Books are traditionally set aside at the request of teachers from the main, normal loan collection to be put on reserve temporarily for checking out for a much shorter loan period to ensure that, at the expense of convenient, long-term loans for other users, all the students enrolled in a course have an opportunity to use them. Many studies have found that reserve usages are not high enough to justify the time and effort involved in making the arrangement. This article reveals that the accessibility and availability of materials to students, the idle status of reserve items on the shelf, and the usage of the collection may be improved if the access to books on reserve and on normal loan matches and fits the instructional choices of teachers and the study modes of students. As long as books in print format continue to play a role in the library collection, librarians have to manage their access to the best benefit of the users. Further studies on how the access to library materials can be managed and arranged concertedly to make the usage surpass the 80/20 rule are desired.
[Copyright of Journal of Access Services is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15367960903385771 ]

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based economy, because the students would have markedly less exposure to a stimulating campus environment than their full-time counterparts. Graduates from discrete full- and part-time programs from 1 university in Hong Kong completed a survey seeking perceptions of the nurturing of a range of capabilities, together with measures of teacher-student relationships and type of teaching experienced. Two hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling: (a) the same mechanism for capability development operated for full- and part-time modes and (b) the principal element of the mechanism was the nature of teaching and the quality of teacher-student interaction. Hypothesis 1 was supported because configural invariance between hypothesized models for capability development between the 2 modes was found. Hypothesis 2 was also supported because the models showed that the principal influence on capability development came from teaching for understanding, through promoting active learning experiences and the degree and quality of teacher-student interaction.
[Copyright of Structural Equation Modeling is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem1302_6]