Where would a library be without its student employees? In academic libraries, the number of student employees, in real numbers, often exceeds the number of regular staff. They assist users, shelve materials, and work as security staff; many perform very technical and demanding work, or provide the coverage needed for long hours of access to collections and services (both physical and virtual). Motivated by their appreciation for these unsung heroes, Baldwin and Barkley cover the basics of good supervision, with specific reference to student employees in libraries: how to hire, how to fire, and everything in between. An unparalleled compendium of facts, advice, and checklists.

Library computer users are often novices and may not be aware that even seemingly innocuous information supplied to Web sites can be mined by government agencies, unscrupulous businesses, and criminals. Even the donated computers that libraries accept and pass on to otherwcan reveal confidential information like social security numbers. The recent discovery that online service providers have been supplying vast quantities of data to government agencies without the public's knowledge dramatically brought this threat to light. This book will help you, as a librarian, understand the threats and pitfalls of electronic privacy and develop a solid plan to protect the privacy of your patrons. A glossary of terms and acronyms is included.

This book provides an overview of approaches to assist researchers and practitioners to explore ways of undertaking research in the information literacy field. The first chapter provides an introductory overview of research by Dr Kirsty Williamson (author of Research Methods for Students, Academics and Professionals: Information Management and Systems) and this sets the scene for the rest of the chapters where each author explores the key aspects of a specific method and explains how it may be applied in practice. The methods covered include those representing qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. Both a chapter on the topical evidence-based practice approach, and another critiquing it, are also included. The final chapter points the way towards potential new directions for the burgeoning field.
Renowned information literacy researcher Dr Christine Bruce affirms the usefulness of the book: New researchers and early career professionals will appreciate the clarity of the introductions provided' to each of the methods covered.

Designing a school library media center may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so take advantage! In this hands-on guidebook, school library construction and media specialists Rolf Erikson and Carolyn Markuson share their experiences of working on more than 100 media center building projects around the country, using conceptual plans from actual school libraries.Combining all aspects of design for the school library media center - floor plans, furniture, technology, bidding, and evaluation - this newly updated edition addresses: current and future technological needs of the student population; unique needs of the community library that combines school and public library services; sustainability and conservation issues to help designers and planners ""go green""; accessibility requirements, including all ADA regulations from the first edition plus the latest material on learning styles and accessibility; and, cost control and ways to minimize mistakes using proven bidding and evaluation methods.With 30 new illustrations and floor plans and an updated glossary of technical terms, readers will be knowledgeable and organized when discussing plans with contractors and vendors. Using the guidance here, you'll avoid the classic building and renovation hazards and build a library media center for the future!

Library building projects leave a legacy for decades, with one chance to get it right. Those with access to a trustworthy expert who can explain the process in step-by-step terms will have the best chance to make their projects succeed. Expert author McCarthy is an architect with in-depth expertise in building libraries as well as an 18-year veteran library trustee. This authoritative overview is filled with practical advice to understand key relationships and manage a complex process. Checklists and sample construction documents provide hands-on insights into the best practices in library construction and tools to do the job. Library directors, professionals, administrators, and trustees will get expert guidance on creating a realistic budget for new library construction and determining the responsibilities on both sides.

Online scholarly publishing is revolutionizing scholarly communication, and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is among those protocols leading the way in the transformation process. OAI enables access to Web-accessible material by harvesting (or collecting) the metadata descriptions of the records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. Through a series of case studies, Cole and Foulonneau guide the reader through the process of conceiving, implementing and maintaining an OAI-compliant repository. Its applicability to both institutional archives and discipline based aggregators are covered, with equal attention paid to the technical and organizational aspects of creating and maintaining such repositories.

Build strong bridges with new members of your community. With this insightful guide, you will learn how to assess your current organizational performance with immigrants, gather data, and use that information to gain support for organizational initiatives. You will also discover how to adapt policies to better fit changing needs, overcome language barriers, develop public relations strategies that reach immigrants, and build culturally relevant collections, services, and programs for a changing community. Filled with quotes, anecdotes, and profiles from the author's research with immigrant communities, the book provides both a positive vision and practical plan for serving immigrants in your library, school, or organization.

Leadership is separate from, but integral to, management; and library directors today and for the foreseeable future can be expected to play an institutional role as they lead the library to contribute towards the mission of their college or university. Similarly, new courses in library leadership now accompany more traditional ones on managing organisations and information resources. However, much of the literature on library leadership represents a distilled application of principles and practices borrowed from other disciplines, with few reports of research from the library field. Conceived as a companion to The Next Library Leadership (Libraries Unlimited, 2003), Making a Difference includes not only a discussion of effective attributes, but of issues central to the development of leadership qualities, strategies, and dispositions. Essential reading for anyone interested in advancing the quality of leadership within the discipline of library and information science, particularly academic librarians in or aspiring to positions of managerial leadership.

ALA Fundamentals Series (Angela, same header treatment as Library Supervision title of Winter 05 catalog.) With more than one-third of library users under the age of 12, it may be said that children's services drive public libraries. Still, many administrators don't fully appreciate how integral these services are to their institutions. Sullivan conducts a friendly tour in this comprehensive reference, covering both innovative and standard practices in children's services. From the collection and programming, to homework support, reference and reader's advisory, to promoting and budgeting, children's services parallel other library services and are no less important. Part of ""ALA's Fundamentals Series"", this overview provides hands-on, proven strategies for those on the front lines, while addressing questions critical to the long-term success of children's library services: Why are children's services so important? How do they fit into the library overall? What do children's librarians do all day? Why should children's librarians focus on administrative matters? What are the hot issues and cutting edge trends? Those who want to become children's librarians, experienced and new children's librarians, library administrators and trustees alike will find this new 'bible' of children's services sets the record straight: Children's services are the heart of the library.

Librarianship as a calling is a powerful perspective. Many librarians sense the deeper meaning and higher purpose in their work, yet rarely have time to contemplate it. Maxwell's down-to-earth candor combined with scholarly insight is designed to inspire and enlighten her library peers and colleagues. Drawing from history, sociology, and philosophy, ""Sacred Stacks"" voices the importance of the library profession and libraries as community institutions in a secular time. Librarians, LIS students and educators, as well as trustees, can step into these Sacred Stacks to reignite meaning in their everyday work. Considering these higher purposes of libraries, Maxwell outlines the work of librarians and libraries that: promote community, uplift society, preserve and transmit culture, and organize chaos.

In today's information world, the importance and need for archival collections and professionals to care for them cannot be understated. Noted professor and author Richard J. Cox provides an insightful guide to the new roles, responsibilities, and considerations for archival management. Cox examines the role of archival collections in public scholarship, distance learning, and the digital era. He explores the need for modern organizations that collect historical materials. Chapters guide readers through the creation of job descriptions and the hiring an archivists and consultants. Cox delineates the role of the archivist in the knowledge age; the profession's changing credentials and specialties; and the growing base of knowledge found in the field's scholarly works. Informative and timely, this guide contains vital new information for archivists, records managers, students, and all information workers who are interested in understanding the important roles archivists play in modern institutions and the information profession.

An updated manual based loosely on the 1977 Insurance manual for libraries, by Gerald E. Myers.

Today's tight financial times make budgeting and sound money management more important than ever. The first six chapters of this essential how-to use a step-by-step approach to thoroughly explain and illustrate the nuts and bolts, including types of budgets and how to create and revise them; ways of tracking spending and fund allocation; and timelines for financial planning, such as capital spending. Later chapters cover special spending challenges, such as new buildings, maintenance, proposals and bids, outsourcing, and more. Careful attention is given to how libraries make and save money - now more important than ever - with coverage of library income, protecting property, alternative library funding, fundraising, grants, and bonds and referenda. The authors describe selected software libraries can use to set and track budgets and point readers to helpful Web sites for further information. Appendices include a sample accounting manual, annual report form, request for proposal, lease agreement, and security guidelines. This impressive, new manual contains proven strategies, detailed examples, worksheets, handouts, forms, and tips that will help any librarian become a better financial manager.

This book describes techniques for evaluating services provided through library networks, including collection development, group purchases, and reference services. Providing guides for developing evaluation instruments, testing them and applying them, it is comprehensive in its treatment of evaluating network services. Featuring contributions from some of the leaders in the area of e-metrics (Oliver Pesh, Ebsco; Judith Hiott, Houston Public; Jeff Shim, ARL e-metrics; and Chuck McClure) this book is an integrated, updated knowledge base of events in this area since 1998. It also provides a great deal of experiential knowledge concerning what libraries should do, plan for, and use in e-metrics.

Electronic resource management is becoming a primary responsibility of library managers. This book approaches electronic resource management as a system affecting all library work, linking it to concepts of collaborative management and the assessment cycle. The author clearly demonstrates how collection development, acquisitions, licensing, budgeting, and cataloging techniques; technological infrastructure; and user services for electronic resources fit into the new collaborative management that relies on learning more than control to respond to change. The techniques presented for managing electronic resources improves the library's service value through relationships between library professionals and with library customers. Engaging the librarian in a cycle of constant learning and assessment, the approach ultimately makes work lighter, relationships with colleagues and customers more productive, and library services more relevant to community needs.

Anyone involved in systems work for libraries will benefit from this masterful compilation written from the authors' experience in academic backgrounds. Whether the reader is a student pursuing a career in library systems or information technology, or an employee in a library systems office or in a supporting information technology division, the advice and descriptions in this book will prove helpful to readers involved in systems work related to any type of library. Chapters begin with planning and proceed through every possible aspect of the relationships and work involved for successful cooperation among libraries and information technology services. Topics include staffing and reporting lines, and inter-organizational relationships, and proceed through training, daily and periodic operations to research and new technologies. A series of resource materials and a list of additional reading conclude the book.

Metadata, or ""data about data"", is used to organize and access information in an effective way. From cataloguing to organizing archives, metadata helps front-line librarians provide customers with a direct path to information. In this text, Priscilla Caplan presents a comprehensive description of the various forms of metadata, its applications, and how librarians can put it to work. Both descriptive and nondescriptive forms of metadata are defined (including the TEI Header, the Dublin Core, EAD, GILS, ONIX and the Data Documentation Initiative) and applied to actual library functions. Illustrations show how different forms of metadata look, the advantages and disadvantages, and where they're best applied in the library. Caplan seeks to provide an unbiased analysis of metadata forms, emerging forms, and current and future applications. She answers questions such as: how does using metadata enhance access?; how can metadata be used to organize and describe a variety of information formats, especially digital resources?; what are the different ways you can use metadata in your library?; and which form of metadata will be most appropriate for your collection?

Every librarian who wants to make wise policy decisions and protect the organization from legal challenges can now consult the library legal team of Minow and Lipinskil Libraries are in the thick of legal issues as new technologies add layers of complexity to everyday work in the library. How do you know what's legal? What can you do to identify and address issues before they turn into bona fide legal matters? Where do you turn for help? In this comprehensive and authoritative, yet easy-to-understand Q & A customized for librarians, you'll find expert guidance on complex issues. With coverage of all the issues of the day - filters, fair use, copyright, Web publishing and Internet use, software sharing, ADA compliance, free speech, privacy, access, and employment and liability issues - you will have a ""librarian's J.D."" in short order! This timely and practical desktop tool: Focuses on quick and reader-friendly answers to common legal questions; Provides examples of legal challenges faced in libraries; Includes precedents and case citations to conduct additional research; Supports libraries in their commitment to access without liability; With detailed and ready-to-apply answers to more than 600 legal questions; this trouble-shooting guide will become your favorite quick-reference.

It's a dark and scary world. Pans are tabid. Blood, guts, and gore are the norm. Welcome to the horror genre. Horror classics have been scaring people for years. Nowadays, who doesn't know about Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Dean Koontz? Profiled in a special section, the ""Big Three"" have turned horror into best-sellers. For all the horror fans that haunt your library, this is the must-have guide. Readers' advisors and reference librarians will appreciate the key tools provided to expand upon this genre, including listings of top books, authors, and award winners within eleven horror subgenres - like mummies, biomedical, monsters, and splatterpunk. Clear descriptions of characteristics within subgenres are provided throughout. To further help you engage new renders, expert horror mavens Spratford and Clausen draw a savvy connection between film and horror as a potent reminder that the scariest movies have been adapted from novels. Their classic and contemporary recommendations like Rebecca, The Shining, and Rosemary's Baby reinforce activities between readers' advisors and library programming and open up the (cellar) door for further patron involvement. Readers' advisors and reference librarians will also learn The art of the readers' advisory interview for horror; Strategies to develop, and tools to market, the horror collection; Tacties for introducing non-horror readers to the genre; Where to go for more details and resources; Honor may be an acquired taste, but under the guidance of two passionate aficionados, any librarian can master the basics to add horror into readers' advisory services.

This much needed work addresses a topic of increasing importance and urgency: the shortage of individuals attracted to professional careers in librarianship, and the subsequent consequences for leadership positions, particularly library directorship. Through extensive interviews and a thorough review of the existing literature, the authors-all highly respected for their exceptional leadership and contributions to library science-assess what constitutes effective leadership and identify the traits needed by the next generation of academic and public library directors. The authors argue that library directors must be both managers and leaders, and that LIS students and graduates need appropriate support in seeking out upper level positions and exercising leadership. They present tools for assessing leadership and suggest strategies that individuals can use to prepare themselves for leadership positions and the challenges that lie ahead. A detailed bibliography completes the work. Chapters include: A Shortage of Librarians Qualities Expected of Library Directors: A Review of the Literature Qualities for ARL Directors Qualities for ACRL Directors Qualities for Public Library Directors Analysis and Comparison of Qualities Leadership Assessment Acquiring the Qualities Hunting Heads and Final Reflections An important contribution to the field of library and information science, this eye-opening study is essential reading for anyone in the profession.

An estimated thirteen million people in the U.S. are not served by a public library. This presents opportunities for creating new libraries. Involving complex, time-consuming, and expensive decisions, the prospect of starting a library without the right direction seems overwhelming. The Public Library Start-Up Guide provides a framework for success - from looking at the big strategic picture to picking the furniture. Hage offers a succinct, nontechnical, and step-by-step approach covering all the practical issues for library professionals as well as nonlibrarians who need to know where to start. With savvy guidance on all aspects of providing public library service, this is the comprehensive one-stop resource for planning and starting a new library. Community leaders, Friends of Libraries, trustees, policymakers, and municipal officials as well as librarians will find a friendly, accessible, and concise guide to help them get the job done.

Pre-adolescent boys are nearly invisible in libraries. With ever-increasing electronic amusements, how can books and the library compete for their attention? It can be done, according to librarian and educator Michael Sullivan. In Connecting Boys with Books, he provides the tools that librarians, school library media specialists, and educators need to overcome cultural and developmental challenges, stereotyping, and lack of role models that essentially program boys out of the library. Attracting boys to library programs in the ""tween"" years will go a long way in maintaining their interest in books and reading over a lifetime, creating good habits from a young age. Based on his experiences with boys in both educational and library settings, Sullivan's practical and proven programming builds on the unique developmental needs and interests of boys in this middle stage. Certain stories, types of characters, action, humor, and mischief are sure to appeal. Here are the guidelines for connecting with boys by: Finding and promoting male readers as role models; Using the power of chess, games, and other challenging (and competitive) activities; Encouraging physical responses to books in a way that spells ""fun"" to boys; Talking about books so boys will be enticed to listen; Reaching out with stories that resonate with boys at this stage; Enhancing boys' ongoing journeys by encouraging independent reading; From playing chess to swathing the walls in butcher paper to give boys a physical space to respond to books, Sullivan's practical ideas and developmentally astute insights show librarian and teacher colleagues how to make vitally needed connections with this underserved population.

Recent law, corporate, and even public library closings are the sad confirmation that libraries are no longer a given. Despite the fact that librarians bring unique value to their communities and organizations, too often their work goes on under the radar. The benefits provided by information professionals are invisible and taken for granted as Internet search engines replace real experts. It's time to assert your value and the value of the resources you marshal. Step from behind the desk or computer to make your community aware of just how indispensable your services are. Here are all the tools you need to become the ""squeaky wheel"" and attract the attention your work deserves. Use these practical strategies to connect with customers, make services both visible and valuable to the community, and get the word out using proven marketing, customer service and public relations tactics specifically tailored to the library environment. Learn to: Provide the answers your users/customers need; Gather internal and external champions to grow a funding base; Access the resources that keep your enterprise viable; Keep information resources available in spite of budget constraints; Be recognized as a value-provider within your organization or community; Library directors, department heads, solo librarians: Learn how NOT to be invisible! Packed with all the best practices in marketing library services, this hands-on guide provides inspiring stories and case studies of library colleagues around the nation who are successfully advocating and marketing themselves and their services.