This volume is unusual in that the theme is quite broad in scope yet focused on a specific topic; innovations and boundary-pushing studies in areas not usually found in library literature. It represents a look at the periphery of the field surveyed in previous volumes and presents chapters grouped into two categories: professional issues and transforming services. First section chapters include the challenges facing librarians in an age of litigiousness and threats to academic freedom, educating ethical leaders for the information society by adopting practices from business, valuing intellectual capital assets by looking at the role of librarians in a knowledge society, and emerging practices of open peer review as a means of achieving a "new science". In the second section chapters include the effects of terminology on health queries by analysing users' health literacy and topic familiarity, an analysis of academic social networking via a case study of users' information behaviour, a study on redefining services and spaces for graduate student success by creating a "scholars' commons", and a final chapter on serving adults and teens in social spaces within a "virtual branch".

Volume 37 of Advances in Librarianship presents detailed examples of local and regional mergers and collaborations and serves as a companion to Volume 36 which presented a comprehensive broad review of the factors that lead to mergers and other alliances, and the methods used to ensure effective and successful collaborations. While corporate mergers make headlines, library and information science examples, especially at regional an local levels, have less visibility. This volume demonstrates that such efforts are occurring in libraries, among LIS degree programs, and enterprises including networks and consortia. They are occurring as economic conditions around the world mandate consolidation and/or collaboration among agencies and enterprises to reduce or curtail expenditures.

Volume 36 provides a broad review of the factors that lead to mergers and other alliances, the methods used to ensure effective and successful collaborations, and descriptions of the factors which contributed to less successful efforts at consolidation. The chapters include original research, case studies, literature reviews and conceptual papers.

Management and Leadership Innovations, vol. 38 of Advances in Librarianship presents techniques, cases and theoretical papers on how libraries and other non-profit organizations can achieve sustainability through application of the UN's Agenda 21, how to interview candidates through non-traditional and interactive processes to assess 'soft skills' needed to join a team, how a model was developed to ensure successful school libraries, and how academic libraries can provide leadership in sustaining and preserving their surrounding communities' history and culture. It also offers chapters on the utility of gossip in management, how to provide mindful leadership within an organization, and how to identify and manage levels of stress and burnout. The volume presents a case study of how a library altered the skill sets of subject librarians to function in teams using a matrix approach in order to better serve clients. Another innovation is represented by a chapter on staff development and service through participation in a community of practice. Also included is a chapter on service design a relatively new concept of service design which is critical in improving user/customer satisfaction and patronage.

Assessment and outcomes evaluation have become increasingly important in librarianship. Although initially used in educational contexts to measure student learning, the strategy has migrated to other contexts such as hiring, employee development, overall organizational and institutional successes, measuring the outcomes of projects and operational changes, and self assessment at the personal level. This growing emphasis is partly due to increasingly stringent requirements that funds are used effectively to improve services and operations. The current economic climate and retrenchments in non-profit agencies, have raised the need for assessment and outcomes evaluation to a critical level. 'Contexts for Assessment and Outcome Evaluation in Librarianship' focuses not on the how of undertaking assessment and outcomes evaluation, but rather on their successes and failures in various contexts in which these tools have been and will be used.