Academic libraries are in the midst of significant disruption. Academic librarians and university administrators know they need to change, but are not sure how. Bits and pieces of what needs to ...happen are clear, but the whole picture is hard to grasp. Reimagining the Academic Library paints a simple straightforward picture of the changes affecting academic libraries and what academic librarians need to do to respond to the changes would help to guide future library practice. The aim is to explain where academic libraries need to go and how to get there in a book that can be read in a weekend. David Lewis provides a readable survey of the current state of academic library practice and proposes where academic libraries need to go in the future to provide value to their campuses. His primary focus is on collections as this is the area with the greatest opportunity for change and is the driver of most library cost. Lewis provides an accessible framework for thinking about how library practice needs to adjust in the digital environment. The book will be useful not only to academic librarians, but also for librarians to share with presidents and provosts who a concise source for understanding where and how to focus their expenditures on libraries.
This book provides strategic insights drawn from librarians who are meeting the challenge of digital scholarship, utilizing the latest technologies and creating new knowledge in partnership with ...researchers, scholars, colleagues and students.
Stolen Wordsis an epic story about the largest collection of Jewish books in the world-tens of millions of books that the Nazis looted from European Jewish families and institutions. Nazi soldiers ...and civilians emptied Jewish communal libraries, confiscated volumes from government collections, and stole from Jewish individuals, schools, and synagogues. Early in their regime the Nazis burned some books in spectacular bonfires, but most they saved, stashing the literary loot in castles, abandoned mine shafts, and warehouses throughout Europe. It was the largest and most extensive book-looting campaign in history.
After the war, Allied forces discovered these troves of stolen books but quickly found themselves facing a barrage of questions. How could the books be identified? Where should they go? Who had the authority to make such decisions? Eventually the military turned the books over to an organization of leading Jewish scholars called Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc.-whose chairman was the acclaimed historian Salo Baron and whose on-the-ground director was the philosopher Hannah Arendt-with the charge of establishing restitution protocols.
Stolen Wordsis the story of how a free civilization decides what to do with the material remains of a world torn asunder, and how those remains connect survivors with their past. It is the story of Jews struggling to understand the new realities of their post-Holocaust world and of Western society's gradual realization of the magnitude of devastation wrought by World War II. Most of all, it is the story of people -of Nazi leaders, ideologues, and Judaica experts; of Allied soldiers, scholars, and scoundrels; and of Jewish communities, librarians, and readers around the world.
Planning and assessment are both crucial elements of a public library that functions efficiently and flexibly. So why are they often treated as separate processes? This concise book combines planning ...and evaluation in a holistic approach, helping public library managers and staff put library resources to work for the community. Based on a series of successful workshops, the authors present a workflow made up of manageable steps for integrating outcome-based planning and evaluation (OBPE) into the routine functions of the public library. Offering step by step guidance that's transparent and easy to follow, this book: -introduces the concept of OBPE and explains how it can be a streamlined, effective method of getting library users' feedback -defines outcomes and shows why public libraries should use them to plan and evaluate services -shares methodologies for assessing community needs and interests, including key informant interviews, surveys, focus groups, and environmental scans -demonstrates how to use community assessment data to create outcome statements that not only guide the creation of new library services, but also provide targets for measuring the effectiveness of those service -offers techniques for designing services that directly serve the community while also achieving the outcomes the library has targeted -provides tips for sharing the results with stakeholders and maximizing successful outcome-based programs to leverage the library's role in the community Featuring plentiful examples of how to proceed through each phase of the OBPE model, this book boils down planning and evaluation into an approachable, easy to understand process for public librarians, library managers, and grant writers.
In Main Street Public Library, eminent library historian Wayne Wiegand studies four emblematic small-town libraries in the Midwest from the late nineteenth century through the federal Library Service ...Act of 1956, and shows that these institutions served a much different purpose than is so often perceived. Rather than acting as neutral institutions that are vital to democracy, the libraries of Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Osage, Iowa; Rhinelander, Wisconsin; and Lexington, Michigan, were actually mediating community literary values and providing a public space for the construction of social harmony. These libraries, and the librarians who ran them, were often just as susceptible to the political and social pressures of their time as any other public institution.
Invisible Search and Online Search Engines considers the use of search engines in contemporary everyday life and the challenges this poses for media and information literacy. Looking for mediated ...information is mostly done online and arbitrated by the various tools and devices that people carry with them on a daily basis. Because of this, search engines have a significant impact on the structure of our lives, and personal and public memories. Haider and Sundin consider what this means for society, whilst also uniting research on information retrieval with research on how people actually look for and encounter information. Search engines are now one of society’s key infrastructures for knowing and becoming informed. While their use is dispersed across myriads of social practices, where they have acquired close to naturalised positions, they are commercially and technically centralised. Arguing that search, searching, and search engines have become so widely used that we have stopped noticing them, Haider and Sundin consider what it means to be so reliant on this all-encompassing and increasingly invisible information infrastructure. Invisible Search and Online Search Engines is the first book to approach search and search engines from a perspective that combines insights from the technical expertise of information science research with a social science and humanities approach. As such, the book should be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students working on and studying information science, library and information science (LIS), media studies, journalism, digital cultures, and educational sciences.
The library in China has been transformed by rapid socioeconomic development, and the proliferation of the Internet. The issues faced by Chinese libraries andlibrarians are those faced by library ...practitioners more globally, however, China also has its own unique set of issues in the digital era, including developmental imbalance between East and West, urban and rural areas, and availability of skilled practitioners. Chinese Librarianship in the Digital Era is the first book on Chinese libraries responding to these issues, and more.The first part of the book places discussion in historical context, before moving on to the digital environment of the Chinese library. The book then considers the issue of digital copyright in China, and debates the core values of the Chinese library. The next three chapters cover public and academic libraries, and library consortia. Finally, the book gives a view of the future prospects for libraries in China. * Unique in focusing on digital libraries in China * Provides a comprehensive overview of libraries in contemporary China * Presents valuable information formerly available only in Chinese
From Greek and Roman times to the digital era, the library has remained central to knowledge, scholarship, and the imagination.The Meaning of the Libraryis a generously illustrated examination of ...this key institution of Western culture. Tracing what the library has meant since its beginning, examining how its significance has shifted, and pondering its importance in the twenty-first century, notable contributors-including the Librarian of Congress and the former executive director of the HathiTrust-present a cultural history of the library. In an informative introduction, Alice Crawford sets out the book's purpose and scope, and an international array of scholars, librarians, writers, and critics offer vivid perspectives about the library through their chosen fields.The Meaning of the Librarywill appeal to all who are interested in this vital institution's heritage and ongoing legacy.
With the legalization of same-sex marriage and the explosion of LGBTQ news coverage in recent years, gender studies is a subject of intense interest in popular media and a part of the curriculum at ...many colleges. Libraries realize the importance of supporting the field yet many have difficulty finding resources and programming ideas. This book provides case studies and a range of innovative solutions for better meeting patron needs. Twenty-seven chapters are arranged into sections covering Research and Library Instruction, History and Herstory, Programming, Collections and Beyond, and Resources.
The essays in Private Libraries and their Documentation revolve around the users and contents of early modern private book collections, and around the sources used to document and study these ...collections. They take the reader from large-scale projects on historical book ownership to micro-level research conducted on individual libraries, and from analyses of specific types of primary sources to general typologies and overviews by period and by region. As a result of its comparative approach and active engagement with questions regarding the nature, selection and accessibility of sources, the volume serves as a guide to sources and resources in different regions as well as to state-of the-art methods and interpretational approaches.
