Public stunts and all-for-fun, utterly nonpoliticized publicity bashes can be a great way to promote a library to a community, get people to see the library in a different light and become interested and involved, and finally reach those who think that libraries are boring or stuffy places. This light-hearted but precise manual provides step-by-step instructions on how to plan, equip and train a successful book cart drill team. It includes tips for recruiting members and making the experience gratifying, finding festive opportunities to perform, costuming, decorating the carts--and especially, clear choreographic drawings for imaginative, attention-getting routines. And by the way: grocery stores, retailers, rental outfits and others could easily adapt the ideas in this book. It doesn't have to be library book carts, it can be grocery carts, baby strollers, and lawn mowers--anything you can push down the street.

Applicable for all types of libraries. Needs assessment can be defined as the process of using one or more techniques to collect and analyze data on library users or potential users. The guide includes the methodology and techniques for carrying out needs assessment projects, ranging from short-term assessments to long-term research or comprehensive collection assessments. Various types of data, techniques, and methodology are described, as are associated pointers and pitfalls.

Formerly entitled "The Handbook of Special Librarianship and Information Work", this represents the 8th edition of Aslib's "flagship" theories, practices and procedures since 1957. As in previous editions, the handbook draws on a substantial background of research and best practice to assist practitioners in developing a pragmatic approach to information management in the work place. The contributors are a mix of well-known academics, consultants, information industry commentators, as well as some new writers now coming in to the profession. This edition sees a substantial number of contributors from outside the UK (from the US, Australia and South Africa) reflecting the global nature of information management. Primarily geared to providing a comprehensive overview of all aspects of information work in "special" information environments, the handbook is also of interest to information managers in other sectors. This edition sets the scene with a lengthy chapter on the digital library and most of the book's contents reflect the importance of the new Web-based delivery mechanisms. The final chapter of the handbook questions some of the long held assumptions about the information "end

This edited book helps demystify how to incorporate ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education into information literacy instruction in higher education as well as how to teach the new Framework to pre-service librarians as part of their professional preparation. This single volume demonstrates professional practice by bringing together current case studies from librarians in higher education who are implementing the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education as well as cases from educators in library and information science, who are working to prepare their pre-service students to practice in the new instructional environment. Instructional librarians, administrators, and educators will benefit from the experiences the people on the ground who are actively working to make the transition to the Framework in their professional practice.

Reviews from the first edition: "Thoroughly readable...important...eloquent"--Library Journal; "all aspects...are covered"--Journal of Academic Librarianship. In this second edition to Museum Librarianship, the author offers guidance in planning and providing information services in a museum--beginning or revitalizing the library; collection development and the bibliographic process; technical services; administration; space and equipment requirements; fundamental services; extended information services; and the information partnership between museums and their libraries. The Internet and other electronic resources are fully covered. The focus of this new edition has shifted slightly from mainly dealing with the start-up aspects to an emphasis on the goals of library and information services in a museum, and the processes through which such services can be achieved. The authors underlying goal is to help enhance and enrich the encounter of the museum-goer with enduring objects, in a time when we all seem to be assailed on every side by random noise and flickering image.

Publications of international governmental organizations (IGOs) are among the most difficult documents for librarians to acquire, organize, and use. This revised work examines the documentation, publications, and computerized information services of major IGOs, such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the League of Nations, the International Development Research Center, and the G-7. Special attention is given to the consequences of recent institutional restructuring and retrenchment. The book covers institutions, resources, and processes. Chapters discuss the organizational and functional characteristics of IGOs; examine their available resources, including documents now available through electronic sources; and explore the role of the private sector and institutions outside the IGOs in providing access to IGO information. Hajnal also discusses collection development and reference and information work. This authoritative, up-to-dat

Using Twitter to Build Communities looks at ways for libraries, archives, and museums to go far beyond Twitter as a "broadcasting" tool, and highlights innovative methods to use the service to spark communication and create ties within your institution's greater community. Appropriate for the social media beginner as well as the experienced user, it covers topics like: *Creating a Social Media Strategy/Policy *Choosing the Right Software *Gaining Followers *How to curate content *How and when to automate your feed *How and when to embed your feed *How to use cross-platform strategies *Using Analytics This book condenses years of research and expertise on using Twitter in an institutional setting into one handy reference for launching or reviving your organization's Twitter presence into an impactful medium in your community.

The user-centered approach is central to the creation of usable information systems, services, and institutions. Information system design should derive from user research into information needs, tasks accomplished in meeting those needs, and resources used in the tasks. "Information Tasks" summarizes user research, then presents design sketches of systems that illustrate how design is linked to research. Also discussed are usable information services and an overview of the organization and economics of information institutions. This comprehensive user-centered approach provides an agenda for information research, design, and education that challenges many accepted beliefs and suggests new directions for information work. "Information Tasks" is of interest to library and information science students and faculty interested in information storage and retrieval, user studies, and systems analysis design. Students and scholars of human factors in systems design, human-computer interaction, and cognitive engineering also find the text useful. It reviews user research from many disciplines, and links research to practical design issues. It provides a unified model for user studies and user-centered design, and includes how-to summaries of design chapters. It shows how designers can investigate their user communities. It provides a general template for the design process. It integrates all aspects of information design, and discusses library issues in the larger information context.

Public Libraries in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact of recent policy initiatives directly targeted at public libraries along with broader developments in the public sector environment within which they operate. Key features include: c An exploration of the context within which public libraries are operating and analysis of their role in local and national life; c Examples of best practice in service delivery; c Evaluation of the challenges and opportunities confronting public library managers; c Wide ranging coverage, including information from published and unpublished sources, supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders in the public library sector. The book provides a unique and thorough guide to the contemporary discourses surrounding issues of identity, social purpose, value and strategy facing the public library service.

In the information society, is the community focused library a real possibility? This book reappraises the relationship between the library and its communities through an examination of the rise and decline of 'community' librarianship over the last three decades. The authors consider key models of community based library service and argue that bland assertions of community prevalence mask a complex and problematic relationship between a highly traditional public service bureaucracy and its users. The resulting uncertainty of purpose, they claim, explains much of the current 'crisis' of the public library movement. Drawing on recent social science theory and empirical work in the field, this book offers a new and critical perspective on the current public library debate. It is essential reading for librarians, students of information and library science and all who have a stake in the future of the public library. As a case study of community, public service and the local state it should also be of value to those with an interest in community development, cultural policy and local government.

This guide for the design and management of information services is intended for students in information services management, both in schools of library and information science and in schools of business management. It is also aimed at practitioners - librarians and other managers - who provide information to services in business, industry, and government, either from within an organization or as external consultants and contractors. In addition, managers of computer and communications facilities and other organizations that process information, should find this guide relevant.;The text offers a basis for the design and management of information services to: provide decisison-makers with help of the management of change; make corporate decision-makers aware of information as an asset and as a strategy for improved, innovative decisions; and make information service providers potential sources of innovation for any organization that processes information.

This volume provides the researcher with an excellent tool for investigating the history, politics, and culture of Paraguay. Although various libraries, museums, and archives in the U.S. contain documentary collections of interest to Paraguayanists, they are little known and thus underutilized. Whigham and Cooney help correct this problem. Not only do they describe the most famous collections in such libraries as the University of Texas at Austin, the Library of Congress, and the Oliveira Lima Library at Catholic University, they have also uncovered some obscure materials. From the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco to the Mennonite Archives at Bethel College in Kansas, they have run the gamut of available resources. This guide discusses diplomatic correspondence, genealogical materials, missionary records, political reports, and unpublished personal reminiscences. The authors also offer hints and advice on working in the various repositories and suggest research themes that might be developed using particular collections. An attractive format and a thorough subject index make this volume easy to use as well as informative.

Transforming Health Sciences Library Spaces presents first-hand case studies and practical advice on transforming health sciences library spaces in the 21st century. Collected here are the experiences and thoughts of librarians on the transformation of health sciences library spaces. They provide insights into planning, budgeting, collecting, and integrating user feedback, collaborating with leadership and architects and thriving in the good times and the tight times. The book has three main sections: The Realities of Making Virtual Work Library Spaces that Work for Users Library Spaces Working with What They've Got These tackle crucial issues including: *Identifying and overhauling dated spaces that lack flexibility *Gathering information on usage behavior and user feedback in relation to our spaces. *Working with feedback to increase satisfaction, and use of the library space with little funds. *Removing a large percentage of the physical collection and deciding what to replace it with. *Maximizing relationships with stakeholders such as leadership and external departments to transform the library space. *Understanding what going 100% virtual means in practice. *Managing usage of materials not traditionally well suited to online access.

This book offers insights into changes brought about by the enormous growth of the internet. There are new ways to share cultural heritage materials through online finding aids, exhibits, and other initiatives. What has been accomplished across libraries, archives, and museums? The authors consider that question by using case studies to explore activities in 14 libraries, archives, museums, and other heritage organizations. They consider what we can learn from current collaborations within and across libraries, archives, and museums and why some collaborations are successful while others cannot be sustained. Their findings are based on observations and interviews at institutions and organizations in the United States, Australia, and the U.K. These organizations have worked to make their collections accessible. Some have simply digitized their collections, while others have enhanced their collection management systems. Others have incorporated digital asset management systems to organize and retrieve media, and to manage digital rights and permissions. Most of these institutions and organizations have succeeded through strategic partnerships, strategic planning, and insightful leadership. However, the book also contains examples of institutions that have undergone transitions: one of the museums closed, and another closed its library. Taken together, the fourteen institutions shed light on professional practices today.

Using Twitter to Build Communities looks at ways for libraries, archives, and museums to go far beyond Twitter as a "broadcasting" tool, and highlights innovative methods to use the service to spark communication and create ties within your institution's greater community. Appropriate for the social media beginner as well as the experienced user, it covers topics like: *Creating a Social Media Strategy/Policy *Choosing the Right Software *Gaining Followers *How to curate content *How and when to automate your feed *How and when to embed your feed *How to use cross-platform strategies *Using Analytics This book condenses years of research and expertise on using Twitter in an institutional setting into one handy reference for launching or reviving your organization's Twitter presence into an impactful medium in your community.

Academic librarians working in instruction are at the crux of professional, higher educational, and societal change. While they work with disciplinary faculty to ensure learners are critical information consumers and producers in 21st century ways, how do academic librarians develop a sense of their own identities as post-secondary instructors? Using both broad and in-depth data from practicing instruction librarians, this book identifies the catalysts and influences in academic librarians' perspective development process. From these factors, then, instruction librarians and librarians-to-be can hone their own instructional identities and transform their teaching practices. This focus on understanding this perspective transformation process around instructional identities offers both working academic librarians and LIS graduate students an innovative way to think about their roles as educators. While many books explore the practical or how-to aspects of teaching in libraries, Transforming Academic Librarianship: How to Hone Your Instructional Identity and Adopt Best Teaching Practice takes a step up and examines how academic librarians think about or approach instruction as a part of their work. Through explicating this metacognitive process, this book helps both academic librarians and librarians-to-be to more intentionally consider their teaching practices and professional identities.

Assessment of student learning continues to be an urgent topic in higher education. For librarians who provide information literacy instruction, creating and implementing authentic assessment instruments asking students to "analyze, synthesize and apply" what they learn is especially challenging, since most librarians have little more than an hour in which to teach students and assess their learning. Using Authentic Assessment in Information Literacy Programs: Tools, Techniques, and Strategies offers teaching librarians practical resources and approaches that will help them to implement authentic assessment in any instructional setting. Sections include: oWhat is "authentic" assessment? oAuthentic assessment tools and techniques across teaching modes oHow to adapt authentic assessment to individual library needs oUsing authentic assessment to inform teaching strategies and instructional design Whether you provide one-shot instruction sessions or for-credit courses, in person or online, this book will help you to develop and implement authentic assessment of student learning.

Websites and digital news stories disappear daily; researchers can't access their own data for reuse; students don't know how to make their work last for the next 10 years. Knowledge is built on previously gathered information, but what happens when that information is no longer accessible? And where does the librarian or archivist fit into this picture? This book describes the basic steps of data curation, in clear easy-to-follow language, and clarifies the many potential roles that a librarian or archivist can play to help make our information future viable for generations to come. Digital Curation Fundamentals is for anyone who wants to help save knowledge for future use, but knows little-to-nothing about digital curation or how it fits with their jobs. This book is also for administrators who need to stay on top of things but don't yet have a good grasp on the purpose and scope of digital curation and how central it is to the future. Additionally, this book is a reference handbook for those who are involved in digital curation in some form but who need the context to know how their work fits into the big picture, and what comes next. This book takes a straight-forward, commonsense approach to a complex problem, and portrays the challenges and opportunities in an approachable conversational style which lowers the bar to include those with little to no technical expertise.

First published in 1992, the purpose of this book is to identify and describe the most important factors that must be considered in making decisions about the optimal ways to provide access to information - in short the best way to use the humans, the machines, and the intangible resources known as information, particularly at the organizational level. In recent years executives have begun to outsource computing and telecommunications functions primarily to control costs. Traditional libraries and information centres have been disbanded in favour of service contracts or outright leasing of staff. Both the private and public sector are examining their information service operations from the point of view of cost effectiveness. Decisions about owning versus leasing of information are being made daily. Decision makers are finding that they must deal differently with funding and budgeting of information systems and libraries than they have in the past. New paradigms for these service functions already exist. Not only have corporations and governments begun to contract out entire information service operations, but libraries themselves have begun to consider the costs, effectiveness, and implications of outsourcing some of their operations and services. This book provides a framework for decision-makers to view and review information services within their organizations. Entire units, components of libraries and information centres are defined and untangled so that the widest variety of organizations can analyse their own environments. Although there is a minimal use of library and computing jargon, a short glossary at the end explains terms for which there is no simple English language substitute. Each chapter is accompanied by comments from a broad range of experts in the information field.

Digital Curation Projects Made Easy: A Step-By-Step Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums outlines simple steps for accomplishing practical digitization and digital preservation projects for those with little experience, time, and/or resources. Following a general introduction, instructions for completing these commonplace digital curation projects are covered: *Photograph collections *Newspaper collection *Rare books *Art Collections *Oral Histories Digital curation does not need to be reserved for big budgets or world-famous collections. In fact, a large part of digitization and digital preservation consists of practical projects that are done every day without much fanfare in libraries and archives around the world.

Librarianship is still a predominantly white profession. It is essential that current practitioners as well as those about to enter the field take an unflinching look at the profession's legacy of racial discrimination, including the ways in which race might impact service to users such as students in school, public, and academic libraries. Given the prevalence of implicit and explicit bias against Black and African American people, authors Folk and Overbey argue that we must speak to these students directly to hear their stories and thereby understand their experiences. This Special Report shares the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the library experiences of Black and African American undergraduate students both before and during college, grounding it within an equity framework. From this Report readers will learn details about the study, which focused on the potential role of race in the students' interactions with library staff, including white staff and staff of color; gain insight into Black and African American users' perceptions of libraries and library staff, attitudes towards reading, frequency of library usage, and the importance of family; understand the implications of the study's findings for our practice and for librarianship more broadly, including our ongoing commitment to diversifying the profession; and walk away with recommendations that can be applied to every library and educational context, such as guidance for developing an antiracist organization and more equitable service provision.

Searching the Grey Literature is for librarians interested in learning more about grey literature. If you have ever been asked for a grey literature search but didn't know where to start, this book will help you craft your search successfully. If you are an expert searcher but find that your library patrons are unfamiliar with the vast body of grey literature, this book may be a useful teaching aid. Those that are both new arrivals and established professionals in the field of librarianship will learn much about grey literature from reading this book, and hopefully acquire new search skills and knowledge. Although a wide range of different types of librarians or information professionals may find the content of this book useful, those working in the areas of health or social science will benefit the most from the book's content. Searching the Grey Literature discuss different aspects of grey literature, including an introduction to grey literature, the value of grey literature, search sources for grey literature and how to conduct needs assessment before beginning a grey literature search. Search techniques for identifying grey literature documents, selecting and evaluating grey literature search sources and best searching practices are also discussed in detail.

The Savvy Academic Librarian's Guide to Technological Innovation provides detailed plans for purposefully integrating technology into the fabric of the academic environment by utilizing examples from a variety of institutions to illustrate successful methods and best practices. Included case studies and further readings emphasize everything needed to create, grow, and sustain a holistic plan for integrating technology within the academic library setting. Highlighted features include: *Concentration on technology uses and applications *Activities and steps needed to develop partnerships, design learning outcomes and other pedagogical applications and measure the success of each of these elements *Practical, how-to approach that is useful to four-year, two-year, and community colleges alike

he summer reading program is the focal point of a children's librarian's year, requiring countless hours of preparation and nearly year-round promotion. Summer reading programs for teens and adults are also offered in many communities, adding to that workload and bringing together librarians from different departments to accomplish the required tasks. In a single volume, Successful Summer Reading Programs for All Ages: A Practical Guide for Librarians provides the tools necessary to put together successful summer reading programs for each of these different age groups. Key elements include: * Sample program ideas for early childhood, school-age, teen, and adult readers to suit any summer reading theme *Best practices for promoting summer reading to the community *Troubleshooting for common difficulties associated with summer reading programs *Tips and tricks for using software programs to manage registration and track readers' progress Public librarians serving children, teens, and/or adults will find everything they need to put together a successful summer reading program in this comprehensive handbook.

Informed Learning Applications: Insights from Research and Practice is the latest volume of rigorous research in the Advances in Librarianship series. Edited by experienced librarian Kim L. Ranger, the eight contributions to this volume describe various practices using and extending Christine Bruce's informed learning theory from a range of educational spaces, from schools to universities. Chen and Chen address integrated information literacy instruction in Taiwanese elementary schools by joining the Big6 model, inquiry-based learning, and Bruce's Six Frames. Woods and Cummins apply universal design in teaching first-year university students about the research process within the discipline of documentary filmmaking using library guides. Tucker blends informed learning with Meyer and Land's threshold concepts to redesign master's courses and uses information experience to assess students' transformed learning experiences and relationships with information. Leek and Brown train university speech center peer tutors and recommend revising public speaking communication curricula. Ranger creates a model of relational liaising by applying Bakhtinian leadership principles to academic librarianship and gives examples that combine informed learning and scholarly communication. Fundator and Maybee transform the role of librarians in higher education to "informed learning developers." Cunningham uses blended models that represents stakeholders' information literacy conceptions and perceptions of their information context to promote learning in an international school community. Whitworth and Webster observe postgraduate students as they negotiate power and authority through resistance in their online communication practices. Informed Learning Applications focuses on integrating approaches to learning, featuring librarian praxis and collaboration with disciplinary instructors. It is the ideal read for academic librarians and researchers looking to explore how to facilitate learning.