Libraries in the USA and globally are undergoing quiet revolution. Libraries are moving away from a philosophy that is collection-centered to one focused on service. Technology is key to that change. ...The Patron Driven Library explores the way technology has moved the focus from library collections to services, placing the reader at the center of library activities. The book reveals the way library users are changing, and how social networking, web delivery of information, and the uncertain landscape of e-print has energized librarians to adopt technology to meet a different model of the library while preserving core values. Following an introduction, the first part begins with the historical milieu, and moves on to current challenges for financing and acquiring materials, and an exploration of why the millennial generation is transformational. The second part examines how changes in library practice can create a culture for imagining library services in an age of information overflow. The final chapter asks: Whither the library? * Provides a synthesis of current research on the impact of technology on behaviour, and connecting it with library services * Offers examples and practical advice for incorporating technology to meet user expectations and assess services * Suggests management techniques to overcome barriers to change and technology innovation
Developing Librarian Competencies for the Digital Age identifies specific digital skills needed for success, ways of developing those skills, and ways of assessing them. This book identifies the crux ...of what it means to a librarian in the 21st century for library professionals at any stage in their career in any library setting.
Cruising the Library examines the ways in which library classifications have organized sexuality and sexual perversion. The author studies the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Classification, ...as well as the Library of Congress's Delta Collection, a restricted collection of obscenity until 1964.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is ...the global voice of the information profession. The series IFLA Publications deals with many of the means through which libraries, information centres, and information professionals worldwide can formulate their goals, exert their influence as a group, protect their interests, and find solutions to global problems.
Collaboration between libraries and social workers is an exploding trend that will continue to be relevant to the future of public and academic libraries. Whole Person Librarianship incorporates ...practical examples with insights from librarians and social workers. The result is a new vision of library services. The authors provide multiple examples of how public and academic librarians are connecting their patrons with social services. They explore skills and techniques librarians can learn from social workers, such as how to set healthy boundaries and work with patrons experiencing homelessness; they also offer ideas for how librarians can self-educate on these topics. The book additionally provides insights for social work partners on how they can benefit from working with librarians. While librarians and social workers share social justice motivations, their methods are complementary and yet still distinct-librarians do not have to become social workers. Librarian readers will come away with many practical ideas for collaboration as well as the ability to explain why collaboration with social workers is important for the future of librarianship.
Globalizing the Library focuses on the globalization of information and the library in the period following the Second World War. Providing an examination of the ideas and aspirations surrounding ...information and the library, as well as the actual practices and actions of information professionals from the United States, Britain, and those working with organizations such as Unesco to develop library services, this book tells an important story about international history that also provides insight into the history of information, globalization, and cultural relations. Exploring efforts to help build library services and train a cohort of professional librarians around the globe, the book examines countries in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific during the period of the Cold War and decolonization. Using the ideas of ‘library diplomacy’ and ‘library imperialism’ to frame Anglo-American involvement in this work, Laugesen examines the impact library development work had on various countries. The book also considers what might have motivated nations in the global South to use foreign aid to help develop their library services and information infrastructure. Globalizing the Library prompts reflection on the way in which library services are developed and the way professional knowledge is transferred, while also illuminating the power structures that have shaped global information infrastructures. As a result, the book should be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of libraries, development, and information. It should also be of great interest to information professionals and information historians who are reflecting critically on the way information has been transferred, consumed, and shaped in the modern world.
At a time when libraries are no longer leading proprietors of information, many library professionals find themselves rethinking their purpose. In this collection of new essays, contributors share ...their experiences and ideas for keeping libraries integral to changing communities.
This important volume by one of the leading scholars in the field examines and discusses how library professionals can meet the demands of policy makers to open up the public library system without ...destroying its values. Based on a critical literature review, a survey of library professionals and consultations with other stakeholders, the book discusses the challenges involved in providing a service that prioritizes equity and social inclusion while at the same time attempting to promote and maintain quality, excellence and ethical standards. In assessing how those responsible for public libraries around the world go about this task the author advocates a service that is sensitive to difference and seeks to provide access to the best.
This new series presents and discusses new and innovative approaches used by professionals in library and information practice worldwide. The authors are chosen to provide critical analysis of issues ...and to present solutions to selected challenges in libraries and related fields, including information management and industry, and education of information professionals. The book series strives to present practical solutions that can be applied in institutions worldwide. It thereby contributes significantly to improvements in the field.
Information science was a burgeoning field in the early years of
the Cold War, and while public and academic libraries acted as
significant sites for the information boom, it is unsurprising that
...McCarthyism and censorship would shape what they granted readers
access to and acquired. Wild Intelligence traces a
different history of information management, examining the
privately assembled collections of poets and their
knowledge-building practices at midcentury.
Taking up case studies of four poets who began writing during
the 1950s and 1960s, including Charles Olson (1910-1970), Diane di
Prima (1934-2020), Gerrit Lansing (1928-2018), and Audre Lorde
(1934-1992), M. C. Kinniburgh shows that the postwar American
poet's library should not just be understood according to
individual books within their collection but rather as an archival
resource that reveals how poets managed knowledge in a growing era
of information overload. Exploring traditions and systems that had
been overlooked, buried, occulted, or censored, these poets sought
to recover a sense of history and chart a way forward.
