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
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.
Over one hundred presentations from the 37th annual Charleston Library Conference (held November 6–10, 2017) are included in this annual proceedings volume. Major themes of the meeting included data ...visualization, analysis and assessment of collections and library users, demand-driven acquisition, the future of print collections, and open access publishing. While the Charleston meeting remains a core one for acquisitions librarians in dialog with publishers and vendors, the breadth of coverage of this volume reflects the fact that this conference continues to be one of the major venues for leaders in the publishing and library communities to shape strategy and prepare for the future. Almost 2,000 delegates attended the 2017 meeting, ranging from the staff of small public library systems to the CEOs of major corporations. This fully indexed, copyedited volume provides a rich source for the latest evidence-based research and lessons from practice in a range of information science fields. The contributors are leaders in the library, publishing, and vendor communities.
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.
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.
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.
Walter Gropius associated standardisation with promoting civilisation in 1935, yet Andrew Carnegie's influence on the proliferation of pattern book public library plans internationally predated these ...observations by 50 years. Through the first twenty years of his programme, he supported the erection of almost three thousand public buildings across Britain and America. Though better acknowledged in the US than the UK, this philanthropic contribution radically extended the scope of public provision and remains incomparable in its scale and scope in both nations. Frequently engraved with the self-deifying slogan Let there be Light�, open access to navigate these new interior public spaces after work coincided with the first provision of electric light. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, professional groups had sought to specify minimum standards of natural light and air for schools and hospitals. However, the commercial quantification of electricity accelerated the development of a readily comparable vocabulary to prescribe adequate quantities of light for all tasks regardless of their location or orientation. Seeking to gauge the extent of universal values, this book concentrates on the design and performance of a handful of early Carnegie library buildings in Britain and America, identifying their response to contemporary design theory, but also by contrast to their respective local environmental contexts. It examines whether their standards of provision were equitable and if these privately financed public buildings were the first roots of generically standardised public environments to be shared transatlantically. The book also argues that the public library building type can provide a datum for acknowledging the twentieth century legacy of shared international environmental standards for public spaces more broadly.
This book explores the history of Library and Information Science (LIS) across non-English speaking European countries, including France, ex-Yugoslavia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Portugal.
Library education is changing. At a time when librarianship is increasingly seen as part of the information industry, Library and Information Science is also searching for its place in a new and ...rapidly developing university landscape.
This book analyzes the development of the contemporary university in light of present critical social theory, focusing on such aspects as academic acceleration, organizational accretion and the rise of an ”entrepreneurial spirit,” all of which have both epistemological and organizational consequences. Library and Information Science has proven well-suited to meet this development. One way has been through the rapid international growth of the iSchool movement, now counting close to a hundred member schools all across the world. iSchools not only meet the requirements of contemporary university development, but also contribute to a recontextualization of librarianship and library education. As the iSchool movement relates to a view of information as a commodity and the ”iField” to increased economic growth, it recontextualizes the library sector, traditionally connected to democratic development based on the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Educating librarians in the Contemporary University is written from a European perspective, and examples such as the EU research platform, Horizon 2020, Government Research Proposals, and policy documents from European iSchools are used in an attempt to understand the current development in Library and Information Science and its relevance for librarianship. As the European Research and Development Sector increasingly connects universities to the solution of various ”social challenges” with emphasis on commercial collaborations, the view on knowledge and use of university resources are affected in a way which seemingly make critical analyses difficult.
Questions are asked about the relation between iSchools, late capitalism and the development of Critical Librarianship. Is there a way of fulfilling the ambitions of the critical theory classics and achieve research and an education environment which encourage emancipatory goals within the iSchool movement?
