For decades, we have been told we live in the “information age”—a time when disruptive technological advancement has reshaped the categories and social uses of knowledge and when quantitative assessment is increasingly privileged. Such methodologies and concepts of information are usually considered the provenance of the natural and social sciences, which present them as politically and philosophically neutral. Yet the humanities should and do play an important role in interpreting and critiquing the historical, cultural, and conceptual nature of information. This book is one of two companion volumes that explore theories and histories of information from a humanistic perspective. They consider information as a long-standing feature of social, cultural, and conceptual management, a matter of social practice, and a fundamental challenge for the humanities today. Information: A Reader provides an introduction to the concept of information in historical, literary, and cultural studies. It features excerpts from more than forty texts by theorists and critics—including Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, Lisa Gitelman, Ian Hacking, N. Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Norbert Wiener—who have helped establish the notion of the “information age” or expand upon it. The reader establishes a canonical framework for thinking about information in humanistic terms. Together with Information: Keywords, it sets forth a major humanistic vision of the concept of information.

Librarianship may be said to be facing an identity crisis. It may also be said that librarianship has been facing an identity crisis since it was proposed as a profession. With the advent of technology that lowers barriers to the access of information, the mission of a library has become indistinct. This volume will explore the current purpose of librarianship and libraries, how we become "Masters of our Domains", develop expertise in various elements of the profession, and how we extend outward into our communities.

This book examines the use and re-use of digital archives in a unique manner, by combining theoretical and practical approaches to the contemporary digital archive. The book brings together a range of writers - specialising in media and cultural studies, contemporary art and art history, digital and networked culture, library and museum studies - to explore the cultural impact of digital archives. Several of the essays describe the process of constructing a digital archive as a specific case study - in digitising a physical archive and designing a searchable digital database as the core of the digital archive. Other chapters explore the cultural significance of digital archives in more general theoretical terms. These considerations include: the specific properties of the digital archive; its similarities and differences to the traditional paper-based archive; the ethical decisions made in the design of an archive; and the potential for creative re-use of online archived materials.

The many recent changes in higher and further education mean that it is more important than ever to analyse the needs of academic library users, and both promote and provide the service they require. This constructive book, pervaded throughout by the impact of IT on the learning environment, surveys the influences on today's academic library, and explains how to increase user satisfaction through quality management. The author focuses particularly on users' behaviour in the library, the problems they cause or encounter, and how libraries cope. The book examines the varying needs of undergraduate and graduate, mature and part-time students, overseas students, franchised students, distance learners and other groups with special needs, explaining ways in which these needs can be identified and the service evaluated. One chapter is devoted to research and researchers' information demands. The particular requirements of subject communities and their consequences for academic libraries are also investigated, as well as the requirements of teaching staff and ways in which the library can work with them. The author emphasizes the importance of user education programmes and explains how to promote the library effectively with limited resources. For librarians, heads of services and senior library managers in further and higher education, and those, such as subject librarians, responsible for specific student groups, this book provides a comprehensive and realistic guide to providing and promoting a quality service. Students of librarianship and information management will gain valuable insight from this book into user analysis and improving the performance of information provision.

This Gower Handbook is an authoritative guide to both the traditional and newer aspects of library and information management. Edited by Ray Prytherch, it brings together the insight of a range of respected contributors, who offer advice on the management, storage, retrieval, analysis, marketing and delivery of information. The book begins with Part I analyzing the context and trends of the information world. In Part II, Strategy and Planning, the information environment is explored in more detail, with Chapters 3 and 4 presenting the main issues and principles of financial planning and strategic planning. Part III, The Service Infrastructure, looks at customer care, the role of performance measurement and research in service improvement, and the influence of copyright law in the delivery of information products to customers. Part IV, Managing Resources, includes five chapters on strategic management, information auditing, human resource management, preservation and disaster management. The last part of the Handbook, Part V, Access and Delivery, focuses on the potential of electronic systems with chapters on subject gateways and Z39.50, electronic publishing, intranets and new models of access and delivery. Each part of the Handbook begins with an introduction by the editor and the book concludes with a directory of organizations, including useful URLs, and a glossary. Flexibility and adaptability are crucial for information professionals if they are to maintain their skills at the right level to provide the services needed by both information-rich and information-poor. In this one book librarians from all backgrounds, information managers and officers, document and records managers, and network and Web specialists will find answers to a wide range of questions that confront them in their working day. The Handbook will become a standard reference on best practice for professionals and students. It will be of interest to information analysts, knowledge managers, and others, including publishers, involved in information maintenance and provision.

This book sets out to provide postgraduate researchers with guidance on selecting and applying sociotechnical theories to the study of information systems, including how they can be combined to complement each other. Until now it has been difficult to source advice on the application of these theories, and there has been no single book that combines multiple theories as this does. Examining the impacts of technological developments and seeking to understand how humans interact with computers and systems is a dynamic field but can often confuse researchers with the overwhelming number of social theories that are utilised to derive insights. Instead, the author in this book breaks down some of the most popular theories used to underpin information system research, such as activity theory (AT), actor-network theory (ANT), contingency theory (CT), diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, structuration theory (ST), and the technology acceptance model (TAM). By doing so, this book serves to enable a simpler, faster selection of appropriate theories, and a more effective and productive application that leads to richer, more rigorous research outcomes. Written for postgraduates, researchers, and academics in the fields of information technology and information systems, this book provides a valuable resource of sociotechnical research methodologies that will enable and enhance future studies.

Providing a substantive approach to the issue, Management of Library and Archival Security: From the Outside Looking In gives librarians and collection directors practical and helpful suggestions for developing policies and procedures to minimize theft. In addition, this text prepares you to deal with the aftermath of a robbery or natural disaster that destroys priceless materials. Through expert opinions and advice, Management of Library and Archival Security will teach you how to protect and secure invaluable collections and the finances invested in them.In addition, Management of Library and Archival Security offers numerous suggestions for preserving collections from environmental hazards and natural disasters. Contributors discuss several possible scenarios leading to the loss or destruction of library or archive materials and offer numerous measures of protection, including: implementing timely inventory standards, using approved marketing practices, keeping good user records, and having knowledge of insurance coverage making a recovery plan that deals with the impact of a theft and how it may affect staff and the actual workings of a department or archive knowing who to contact after a theft, such as local enforcement agencies, federal officials, and listing the theft on the Library Security Officer Listserv (LSO) to alert local and national libraries and collectors to the crime incorporating internal audits in a university setting to prevent crime and ensure accounting and administration controls are effective and efficient instituting a preservation program for collections, which includes temperature control of the indoor environment, studying the building design for weaknesses or potential dangers, reformatting deteriorating materials, and limiting the handling of materials making plans for the aftermath of a disaster, such as creating methods for risk assessment, developing collection priorities, and making rehabilitation policies for materialsThe chapters in Management of Library and Archival Security offer unique insight from a former F.B.I. agent with extensive experience in library thefts, a preservation specialist, and an archivist with extensive conservation experience in order to provide you with all of the information you need to safeguard library and archive collections against theft, environmental conditions, natural disasters, and resultant financial loss.

An overview of the research topics and trends that have appeared over the last five years, Serials Cataloging at the Turn of the Century doesn t just tell you that there has been a lot of change--that the information environment is something of a chameleon, always beguiling and slipping out of grasp. Instead, it gives you the plain facts on the specific challenges serials catalogers have been facing and how they re meeting adversity head-on, ready to gain the advantage in the rumble with proliferating information and formats.Comprehensive, resource-packed, and easy-to-digest, Serials Cataloging at the Turn of the Century examines how developments in automation and national standards have broadened the role of the serials cataloger, how an integrated format can lessen the problem with duplicate records in computerized bibliographic utilities, and how CONSER has utilized new technology to facilitate access to serials information. It gives you strategies and cautions that will be useful to your cataloging unit as it prepares for an electronic resources cataloging venture, advice on how to develop an electronic communications network, and important information on: accessing bibliographic information in European online catalogs practical issues and concerns surrounding the cataloging of Internet materials the need for a comprehensive guidebook for cataloging serials that are published in all types of audiovisual formats Canada s largest information systems management outsourcing company the multiple-version problem of serials nontraditional resources for bibliographic information the consolidation of the CONSER program and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging making the technological infrastructure of a business successful at cataloging and processing items changes in a serial unit s work flow when a library migrates to an integrated library systemWhether you want information on workstation-based cataloging tools, staffing an outsourcing company, ISSN Sweden, resources on AACR2 serials cataloging, or the bibliographic control of serials in special libraries, Serials Cataloging at the Turn of the Century has it all In fact, it sorts out all the information--neatly and precisely--so that you won t have to bumble along in confusion, wondering how to navigate through the sea of information, cataloging programs and techniques, and user formats.

This a detailed examination of how to use information sources to research, profile and target prospects. The book shows how to match prospects for marketing and fund-raising campaigns. This detailed study should be of interest to information professionals, business information providers, corporate librarians, commercial bankers, investors, lawyers and law librarians, media researchers and public relations.

Arguing that there never was a time when politicians did not prevaricate and when some communities did not doubt conclusions that others considered to be facts, The Measurement of Information Integrity puts the post-truth era in context and offers measures for integrity in the modern world. Incorporating international examples from a range of disciplines, this book provides the reader with tools that will help them to evaluate public statements - especially ones involving the sciences and scholarship. It also provides intellectual tools to those who must assess potential violations of public or academic integrity. Many of these tools involve measurement mechanisms, ways of putting cases into context, and a recognition that few cases are simple black-and-white violations. Demonstrating that a binary approach to judging research integrity fails to recognize the complexity of the environment, Seadle highlights that even flawed discoveries may still contain value. Finally, the book reminds its reader that research integrity takes different forms in different disciplines and that each one needs separate consideration, even if the general principles remain the same for all. The Measurement of Information Integrity will help those who want to do research well, as well as those who must ascertain whether results have failed to meet the standards of the community. It will be of particular interest to researchers and students engaged in the study of library and information science.

YIVO, founded in 1925 in Wilno (Vilnius), is a center for scholarship on East European Jewish history, language, and culture. During the 1920s and early 1930s a network of YIVO affiliates was established across Europe and the Americas including one in New York, which became the institute's new home when YIVO was reestablished in 1940 by members of its board who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.

This is the first repository-level finding aid to the archives (over 1,400 collections) of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. It includes a brief history of the institute and archives, descriptive entries on each collection, a detailed index of key words and subject headings, and information on the archive's basic services.

The true pioneers in electronic publishing put their bibliographic databases on tape and online in the 1960s. Nearly all of them had long experience with compiling information for distribution in printed form and a strong market connection. As a result of Soviet advances in science and space technology, American government support for information science and academic libraries flowed freely for a little over a decade, making possible tremendous advances in technology, in retrieval techniques and in sophisticated coverage. Advances in information technology and market conditions have encouraged many more participants to underwrite the development of databases that now extend into the arts, social sciences, business, and popular interests. These essays show how production statistics accompanied by statements of editorial coverage provide a fairly accurate reflection of output of many of the major disciplinary bibliographic databases. The urgent priority of information resources in the 1960s has encouraged comprehensive servicing of the formal research literature as published in journals and monographs. Authors have counted subject words, languages, origins, types of publication, and so on over several decades. This volume also includes articles on some databases that are not strictly bibliographic, such as the CMG database of college courses, which illuminates some of the changes in college textbook publishing. Information seekers will find the many tables of practical use, as guidance to what and how much may be found within each database. Analysts of publishing, of science policy, and of higher education will find information relevant to expenditures, human resources, and other indicators of education, research, and technology activity.

This book presents a series of recent studies that introduce current topics and novel concepts in the field of information science. Among the chapters are discussions of the contribution of information science to society in the dual context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Agenda 2030, some negative aspects of information behaviour, including criminal activities in the dark web and the hikikomori phenomenon, the hot issues of fake news and hate speech from a library and information science perspective, gamification in libraries, and the new concepts of 'jamography' and 'disnormative information'. Intended for information specialists and researchers, librarians and library and information science students, the book analyses how people use information, what their information needs are and how these needs are satisfied in today's digital world. The book can also serve as a useful reference for the education and training of students and specialists in library and information services.

The Academic Library Director: Reflections on a Position in Transition addresses the changing nature of work and the new demands being placed on academic library directors. The authors'broad range of professional experience offers you unique insight on a management position that is truly in transition. Get inside seasoned professionals'heads to save time, effort, and money for yourself and your library. See what these experienced directors did right . . . and learn from their mistakes. The Academic Library Director is the resource that: Considers the challenges of leading an academic library through the transition period between permanent directors; lists the challenges met by interim directors and presents their advice for succeeding in this difficult role. Studies the career paths for academic library directors based on a survey of 21 library directors across the country, with a focus on factors such as gender, education, age, tenure, professional experience, and internal vs. external candidates. Identifies critical criteria for recruiting library leaders for the 21st century. Should your library hire a manager or a leader? Provides a unique, non-librarian perspective on the establishment of a newly configured position of Vice Provost for Information and Dean of University Libraries at a large university. Discusses the perceptions recently appointed academic library directors have about collegiate life vis a vis the realities they've encountered since assuming their positions. Shows how a library can thrive in a not-for-profit culture by embracing for-profit principles. The Academic Library Director: Reflections on a Position in Transition will help prepare you and your library for the only sure thing in the future--change. Successful library directors will be the ones who can recognize and thrive on the "management of change." Unsuccessful directors will find themselves unable to adapt. Use this book to ensure your library comes out on the right side of the line.

Autoethnography for Librarians and Information Scientists illustrates that autoethnography is a rich qualitative research method that can enhance understanding of one's own work experiences, whilst also facilitating the design of tailored experiences for a variety of audiences. Starting with the position that librarians and information scientists require deep insight into people's experiences, needs and information behaviour in order to design appropriate services and information interventions, this book shows that using only conventional methods, such as questionnaires and focus groups, is insufficient. Arguing that autoethnography can provide unique insights into users' cultural experiences and needs, contributors to this volume introduce the reader to different types of autoethnography. Highlighting common challenges and clarifying how autoethnography can be combined with other research methods, this book will empower librarians and information scientists to conceptualise topics for autoethnographic research, whilst also ensuring that they adhere to strict ethical guidelines. Chapters within the volume also demonstrate how to produce autoethnographic writing and stress the need to analyse autoethnographies produced by others. Autoethnography for Librarians and Information Scientists is essential reading for any librarian, information scientist or student looking to deepen their understanding of their own experiences. It will be particularly useful to those engaged in the study of service provision, user studies and information behaviour.

An important component of library administration and organization in the modern age is managing projects. Once the realm of technology and business gurus, formal project management tools, techniques and schemas have become more commonplace in libraries. Using formal project management components can help libraries achieve their desired outcomes with less stress for employees. However, there can be an entry barrier to project management, since the concepts are still somewhat out of the range of the usual library administration experience. This volume of Advances in Library Administration and Organization attempts to put project management into the toolboxes of library administrators through overviews of concepts, analyses of experiences, and forecasts for the use of project management within the profession.

Award-winning information theorists and practitioners Pearlstein and Matarazzo have assembled a group of top international authors with experience in public, academic, government, and special library settings, including experienced independent information professionals, to address the critical issues facing Information Management (IM) today. This new handbook provides a context for approaching the world in which information professionals work; a tool, the Balanced Scorecard, to help demonstrate contribution and value; and a review of opportunities for new areas of employment and career development, ripe for applying the Information Services skill set. Through combinations of topical chapters with common themes, the professor and student will find a multi-perspective approach to the IM landscape. Used as a ready-reference, the IM practitioner will find both theoretical and pragmatic approaches to inform their decision making on traditional as well as new challenges. For information and IM professionals, librarians, and students, this must-have handbook provides invaluable insights from the leading names in the field, enabling you to make the best decision no matter what challenges you face.

How can you, as an acquisition librarians, keep current on the output of hundreds of publishers? The answer, of course, is that you cannot. For over 30 years, approval plans have been used by librarians to acquire current titles, save staff time, and build core collections. Even today, these reasons seem appropriate, as libraries try to maintain up-to-date collections and control personnel and operating budgets. However, as shown in Approval Plans: Issues and Innovations, the use of approval plans is not so simple and straightforward; their use is subject to complex procedures and policies--and even politics. This book presents research by librarians from academic libraries and professionals from approval vendors to give you necessary insight on the major approval plan issues and to show you some of the innovative approaches to solving the problems associated with approval plans. Unfortunately, approval plans are not as simple as creating a "needs" profile and receiving the books that match that profile from an approval vendor. Problems and questions invariably arise. If you are in acquisitions and collection development or administration, it is particularly important that you explore the following questions posed in Approval Plans: What mechanisms can reduce receipt of duplicate titles? Do vendors see small college libraries as a viable market? What role does technology play in improving approval plans? What level of returns is acceptable? Do the hidden operational costs of approval plans offset their benefits? Approval Plans is full of useful information that will show you how to save time and money, improve collections, and utilize new technology. The book discusses such key issues as: the benefits of approval plans to public service vs. the costs to technical service; the call for refined profiles to help keep return rates low; proper management in key areas such as profile development, quality control, and plan maintenance; approval plan overlap; and vendor responsibilities. Innovations covered include: the call for introduction of approval plans to small college libraries; the possibility of "outsourcing" technical service functions with vendor-supplied cataloging and end-processing; the use of online services, World Wide Web, and the Internet to improve communication between vendors, publishers, and libraries; and a list of criteria to be considered when selecting an automated acquisitions system. Approval Plans is especially useful and timely as libraries are considering the best ways for acquiring books during an era of declining materials budgets. This collection also has special importance, in a broader sense, to the many changes that are occurring in academic libraries today.

A collection of articles in English and German devoted to the study of books, readers and libraries in medieval England, especially in the Anglo-Saxon period. The first article surveys the history of the English library from its beginnings to the suppression of the monasteries. It is followed by a more detailed examination of the first four centuries of Anglo-Saxon book collections and by studies on book production in 9th-century England, as seen in relation to King Alfred's plans for educational reform and to the intellectual background of library history in the 10th century. Of two articles on liturgical books, one sets out the now standard classified list of liturgical manuscripts written and owned in Anglo-Saxon England; other essays look at individual manuscripts and the earliest modern catalogue of surviving books with Old English texts.

This book provides practical information about web archives, offers inspiring examples for web archivists, raises new challenges, and shares recent research results about access methods to explore information from the past preserved by web archives. The book is structured in six parts. Part 1 advocates for the importance of web archives to preserve our collective memory in the digital era, demonstrates the problem of web ephemera and shows how web archiving activities have been trying to address this challenge. Part 2 then focuses on different strategies for selecting web content to be preserved and on the media types that different web archives host. It provides an overview of efforts to address the preservation of web content as well as smaller-scale but high-quality collections of social media or audiovisual content. Next, Part 3 presents examples of initiatives to improve access to archived web information and provides an overview of access mechanisms for web archives designed to be used by humans or automatically accessed by machines. Part 4 presents research use cases for web archives. It also discusses how to engage more researchers in exploiting web archives and provides inspiring research studies performed using the exploration of web archives. Subsequently, Part 5 demonstrates that web archives should become crucial infrastructures for modern connected societies. It makes the case for developing web archives as research infrastructures and presents several inspiring examples of added-value services built on web archives. Lastly, Part 6 reflects on the evolution of the web and the sustainability of web archiving activities. It debates the requirements and challenges for web archives if they are to assume the responsibility of being societal infrastructures that enable the preservation of memory. This book targets academics and advanced professionals in a broad range of research areas such as digital humanities, social sciences, history, media studies and information or computer science. It also aims to fill the need for a scholarly overview to support lecturers who would like to introduce web archiving into their courses by offering an initial reference for students.

At the heart of any discussion about the future of libraries is the future of librarians-and how well our instructional programs, especially the Master of Library Science (MLS) degree, prepare them for their careers. Building on the Re-envisioning the MLS initiative from the University of Maryland's iSchool and the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC), this book continues the critical conversations around preparing future librarians. Library and information science (LIS) programs are the foundation of librarianship, and their design requires input from everyone in the field-from academics designing programs and courses, to practitioners reflecting on how prepared (or unprepared) they are to serve their communities, to hiring authorities considering qualifications of candidates. The second installment of this two-part volume explores many of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the future of the MLS degree, including the changing nature of the communities that libraries serve and how LIS education should address these changes, how archival training must accommodate big data, the specialized skill sets librarians need on the job, and how best to prepare librarians for their role as educators. These conversations will never be fully resolved, as LIS education must continue to evolve to ensure the efficacy of libraries and the librarians at the heart of the work.

This book focuses on difficulties and opportunities in revitalization of old, derelict or abandoned buildings into a library and investigates the transformation of buildings which originally had a different purpose. The publication shows worldwide best practice examples from different types of libraries in historic environments, both urban and rural, while maintaining a focus on sustainability concerning the architecture and interior design.

Digital-Age Innovation in Higher Education recounts the creation, development, and growth of an innovation unit within a major university. This single case study follows the development of the EdLab at the Gottesman Libraries of Teachers College, Columbia University, which was charged with developing new services and products at a time when digital technologies were markedly beginning to impact the sector. The major steps taken - recruiting staff in key skill areas, developing projects, collaborating across organizational lines, securing resources, delivering new services, and more - are covered in detail, illustrating the opportunities and challenges presented by innovation mandates in long-established organizations with stable operations and traditional academic values and practices.

This in-depth study includes data from nine case study areas which have been subjected to detailed examination. The Review assesses the scope and value of public library services currently provided in England and Wales, with a schedule of guidelines and wide-ranging recommendations which lead to a blueprint for services in the new millennium. The Report: examines the changing world within which public libraries have to operate; incorporates significant developments in the UK and abroad over the last ten years; analyses the changing and emerging needs of the public; investigates partnerships, links with other information sectors, and the relationships between library services and other local authority services. It is essential reading for everyone who deals with the public library sector. Contents: Summary; Schedule of recommendations; Scope and structure; The public library's environment; Users and their interests; Functions and services; Funding and control; Repercussions of change; Cooperative endeavours; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.

Continuing work on Pepys's library, and recent discoveries, necessitate expansion of the content and entries in the original volumes. This is the first in the Supplementary Series. Pepys's library has been, as he directed, preserved intact at his old Cambridge college since 1724. Between 1978 and 1994 a complete catalogue was published for the first time. The present title, essential to all users of the first volume in that series, N.A. Smith's Printed Books, vastly enhances the range of information available. The short-title arrangement of Printed Books is replaced by a numerical listing which follows the library's shelf-order; many entries have been extended, and where possible updated with reference to new scholarship; the location of MSS and other material treated elsewhere in the catalogue is also indicated, providing for the first time a published conspectus of the whole library. Extensive indexes have been provided for authors and ancillary contributors, subjects, printers and places of publication, and references which reflect Pepys himself and his bibliophilism.Concordances identify the Pepys books covered by STC, Wing, ESTC and other bibliographies. Dr CHARLES KNIGHTON gained his Ph D from Magdalene College, Cambridge.