On May 13, 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Google must comply with Spanish attorney Mario Costeja González’ request that it remove links to notices of a 1998 forced sale of real estate he then owned, helping to establish a “right to be forgotten” in regard to Internet searches in the European Union. While some have argued that the decision is unwarranted censorship that threatens freedom of speech and the character of the Internet, I contend that the recognition of a right to be forgotten is an acknowledgment of the tremendous power which Google has in determining how a person is perceived and that the CJEU’s decision is merely a small step in allowing individuals to limit real harms that can occur from what the company chooses to include in the results it returns when a person’s name is used as a search query.

MOOCs—an online successor to older forms of distance education, such as correspondence courses, radio for education, and educational television—entered the higher education scene around 2011-2012 with the founding of Coursera, Udacity, and EdX. Although a literature review reveals some discussion of how libraries can support MOOC professors, there has been very little discussion of how libraries can support MOOC students. However, library support for MOOCs has become very important now that two new trends are forcing MOOC students to take their coursework more seriously: MOOCs for high school students and MOOCs for credit, both of which are partially driven by the rising cost of college tuition. Before academic libraries can provide research assistance or materials to MOOC students, they will need to address institutional, distance-based, legal, and resource barriers.

This paper describes situations and proposed activities that can prepare library staff in post-secondary institutions of higher education in provision of services to the disabled. To improve library services for the disabled, librarians and library staff need information on policies, procedures and services as well as a working understanding of disability as defined by federal law. To provide that information, I researched significant decisions by the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights as well as changes in and additions to statutes and regulations as presented in LRP Publications' Disability Compliance for Higher Education. Most cases, however, are not about libraries or librarians; most cases are about disputes between disabled individuals and post-secondary institutions in general. Therefore, I review cases that lend themselves to application in a library setting and then summarize the decisions for re-interpretation and application in the creation of policies, procedures, and training programs.

This dissertation examines the extent to which chief executive officers (CEOs) in academic and research libraries are involving their top management team (TMT) members in strategic decision making that affects organizational performance, and, the extent to which this involvement is preparing top managers to assume leadership positions as CEOs. This is a critically important question because the current leadership in libraries is ageing out and unless knowledge, skill and ability transfer is taking place within today’s academic and research library environment, the next generation of leaders will be at risk of losing the opportunity to incorporate the cumulative knowledge and experience of their predecessors into their leadership portfolios. Strategic decision-making is one of the most important aspects of a top executive’s job. To better understand the dynamics taking place within top management teams that influence strategic decision-making, and top managers’ roles in strategic decision making processes in libraries, 34 top managers and their CEOs from academic libraries were interviewed on the dynamics surrounding strategic decision making in their organizations. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with participants. The results shed considerable light on the richly nuanced relationships that top managers have with one another and with the CEO and how these relations impact strategic decision-making. The study also revealed demographic characteristics of top managers that are related to strategic decision making within the TMT. Key strategic decisions that TMT members were involved in and their role in the decisions were examined in relation to the strategic issues that CEOs pointed to as important. A comparison of these citations revealed a series of variables that influenced co-citation of strategic issues by both CEOs and TMT members.