Metropolitan Library System

ABSTRACTApproximately 10% of Roman Catholic women seriously discern a vocation to religious life during their lifetime. Spiritual discernment is often characterized by prayer and spiritual direction, but also the acquisition of knowledge and information about religious life. No study to date has sought to understand how women seek out and retrieve information about religious life. Therefore, the current study sought to answer the following research question: “what is the information-seeking behavior (ISB) of Catholic women discerning a vocation to religious life?” using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. A survey was administered online and yielded responses from 124 participants. Findings indicated that digital and print resources were heavily utilized. However, participants indicated that connecting with a person face-to-face and visiting religious sisters produced a kind of knowledge and information that could not be acquired online, suggesting that their ISB was an integration of digital and print resources and human connection. This study contributes to the literature by intersecting the disciplines of information science and religion to equip practitioners who seek to develop resources for them. The study introduces the concept of limited Internet effectiveness in order to understand the integration of digital versus in-person resources in spiritual religious processes.

The challenge to the Benedictine University Library In-terlibrary Loan Department, and too many other small academic interli-brary loan departments, is to provide items to patrons in a timely fashion with little or no budget. Techniques to facilitate interlibrary loan in small libraries are described and discussed. Efficient workflow, consortia and statewide library partnerships, reciprocal sharing agreements and leveraging existing tools in creative ways to save labor and time are also described.

Historically, librarians have resorted to short‐term, charitable, punitive, and legalistic means to resolve the mounting problems associated with overdues—materials unreturned from circulation. In their quest to retrieve overdues we hear and read reports of librarians confronting delinquent borrowers by sending staff to private homes, filing criminal charges or claims in small claims court, engaging credit collection agencies, sending overdue notices as Western Union Mailgrams, conducting “fine free” amnesty days for return of all overdue materials, and offering rewards for returning books. There is an air of desperation in these moves. Despite that desperation, however, while anecdotal accounts pepper the pages of library literature, there is surprisingly little hard evidence that can guide policy decisions to lessen the probability of unreturned materials.

The first national meeting of the Public Library Association, a division of ALA, was held at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland, from March 23-26, 1983. The theme, Serving People: The Public Library Today and Tornorrow, featured keynote addresses by Maryland Senator Paul Sarbanes and noted author Isaac Asimov. The conference began with theme tours of Maryland libraries specializing in such programs as service to the disabled, literacy services, merchandising, and automated circulation. Conference programs included sessions on intellectual freedom strategy, cablelvideo, the impact of demography and technology, interlibrary loan, and other topics of special interest to public librarians. The following paper is a compilation of the notes and impressions of six professionals who attended the conference.