This memoir tells the brutally honest story of how author Sarah Ann Murphy learned to overcome serious depression and a failure-to-thrive childhood. She begins with her birth and traces her childhood with an Irish, alcoholic mother who abandoned her emotionally. As a child, her existence was barely tolerated by her Old Mother; birthdays were not acknowledged or celebrated at all. As she recounts the ups and downs--mostly downs--of her growing up years, she comes to the realization that the best times were with her animals.

She learned to thrive because her animals taught her that she was lovable and gave her a different perspective on life. This in turn gave her that spark that set her on the path to developing a strong backbone and a moral core--strengths she would need later with her abusive husband, who treated her much the same as her mother had. As she began to grow into her own person--someone who could love and be loved--she took the steps with her analyst to overcome serious depression and a failure-to-thrive childhood.

A library's infrastructure of programs and personnel is its most valuable asset, providing the foundation for everything it does and aspires to do, which is why assessment is so vitally important. In this collection of case studies, Murphy and her team of contributors describe how quality assessment programs have been implemented and how they are used to continuously improve service at a complete cross-section of institutions. This volume: Looks at how a program was established within a library organisation, the individual roles for staff participating in the program, and singles out which activities and projects were most successful Describes programs such as the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, Lean Six Sigma, and ISO 9001:2000 Examines contexts ranging from a liberal-arts college library to key federal government libraries, to libraries that serve major research universities in the United States and Canada Summarising specific tools for measuring service quality alongside tips for using these tools most effectively, this book helps libraries of all kinds take a programmatic approach to measuring, analysing, and improving library services.

Library users’ evolving information needs and their choice of search methods have changed reference work profoundly. Today’s reference librarian must work in a whole new way—not only service-focused and businesslike, but even entrepreneurial. Murphy innovatively rethinks the philosophy behind current library reference services in this thought-provoking book, which * Rebrands reference librarianship on the model of a consulting business, providing a renewed vision of the reference desk by treating patrons as clients * Spells out the importance of the patron’s voice, and details methods for building and maintaining relationships with patrons * Identifies the reference librarian’s competitive advantage over Web search engines and shows how to capitalize on it Murphy adapts existing business practices and programs to the context of the library, allowing frontline staff and administrators in any type of reference department to monitor and continuously improve their library’s services.