than nonfederated searching. Undergraduates rated their satisfaction with the citations gathered by federated searching 17 percent higher than their satisfaction using nonfederated search methods. A majority of undergraduates, 70 percent, preferred federated searching to the alternative.This study could not ultimately determine which of the two search methods yielded higher citation quality. The study does shed light on assumptions about federated searching and will interest librarians in different types of academic institutions, given the diversity of the three institutions studied.ibrary research remains a complex, convoluted process for many undergraduates, in spite of the advances promised by the digital age. In their final report, the Bibliographic Services Task Force from the University of California Libraries states, "We offer a fragmented set of systems to search for published information (catalogs, A&I databases, full text journal sites, institutional repositories, etc) each with very different tools for identifying and obtaining materials. For the user, these distinctions are arbitrary."1 Federated searching a empts to collocate the information found in these fragmented systems and to provide one location to perform all library research. In this study, we investigated the assumptions that have been made about federated searching and studied undergraduates to determine if federated searching

Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library conducted a time-task cost study to compare the cost and processing time of shelf-ready books to non-shelf-ready books to determine if it could better use its human resources and if it should expand the use of shelf-ready to include its approval books. The results showed that shelf-ready was, on average, 5.7% cheaper, took 47% less processing time, and arrived on the shelves 33 sooner than books processed in-house. Based on the results of the study, the library moved its approval books to the shelf-ready program and was able to reallocate catalogers tasks.