In this book, nine librarians from across the country describe their libraries' best practices in this key area. Their contributions range from all-encompassing customer service policies and models any library can both adapt and be proud of to micro-approaches that emphasize offering excellent user-focused technology planning, picture book arrangement with patrons in mind, Web 2.0 tools to connect users with the library, establishing good service delivery chains, and making your library fantastic for homeschoolers. As past Public Library Association President Audra Caplan writes in her introduction to this book, "There is nothing magical about providing excellent customer service; it just takes the right people, the right philosophy and the passion to make it a reality." If you've got all that, here are the best practices to make stellar customer service a reality for your library's users.

Just as Andrew Carnegie s support changed the landscape of public libraries in America, Apple s launch of the iPhone on June 29, 2007 forever altered how people expected to interact with services. Libraries, like every other kind of organization, must now make their services not just their catalogs available on an array of mobile devices. Mobile Library Services provides 11 proven ways to reach out to mobile users and increase your library s relevance to their day-to-day lives. Librarians detail how they created mobile apps to how they went mobile on a shoestring budget. Written by public, academic, and special librarians, these 11 best practices offer models for libraries of every type and size."

Since there's no point in Twittering if no one acts on your tweets and there's no point in having a Facebook page with a million "likes" if library use doesn't increase, you'll welcome the eight best practices presented here because they will help your library both actually do social media in a way that matters and do it well. The successful strategies presented here range from the Vancouver Public Library's innovative use of Twitter to the United Nations Library's adoption of a social media policy to the Farmington, Connecticut Public Library's fantastic work using social media to reach teens who weren't using the library. Other libraries highlight their ventures into media including blogs, Pinterest, and social catalogs.

If libraries are to remain centers for lifelong learning, then that learning must increasingly be e-learning. But, where can librarians turn for the best ideas and inspiration on how to implement e-learning programs? This book features nine exemplary programs set in all types of libraries. You'll find proven, successful ways of introducing online credit-based information literacy instruction, innovative methods for teaching critical thinking skills online, ways of using open source software in interactive learning, step-by-step guidance for instructional screencasting, ways to work with faculty on e-learning solutions through streaming video, and how a school library used e-learning to teach about the Holocaust. These stellar models offer solutions and feature the aspects you and your staff need because they recognize the problems you face. There's plenty here for all libraries to grab on to and implement to move learning from inside the library to where your users live and work.

Through the lens of age, racism, and suffering, "From Zero to Eighty" narrates a history of what has not been written about older African American men. In this memoir, author Helen K. Black tells the life stories of John T. Groce and Charles E. Harmon against the backdrop of deep-seated cultural beliefs that engender racism. In this memoir, Black shares the thoughts and emotions of Groce and Harmon, two African American men who are rich with years, experience, and pain. Among many topics, "From Zero to Eighty" explores the following: The definition, description, and stories of suffering both as individuals and as part of a community The place of these men in a society that's filled with covert and overt racism The concepts of survival for African American men in general The men's childhood and young adult years and how they shaped their self- and world view The significance of men's program's founded by Groce and Harmon The link between old age and suffering The future in concrete ways and where we go from here A biography of two African American elders, "From Zero to Eighty" recounts a journey of their lives, captured in words of struggle and hope.

Through the lens of age, racism, and suffering, "From Zero to Eighty" narrates a history of what has not been written about older African American men. In this memoir, author Helen K. Black tells the life stories of John T. Groce and Charles E. Harmon against the backdrop of deep-seated cultural beliefs that engender racism. In this memoir, Black shares the thoughts and emotions of Groce and Harmon, two African American men who are rich with years, experience, and pain. Among many topics, "From Zero to Eighty" explores the following: The definition, description, and stories of suffering both as individuals and as part of a community The place of these men in a society that's filled with covert and overt racism The concepts of survival for African American men in general The men's childhood and young adult years and how they shaped their self- and world view The significance of men's program's founded by Groce and Harmon The link between old age and suffering The future in concrete ways and where we go from here A biography of two African American elders, "From Zero to Eighty" recounts a journey of their lives, captured in words of struggle and hope.