Increasingly, libraries are struggling to deal with a growing diversity in the cultural background of their patrons. Problems arising from this cultural diversity afflict all library types--school, public and academic. Library Services for Multicultural Patrons is by and for all libraries that are striving to provide multicultural services to match the growing diversity in the cultural background of patrons. The book is designed to offer helpful tips and practical advice to academic, public, and school librarians who want to better serve the multicultural groups in their communities. The contributors to the book are themselves practicing librarians and they share creative ideas for welcoming multicultural patrons into libraries and strategies for serving them more effectively. Librarians will find in these chapters tried and true tips and techniques for marketing and promotion, improving reference services for speakers of English as a second language, and enhancing programming that they can easily implement in their own libraries and communities. The chapters are divided into the following categories for ease of access: 1) Getting Organized and Finding Partners, 2) Reaching Students, 3) Community Connections, 4) Applying Technology, 6) Outreach Initiatives, 6) Programming and Events, and 7) Reference Services. Librarians of all types will be pleased to discover easy-to-implement suggestions for collaborative efforts, many rich and diverse programming ideas, strategies for improving reference services and library instruction to speakers of English as a second language, marketing and promotional tips designed to welcome multicultural patrons into the library, and much more.
Whole Person Librarianship guides librarians through the practical process of facilitating connections among libraries, social workers, and social services; explains why those connections are important; and puts them in the context of a national movement. Collaboration between libraries and social workers is an exploding trend that will continue to be relevant to the future of public and academic libraries. Whole Person Librarianship incorporates practical examples with insights from librarians and social workers. The result is a new vision of library services. The authors provide multiple examples of how public and academic librarians are connecting their patrons with social services. They explore skills and techniques librarians can learn from social workers, such as how to set healthy boundaries and work with patrons experiencing homelessness; they also offer ideas for how librarians can self-educate on these topics. The book additionally provides insights for social work partners on how they can benefit from working with librarians. While librarians and social workers share social justice motivations, their methods are complementary and yet still distinct—librarians do not have to become social workers. Librarian readers will come away with many practical ideas for collaboration as well as the ability to explain why collaboration with social workers is important for the future of librarianship.
This practical and holistic approach to offering library resources and services to online patrons addresses multiple areas of service to online patrons, including reference, instruction, access, and marketing. Academic libraries are wonderful resources for university students and faculty on campus, and public libraries thrive on providing targeted in-person services such as storytime, makerspaces, and adult programming. It can be easy, however, to forget about the large population of students, faculty, and community members who access library resources and use library services remotely. Library Services for Online Patrons reaches out to patrons who are not—or not always—located on campus or who seldom—if ever—visit libraries' physical facilities and who may not be aware of or able to equitably use library services. The authors focus on ways to organize library resources using principles of design and to cater library services to the specific needs of online students, faculty, and community members. They also address how to effectively target marketing to the online population and how to collaborate with campus and community stakeholders who work directly with them.
Provision of library service to blind and physically handicapped individuals is an ever-developing art/science requiring a knowledge of individual needs, a mastery of information science processes and techniques, and an awareness of the plethora of available print and nonprint resources. This book is intended to bring together a composite overview of the needs of individials unable to use print resources and to describe current and historic practices designed to meet those needs. - Preface.
Emphasizing the advantages of working together and exploring the future of library services in an online, socially connected world, this exciting book shows how all public library professionals can take advantage of our strongest community and information tool—the library catalogue. This book is a guide to the library catalogue that all public library professionals will find enlightening and useful. Its technical services perspective provides a different point of view as compared to traditional public library literature, which is often written by frontline professionals. For example, it poses and examines this thought-provoking question: should library catalogues be considered the primary gateway to the library's information, rather than the library website? Author and collection access librarian Laurel Tarulli examines next-generation or "social" catalogues, discussing the theories and concepts behind them, their impact on core library services, and their potential in shaping future libraries and library services. Geared toward frontline and backroom staff, this book helps readers understand next-generation catalogues and see the collaborative opportunities that are possible between the frontline and backroom. Written to be much more than a "one-time" read, this resource book provides practical ideas for beneficial collaboration and implementation of social features in library catalogues.
Information and records management has been an important part of society for establishing procedures to effectively manage information. As technology has increased in society, this essential function has been impacted as well. With the onset of technological tools brought upon by the fourth industrial revolution, technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data, and more have changed the face of information and records management. These technologies and tools have paved new ways for security, efficiency in timely processes, new ways to create and process records, and other beneficial traits. Along with these advancements come new contemporary issues, leading to the need for research on how exactly information records management is functioning in modern times, the technologies brought on by the fourth industrial revolution, and both the benefits and challenges to this transition. The Handbook of Research on Information and Records Management in the Fourth Industrial Revolution showcases contemporary issues and demonstrates the value of information and records management in the fourth industrial revolution. The book provides a summary of the key activities undertaken by information and records managers as they seek to make records and information management more visible in the modern knowledge-driven society. The chapters highlight innovation, the use of information and communication technology in information and records management, best practices, challenges encountered, and how they are overcome. The target audience of this book will be composed of professionals, librarians, archivists, lecturers, and researchers working in the field of library and information science, along with practitioners, academicians, and students interested in information and records management in the 21st century.
For over a decade, some academic libraries have been purchasing, rather than borrowing, recently published books requested by their patrons through interlibrary loan. These books had one circulation guaranteed and so appealed to librarians who were concerned about the large percentage of books selected and purchased by librarians but never checked out by their patrons. Early assessments of the projects indicated that patrons selected quality books that in many cases were cross disciplinary and covered emerging areas of scholarly interest. However, now we have a significant database of the ILL purchase records to compare these titles with books selected through normal methods. The projects described in this book present a powerful argument for involving patrons in the book selection process. This book looks at patron-driven acquisitions for printed books at Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Illinois, as well as exploring new programs that allow patrons to select e-books or participate in other innovative ways in building the library collections. This book was published as a special issue of Collection Management.
In the last decade library collections have rapidly evolved from a predominance of print books and journals to an ever growing mix of digital and print resources. Library patrons are predominately served by support staff that is expected to know how to help patrons select and use digital resources. Yet most library support staff (LSS) has not had training to become proficient in finding, using, and instructing others in the abundance of the digital resources of websites, databases, e-texts, digital libraries and their related technologies. Library Technology and Digital Resources: An Introduction for Support Staff is both a text for professors who teach in library support staff programs and an introductory reference manual for support staff who work in libraries. This book will guide the LSS to be able to: Distinguish key features and enhancements found among vendors and providers of digital libraries, digital collections, databases, and e-texts; Plan, budget, fund and write grants for digital resources; Understand the complexity and options of licensing and usage agreements for digital resources; Know copyright permissions and acceptable use guidelines for digital resources. Understand the basic technologies that support library digital resources including network structures, software applications, and protocols; Distinguish between directories and search engines as they relate to digital resources as well as be able to employ advance search skills effectively; Explore the resources of global, national, and state digital libraries and their collections; Use government databases and other digitized systems and information sources; Find exemplary digital resources though other agencies such as museums, university collections and other sources that librarians can share with patrons. Create local digital resources of primary and historical materials and artifacts with metadata and cataloging for searchable access. Interpret meaning from library digital resources using visual literacy skills. Promote library digital resources through a variety of means including social media and online options.