This book is a must for librarians with international interest in access to knowledge. It includes a collection of 15 chapters written by authors from all over the world and covers different approaches to the vital role of libraries driving access to knowledge. There are chapters that offer solutions and ideas to enable libraries to become the knowledge engine in society. Other chapters discuss the conceptual part of the subject and related services. The book was compiled as part of the presidential theme of Ellen Tise, IFLA President 2009-2011, with the aim of offering the reader a good portrait of the opportunities and challenges that libraries have in driving access to knowledge.

Hardbound. Change has always been characteristic of serials, and now the nature and speed of that change have altered with the development of electronic technology. Inflation, automation, and changes in publishers' practices and vendors' services all make their mark on serials librarianship. Advances in Serials Management presents essays on current issues in various topics, emphasizing the response to change and clear communication among those who work with serials as producers, processors and users.

Text Retrieval and Filtering: Analytical Models of Performance is the first book that addresses the problem of analytically computing the performance of retrieval and filtering systems. The book describes means by which retrieval may be studied analytically, allowing one to describe current performance, predict future performance, and to understand why systems perform as they do. The focus is on retrieving and filtering natural language text, with material addressing retrieval performance for the simple case of queries with a single term, the more complex case with multiple terms, both with term independence and term dependence, and for the use of grammatical information to improve performance. Unambiguous statements of the conditions under which one method or system will be more effective than another are developed. Text Retrieval and Filtering: Analytical Models of Performance focuses on the performance of systems that retrieve natural language text, considering full sentences as well as phrases and individual words. The last chapter explicitly addresses how grammatical constructs and methods may be studied in the context of retrieval or filtering system performance. The book builds toward solving this problem, although the material in earlier chapters is as useful to those addressing non-linguistic, statistical concerns as it is to linguists. Those interested in grammatical information should be cautioned to carefully examine earlier chapters, especially Chapters 7 and 8, which discuss purely statistical relationships between terms, before moving on to Chapter 10, which explicitly addresses linguistic issues. Text Retrieval and Filtering: Analytical Models of Performance is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course on Information Retrieval or Linguistics, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This book gives a unique view of the current hot topic of continuing professional development/lifelong learning in the information services environment. It aims to provide the reader with guidelines for conceptualising, designing and measuring successful programmes for professional learning, staff development and professional growth in the organization.

As the population continues to age, gerontological research will become increasingly important and library holdings in gerontology and geriatrics will be in great demand. This valuable reference discusses the history of gerontology and geriatrics libraries in the United States and Canada and profiles their holdings. The study is based on a questionnaire distributed to public and private gerontology and geriatrics libraries. Data from the questionnaire are presented in brief but informative profiles. Each profile lists the type of library, its chief administrator, the date of its founding, the hours during which it is open, and its holdings, services, and facilities. The result is an illuminating overview of information centers available for the study of geriatrics and gerontology.

Joyce A. Post begins with an extensive discussion that traces the history of library collections in gerontology and geriatrics, including the impact and importance of federal assistance and the creation of geriatric education centers. The next section discusses the author's research methodology and offers an analytical summary of her findings. The directory that follows is arranged alphabetically by state and then by towns within each state. The appendixes present the questionnaire used to obtain the data and a listing of the library holdings of 18 major gerontology and geriatrics periodicals. The useful and varied indexes make this work an indispensable and easy to use reference for gerontologists, librarians, and all those interested in research on the elderly.

This comprehensive manual of operations for managing local history material within the administrative framework of a library covers issues of administration, acquisitions, access, and use of all formats of material. Information on continually changing areas such as preservation, copyright and other legal concerns, computer applications, and national databases is also addressed, along with public relations roles and outreach activities for local history collections. Guidelines for administration of nontraditional library material (e.g., manuscripts) will be especially helpful to librarians. Archivists will value the manual as one of continuing practical education and theoretical development as exemplified by the Society of American Archivists' Basic Manual Series and Archival Fundamental Series. Manuscript curators, students, and administrators will also benefit from this book.

Operational information management is at a crossroads as it sheds the remaining vestiges of its paper-based processes and moves through the uncharted domain of electronic data processes. The final outcome is not yet in full focus, but real progress has been made in the transition to electronic documents providing the aviation industry with a clear direction. This book looks at a combination of industry initiatives and airline successes that point to the next steps that operators can take as they transition to fully integrated information management systems. Although the route has not been fully identified, it is evident that a key to successful long-term efficient information management is industry-wide cooperation. The chapters are authored by a range of experts in operational information management, and collectively, they outline ways that operators can improve efficiency across flight, ground and maintenance operations. Considerations and recommendations are identified and presented addressing the following priorities: Safety-critical information and procedures Human factors Information security Operational information standardization. The readership includes: Airline flight operations managers and standards personnel, Airline operating documents and publication specialists, Airline information managers, Commercial pilots, Airline maintenance managers and personnel, Manufacturers and vendors of aviation products, Aviation regulators and policy makers, Aviation researchers and developers of information technologies, and Military technical publications specialists.

This diverse collection of American folktales and true stories showcases the history and lore of the western states. Capturing the spirit of legendary figures like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and events like the Gold Rush, stories animate American history. Experiencing these tales allows students to enjoy a vibrant aspect of history that is rarely represented and communicated: the hopes, fears, joys, and trials of the people who came before us. The United States of Storytelling: Folktales and True Stories from the Western States contains lore about early pioneers and settlers, Native Americans, and later immigrants of the states west of the Mississippi as well as the Commonwealths and Territories. Each chapter focuses on an individual state and includes approximately six folktales or true stories from that state, plus the date it entered the union. Appropriate for students in third through eighth grade, this guide is specifically suited for children studying the states in grades four through six, serving as a valuable storytime resource as well as a research springboard for these age groups. Features folklore presented by four noted storytellers and scholars Each chapter/state includes a sub-bibliography that lists sources by title; there is also a general bibliography in the back of the book Each chapter/state has its own glossary of terms

The development of online digital libraries has enhanced the availability of printed materials. By implementing these systems, this ensures the access of material to universities, students, and bibliophiles. Digitizing the Modern Library and the Transition from Print to Electronic is a pivotal reference source for the latest techniques and initiatives needed to transition libraries into the digital age. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as electronic resource management, library management software, and semantic web, this publication is an ideal resource for faculty members, research scholars, students, information specialists, and librarians in universities and in academic, public, and special libraries.

Using database-driven web pages or web content management (WCM) systems to manage increasingly diverse web content and to streamline workflows is a commonly practiced solution recognized in libraries to-day. However, limited library web content management models and funding constraints prevent many libraries from purchasing commercially available WCM systems. And, the lack of much needed technical expertise in building in-house WCM systems presents a great challenge for libraries of all types. Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies provides practical and applicable web content management solutions through case studies. It contains successful database-to-web applications as employed in a variety of academic libraries. The applications vary in scope and cover a range of practical how-to-do-it examples from database-driven web development, locally created web content management systems, systems for distributing content management responsibilities, dynamic content delivery, to open source tools, such as MySQL and PHP to manage the content. Issues and challenges associated with the development process are discussed. Authors will also discuss detours, sand traps, and missteps necessary to a real learning process.

Ethnic minority groups in the United States suffer and die from disease at rates much higher than the general population. Such groups include African-Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Pacific Asian Americans. To understand the nature of the deplorable rates, the health history of the ethnic groups must be understood. This book describes the contents of libraries nationwide which house health and medically related materials on ethnic minority populations. The book covers information about catalogs, books, articles, biographies, and autobiographies, primary source materials, cassette tapes of speeches, video tapes and films, and medical artifacts.

The repositories covered are in various stages of cataloguing these materials but indicate an interest in having researchers use the collections. This book is the most comprehensive guide to ethnic medical health materials, their location, state of completion, and the contents of collections.

Knowledge Management was the theme of the Standing Conference of Eastern, Central and Southern African Library and Information Associations (SCECSAL XVII) in 2006. This selection of conference papers provides a cross-disciplinary approach to knowledge, information and development and how the three together can mould a new and more informed society. The challenge is to make our libraries more people-centered and Afro-centric, not simply serving the interests of the elite and paying little attention to the plight of the less well off. This needs to change, with libraries becoming more inclusive and serving the needs of all. These papers raise provocative questions, and provide an insight into the struggle of information services in this part of Africa to be part of an emerging information and knowledge society.

This book discusses the development of library and information services in China and the effect of the nation's political and social conditions on that develpment. The author briefly reviews the history of Chinese libraries and librarianship, then describes Chinese library services in the first half of the 20th century. The remarkable consequences of the ideological change after the Communist takeover are described in a concise manner, but the focus of this book is the massive modernization movement that has taken place since 1978. This unique book has been prepared based on data collected directly from Chinese professional journals. In addition, it provides unusual detailed information from sources obtained during the author's extensive official visits to libraries and library schools in China. For the first time, these details are now easily accessible in one comprehensive volume.

Ernst Mach (1838-1916) was a seminal philosopher-scientist and a deserving member of the canon of major twentieth-century thinkers. Yet, despite a healthy resurgence in Mach studies, he is still widely thought to represent a simplistic positivist, even sensationalist, position that does not at all reflect the depth of Mach's interests and subtlety as a philosopher. By exploring Mach's views on science as well as philosophy, this book attempts to wrest him free from his customary association with logical positivism and to reinterpret him on his own terms as a natural philosopher and naturalist about human knowledge. Mach's development and his influences from 19th century German philosophy and science are probed in great conceptual and historical detail, and attention is paid to his unpublished Nachlass as well as to the affinities between Mach's thought and that of other major philosopher-scientists such as Einstein, Bertrand Russell, William James, Helmholtz, Riemann, Herbart and Kant. In particular, the book strives to set forth the true nature of Mach's sensation-elements, the motivations for his critique of the concepts of space and time in physics, and the real meaning of his famous critique of metaphysics. The author's work has appeared in Synthese, Kant-Studien, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, but here these inquiries are gathered into a unified historico-critical treatment that follows Mach's conceptual development and the culmination of his work in a unique and intriguing natural philosophy. Physicists, psychologists, philosophers of science, historians of twentieth-century thought and culture, and educators will find this volume a valuable help in interpreting Mach's ideas in a context that includes philosophy and science and the bridge between them."

Intended to support the national initiative to strengthen learning in areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, this book helps librarians who work with youth in school and public libraries to build better collections and more effectively use these collections through readers' advisory and programming. A versatile and multi-faceted guide, Best STEM Resources for NextGen Scientists: The Essential Selection and User's Guide serves as a readers' advisory and collection development resource for youth services and school librarians seeking to bring STEM-related titles into their collections and introduce teachers and young readers to them. This book not only guides readers to hundreds of the best STEM-related titles-fiction and non-fiction printed materials as well as apps, DVDs, websites, and games-it also includes related activities or programming ideas to help promote the use of the collection to patrons or students in storytime, afterschool programs, or passive library programs. After a detailed discussion of the importance of STEM and the opportunities librarians have for involvement, the book lists and describes best STEM resources for young learners. Resources are organized according to the reading audiences for which they are intended, from toddlers through teens, and the book includes annotated lists of both fiction and nonfiction STEM titles as well as graphic novels, digital products, and online resources. In addition, the author offers a selection of professional readings for librarians and media specialists who wish to further expand their knowledge. Introduces more than 500 STEM resource suggestions for toddlers to young adults Highlights more than 25 detailed library program or activity suggestions to be paired with STEM book titles Provides resource suggestions for professional development Contains bonus sections on STEM-related graphic novels, apps, and other media

Countries around the globe are grappling with issues of archive legislation -- both in established societies where old laws no longer respond to modern realities and in the growing number of new states seeking to establish their own legal framework.

These two volumes outline the progress and procedures developed by nations grappling with issues such as:
-- How to provide access while protecting privacy
-- How to craft legislation that will survive the rapid advances of technology -- and reflect the changing relationship between public and private sectors

The reports presented here reveal common elements that may be fruitfully addressed by international effort and will act as a sourcebook of ideas and action.

Extracting content from text continues to be an important research problem for information processing and management. Approaches to capture the semantics of text-based document collections may be based on Bayesian models, probability theory, vector space models, statistical models, or even graph theory. As the volume of digitized textual media continues to grow, so does the need for designing robust, scalable indexing and search strategies (software) to meet a variety of user needs. Knowledge extraction or creation from text requires systematic yet reliable processing that can be codified and adapted for changing needs and environments. This book will draw upon experts in both academia and industry to recommend practical approaches to the purification, indexing, and mining of textual information. It will address document identification, clustering and categorizing documents, cleaning text, and visualizing semantic models of text.

This book is the culmination of three years of study of information and referral activity in U.S. public libraries. Information and referal (I&R) is defined broadly as facilitating the link between a people and the resource or resources outside the library that can meet their needs. The book helps to define what I&R is, how some libraries have approached it, and what major problems have been associated with its adoption. It serves as a guide on the role of public libraries in I&R, managing I&R in a library environment, appropriate skills and training, the performance of libraries where I&R has been tried, the impact of library-based I&R on the client group, and how library-based I&R compares with non-library I&R.