Best Practices Of Public Library Information Technology Directors

Of major findings -- The Minneapolis Public Library -- Princeton Public Library -- Santa Monica Public Library -- Evansville Public Library -- Columbus Metropolitan Public Library -- The Boston Public Library -- Cedar Falls Public Library -- The Seattle Public Library -- The San Francisco Public Library -- The Denver Public Library -- Other reports from Primary Research Group, Inc.

This study is based on interviews with IT directors and assistant directors of leading college and university libraries and consortiums, including The Research Libraries Group, Vanderbilt University, the University of Texas, Lewis & Clark College, Salt Lake Community College, the University of Washington, the California Institute of Technology, Hutchinson Community College and Australia?s Monash University, Among the many topics covered are: investment in and maintenance of workstations, implementation of wireless access, policies towards laptops in the library, digitizing special collections, establishing digital depositories, preserving scholarly access to potentially temporal digital media, use of Ebooks, services for distance learning students, use of url resolvers, web site development and management, use of virtual reference, investment in library software, IT staff size and staff skill composition, range of IT staff responsibilities, use of outsourcing, relations between Library and general University IT staff, uses of PHP programming, catalog integration with the web, catalog enhancement software and services, web site search engine policies, use of automated electronic collection management software, technology education and training, development of technology centers and information literacy, library printing technology and cost reimbursement, and other issues of concern to library Information Technology Staff Directors.

"This report looks closely at the electronic and print serials procurement and management practices of eleven libraries including: The University of Ohio, Villanova University, the Colorado School of Mines, Carleton College, Northwestern University, Baylor University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of San Francisco, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center"--P. 6.

There’s no shortage of library management books out there—but how many of them actually tackle the little details of day-to-day management, the hard-to-categorize things that slip through the cracks of a larger handbook? Library Management Tips that Work does exactly that, addressing dozens of such issues facing library managers, including How to create a job manual, and keep staff accountable Keeping your library board in the loop Using numbers to make your case Dealing with unreturned library materials Methods for managing multiple libraries with one FTE librarian Retaining services despite budget cuts and staff shortages Public relations on a shoestringWritten by contributors from across the field, this eclectic guide offers best practices suitable for managers in all types of libraries.

The new report from Primary Research Group is based on interviews with webmasters from the San Jose Public Library, the Salt Lake City Public Library, the Alexandria Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Public Library, the Houston Public Library, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Colorado Virtual Library and the Boston Public Library. A free sample chapter is available for download. A few of the report?s conclusions are summarized below:CONTENT MANAGEMENTLibraries take widely varying approaches to the issue of how should control the website and who should be empowered to add content to the site. Some libraries prefer to centralize access in the hands of just a few librarians who act as gatekeepers to the website. Others prefer to empower as many librarians as possible to contribute to the site, and to oversee their own contributions to the site. To achieve this, some libraries have purchased off the shelf content management systems, while others have developed in-house content management systems that allow non-technical librarians to function independent of the need for technical help. THE IMPACT OF CASCADING STYLE SHEETS (CSS)Cascading style sheet, that allow librarians to edit entire sites, or subsets of site, with one click of the mouse, have become popular ways to introduce some uniformity and lower the labor demand of editing public library websites. Cascading style sheets are important because librarians are finding more and more reasons to add more and more content to their sites. Public library websites have often quickly become unwieldy monsters that voraciously eat up librarian time. Correcting and editing these beasts by hand is dangerous and cascading style sheets allow proper measured feeding without loss of limb. MOST POPULAR PAGESSome of the most popular pages on the public library websites surveyed were the events calendar, basic library info page, database gateways and children?s and teen pages.STAFFINGRelative to the importance of the library website to the overall success of the library, the size of most library web staffs, when such staffs exist, is quite small. Usually one to three individuals run the website, and they often have other responsibilities. The strategy that most have pursued to overcome their small staffs is to devolve responsibility for content to subject specialist librarians, and to empower them to be able to edit the portions of the website for which they are responsible. UNIQUE CONTENTMost librarians interviewed stressed the need to develop unique content that would draw traffic to the website. Among the type of content mentioned were: interactive storytelling and educational games, reading lists and contests, book reviews by librarians posted online, subject guides, and events calendars. CHILDREN?S & TEEN SERVICESOne of the most vibrant areas for website development has been services for children and teens. This age group grew up with access to the world wide web and it is truly the only generation for which web use and communication is as natural as turning on the television for most Americans. Libraries have responded with books clubs, personalized spaces, interactive stories and games, and other features aimed at this audience. Nonetheless, many libraries have just scraped the surface of their potential in this area. We like what the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Public Library has done in this area, developing unique content, focused marketing and web teams to create a unique site for Charlotte area children. SPECIAL COLLECTIONSMany libraries have plans to digitize their special collections, or at the very least, to digitize finding aids for those collections and increase access to them through the library website. We expect that this will soon become a major area of public library investment and a challenge for website administrators who must devise access schemes to digitized resources.

This book, first published in 1992, equips library managers in all types of libraries to make the administrative changes necessary to deal with new information technologies. Despite financial difficulties due to inflation and declining budgets, electronic/optical information formats and the hardware and software to support them are a reality for many libraries. Libraries are designing and implementing prototypes of the ‘electronic library’ and are introducing new technologies as a growing adjunct to traditional text formats and services. It analyses administrative adjustments to the new technological information culture. Chapters in this resource that deal with issues not easily grasped by non-computing specialists are distilled to basic components, making them easy for busy managers to comprehend and immediately useful to library administrators.

The report profiles the information literacy efforts of a broad range of North American colleges including: Syracuse University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Windsor, Ulster County Community College, the University of North Texas, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Southeastern Oklahoma University, Central Connecticut State University and Seattle Pacific University. Participants discuss how they promote information literacy at their institutions, how they win support of key faculty and administrators, and how they develop courses, guidelines, tutorials and standards. Other major issues include student assessment, instructor training, integration of info literacy into other curriculums, grants and institutional financial support, the impact of new educational technologies, and the role of learning and computer centers in supporting the info literacy effort, among other issues. Indiana University library officials discuss info literacy efforts for specialized populations, such as athletes, while librarians at the University of California, Berkeley explain their grant funded information literacy outreach program that reaches all corners of the University. University of North Texas librarians relate how they are developing special classrooms to ready themselves for the likely move towards more formal information literacy classes, while faculty at Ulster County Community College explain how the college developed a required information literacy course that is delivered through traditional means and through the college?s distance learning program. Instructional library faculty at North Carolina State Wilmington explain the political process of getting a required information literacy course approved at their university, while Seattle Pacific University librarians discuss the challenges of student assessment. As North American colleges move towards mandated information literacy courses, this study can help information literacy coordinators to reduce the time and effort involved in developing courses and tutorials, and assist them in dealing with in-house politics and in finding useful institutional models and best practices.

This special report looks at the efforts of ten leading art libraries and image collections to digitize their holdings. The study reports on the efforts of The National Gallery of Canada, Cornell University?s Knight Resource Center, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, The Illinois Institute of Technology, The National Archives and Records Administration, McGill University, Ohio State University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the joint effort of Harvard, Princeton, The University of California, San Diego, the University of Minnesota and others to develop a union catalog for cultural objects. Among the issues covered: cost of outsourcing, cost of in-house conversions, the future of 35 mm slides and related equipment, use of ARTstor and other commercial services, ease of interlibrary loan in images and the creation of a union catalog, prioritizing holdings for digitization, relationship of art libraries to departmental image collections, marketing image collections, range of end users of image collections, determining levels of access to the collection, digitization and distribution of backup materials on artists lives and times, equipment selection, copyright, and other issues in the creation and maintenance of digital art libraries.