Libraries As User Centered Organizations

How do we begin to assess the impact of economic, technological, demographic, and management trends in our environment and understand the long term implications? How can administrators, managers and information professionals take advantage of these trends? How can librarians empower staff and change organizational hierarchies to create more responsive and rewarding environments? How do we restructure organizations to make them more learning- and student-centered and more responsive to the needs of new clienteles? These are just a few of the questions addressed in Libraries as User-Centered Organizations, which examines organizational change from the point of view that academic institutions are experiencing a paradigm shift in the definition of their mission, their focus, and their activities. As librarians move into a new paradigm of library as gateway and connector, they must also shift their focus from the information product to the user of information. This profound change in vision is explored in this book through the concept of user-centeredness, a focus on the habits, needs, desires, dislikes, abilities, and preferences of the user. Libraries as User-Centered Organizations explores a variety of important aspects of organizational change including: leadership styles sustaining and expanding staff empowerment and creativity collaboration between libraries and computer centers creating multicultural organizations remolding the library science educational structure organizational change in professional associations Libraries as User-Centered Organizations looks at current trends affecting higher education, research libraries, professional education for librarians, professional associations, and publishing from the point of view of some of the leaders in these fields and offers readers a context for viewing organizational change. The book is of particular assistance to library administrators and educators engaged in planning for change and rethinking operations and services.

Bring technical and public services together to create a more user-friendly library! Written for public and technical services librarians, this vital book examines the changes in the profession that have contributed to the integration of the two services. It explores the responsibilities of public and technical services, the effect of dualism on libraries and the profession, and management concerns in this overlapping environment. With case studies and insightful predictions for the future, Integration in the Library Organization discusses the changes in the profession that have contributed to the integration of the two services. This book fills a gap in the available information about team management and the blurring of public/technical services lines in libraries. Integration in the Library Organization shows you how to create an environment of full staff cooperation within your library and provides examples of ways that other libraries have accomplished this. Here you'll discover management techniques to use in such an overlapping environment. Integration in the Library Organization discusses: the false dualism of technical services vs. public services working as partners in a team-based environment tailoring library positions to match individual skills outsourcing in Hawaii satellite cataloging operations and nonprint backlogs . . . and much more! Integration in the Library Organization will provide you with the insight you need to help your library balance and integrate technical and public services and improve the capability of your library to offer patrons quality services and large amounts of information.

Modern library services can be incredibly complex. Much more so than their forebears, modern librarians must grapple daily with questions of how best to implement innovative new services, while also maintaining and updating the old. The efforts undertaken are immense, but how best to evaluate their success? In this groundbreaking new book from Routledge, library practitioners, anthropologists, and design experts combine to advocate a new focus on User Experience (or ‘UX’) research methods. Through a combination of theoretical discussion and applied case studies, they argue that this ethnographic and human-centred design approach enables library professionals to gather rich evidence-based insights into what is really going on in their libraries, allowing them to look beyond what library users say they do to what they actually do. Edited by the team behind the international UX in Libraries conference, User Experience in Libraries will ignite new interest in a rapidly emerging and game-changing area of research. Clearly written and passionately argued, it is essential reading for all library professionals and students of Library and Information Science. It will also be welcomed by anthropologists and design professionals working in related fields.

In the face of rapid change and an ever-widening constellation of challenges, it’s crucial for library leaders to pull back to the question of “why?” Plotting a sustainable way forward depends upon recommitting ourselves to our underlying values, such as customer service and community-building, while fostering the improvements that change makes possible. With passion, patience, and fortitude, libraries can stride confidently into the future. In this book, noted speakers and consultants Bignoli and Stara speak directly to library directors, managers, administrators, and technology staff, offering concrete guidance on setting or resetting strategic priorities. Taking an interconnected and specific approach to planning for and strengthening the library environment as a whole, their book discusses why libraries should embrace change as a fundamental part of library life; explores how to harness rapid change to provide more responsive, user-centered library service; addresses the ways in which libraries straddle the physical and the digital, in areas such as service provision and collections, illuminating how they overlap and can be improved using similar philosophies; presents both a comprehensive overview of library technologies as well as related team and change management advice, all grounded in user experience principles; shows how the concepts of sustainability and flexibility apply to physical space planning and design, from furniture selection and arrangement to infrastructure; and provides sound guidance on project management, problem solving, preparing for future challenges, personal reflection and self-care, and other leadership topics.

Each summer, circulation staff in my library inventories a section of the stacks andbrings collection issues to the attention of appropriate bibliographers. Since I amresponsible for the economics collection, I see an array of government documents thathave managed to elude the cataloging process. Many of these titles are decades old, having squatted in the library undisturbed and uncirculated since our online catalogwas implemented in 1990.

Provides a body of research literature that contributes to the base of organizational theory upon which library administrators rely. This title covers a variety of topics relating to the management of academic, and public and school libraries.

Safely guide your library into the new millennium! Like so much else in the information professions, leadership styles are being forced to change to meet the demands of technological innovation. Leadership in the Library and Information Science Professions is among the first books to focus on this increasingly important job qualification. It offers practical advice for developing strong, flexible, and creative leadership skills in yourself and your staff. This fascinating volume stresses the leadership needed to manage change. The essential skills taught here will help you update library services at a reasonable pace while preserving valuable low-tech alternatives. As one chapter recommends, “Every librarian at every level should have ready an answer-multiple answers-to the ubiquitous questions: Why do we still need libraries when everything is on the Web? How can you justify an expanding budget in the Internet Age?” Leadership in the Library and Information Science Professions offers fresh ideas for developing and using leadership skills, including: recruiting tips for identifying potential leaders staff training and development restructuring the organization to encourage full staff participation budget strategies for successful leaders issues of gender and ethnic diversity evaluating and assessing leadership Leadership in the Library and Information Science Professions is an essential resource for library administrators and staff. By developing your leadership skills and those of your staff, you can confidently face the hectic pace of change in the information sciences.

This book focuses on participating libraries that used the 2002 LibQUAL+ survey to collect qualitative and quantitative data for assessing and evaluating their service quality, resource allocations, staffing, technology, and policies. The book provides a wealth of information on this Web-based marketing instrument that measures users' perceptions of library service quality. Library professionals dealing withor interested inlibrary service quality assessment will benefit from the practical examples and graphical representations found in this essential work.