Managing The Twenty First Century Reference Department

Learn the skills needed to update and manage a reference department that efficiently meets the needs of clients today—and tomorrow! Managing the Twenty-First Century Reference Department: Challenges and Prospects provides librarians with the knowledge and skills they need to manage an effective reference service. Full of useful and practical ideas, this book presents successful methods for recruiting and retaining capable reference department staff and management, training new employees and adapting current services to an evolving field. Expert practitioners address the changing role of the reference library worker and how longstanding traditions and practices can be re-evaluated and re-applied. The information in this book is ideal for librarians and students of library studies looking to take their skills to the next level. Reference departments continue to evolve as the number of applicants qualified to run them declines. Managing the Twenty-First Century Reference Department: Challenges and Prospects explores the dynamics of leadership and management as well as a variety of other characteristics needed in a Head of Reference. It recognizes the increasing need for visionary leaders who can deal with shrinking budgets, soaring costs, expensive electronic resources, and high user expectations and provides you with practical advice on finding, training, and keeping these individuals. In addition to the training and recruitment techniques documented in this book, you will find extensive information on: setting and achieving goals creating and maintaining a positive work environment how to deliver quality services how to improve job satisfaction for library staff problem solving strategies the importance of communication making your reference department task- and employee-centered Managing the Twenty-First Century Reference Department: Challenges and Prospects also provides an inside look at Oregon State University’s Valley Library’s new management model. The library’s information professionals detail this new model’s current function, potential hazards, and multiple advantages. The user-friendly information documented in this chapter and in the book as a whole makes Managing the Twenty-First Century Reference Department: Challenges and Prospects an essential read for any librarian or student of library studies looking to meet the demands of an increasingly technical field.

This book explores the expectations and resources available to develop a set of important core skills needed for this profession. Leading authorities in the field of librarianship offer their extensive experience and insight to help beginners to understand precisely what actual measurable skills are required to become a successful career science librarian. Librarians currently working in the area will gain the data they need to be able to effectively collaborate with more experienced people. Topics include reviews of key concepts, basic skills, terminology, ACRL instruction competencies, teams, and assessment of services. It also provides the latest knowledge on trends, standards, terminology, professional associations, and a brief literature review, and recommended readings for familiarizing librarians with their job responsibilities. Besides job competencies, the book reviews collection development, reference issues, in-depth research assistance, cataloging and metadata, faculty liaison and outreach, career development concerns, continuing education tracks, and issues in collaboration assistance. This source also provides extensive references and tables and figures to clearly present information. This book is a valuable resource for beginners who wonder what they need to know as they start their careers or are considering this as an area of concentration, and as a refresher and professional development track for current librarians working with more experienced people in the area. This book was published as a special issue of Science & Technology Libraries.

This book responds to an request by the U.S. Army to study the applicability of commercial multimedia technologies to command, control, communications and intelligence needs on future battlefields. After reviewing Army's needs and discussing relevant commercial technologies within the context of a generic architecture, the book recommends approaches for meeting the Army's needs. Battlefield potential is illustrated, andâ€"drawing on lessons learned from the private sectorâ€"a technology management strategy consisting of specific recommendations to the Army is provided. The key to future benefits is for the Army to accommodate the rapid changes taking place in the commercial world of multimedia technologies.

Every librarian who teaches in an academic library setting understands the complexities involved in partnering with teaching faculty. Relationships Between Teaching Faculty and Teaching Librarians recounts the efforts of librarians and faculty working together in disciplines across the board to create and sustain connections crucial to the success of library instruction. This unique collection of essays examines various types of partnerships between librarians and faculty (networking, coordination, and collaboration) and addresses the big issues involved, including teaching within an academic discipline, the intricacies of assigning grades, faculty perceptions of library instruction, and the changing role of the reference librarian. Education is the main focus of reference service in today's academic libraries and librarians teach a variety of single-session, course-related, course-integrated, or credit-bearing courses in nearly every discipline. Relationships Between Teaching Faculty and Teaching Librarians reflects the experiences of librarians, teaching faculty, and library directors, whose perspectives range from cynicism to cautious optimism to idealism when it comes to working with teaching faculty. The book includes case studies, surveys, sample questionnaires, statistics, and a toolkit for establishing an effective library liaison program, and examines the teaching and learning environment, course growth and maintenance, and the “professor librarian” model. Relationships Between Teaching Faculty and Teaching Librarians presents lessons learned from seeking a common ground including: a successful faculty/librarian collaboration for educational psychology and counseling a library research project for freshman engineering students a semester-by-semester look at a collaboratively taught graduate research and writing course a survey that determines how librarians and library directors feel about teaching outside the library an analysis of librarians’ attitudes toward faculty an analysis of attitudes that influence faculty collaboration in library instruction a look at innovative methods of increasing the teaching roles of librarians and much more! The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSA/CHE) has mandated that information literacy be included as part of a general education requirement. If your faculty wasn't calling for library instruction before the mandate, it probably is now. Relationships Between Teaching Faculty and Teaching Librarians will help librarians establish communication with faculty that provides a solid foundation for coursework in all disciplines.

Outreach Services in Academic and Special Libraries examines the creation and delivery of outreach programs designed to promote awareness of the library by meeting the information needs of underserved or uninformed patrons. This book contains the experiences of academic and special librarians who describe a wide array of successful outreach programs that are in place throughout the country. This valuable tool introduces professional librarians and library science students and faculty to current and highly innovative models of outreach services implemented in a variety of academic and special library settings.

Designed to complement every introductory library reference course, this is the perfect text for students and librarians looking to expand their personal reference knowledge, teaching failsafe methods for identifying important materials by matching specific types of questions to the best available sources, regardless of format. Guided by a national advisory board of educators and practitioners, this thoroughly updated text expertly keeps up with new technologies and practices while remaining grounded in the basics of reference work. Chapters on fundamental concepts, major reference sources, and special topics provide a solid foundation; the text also offers fresh insight on core issues, including ethics, readers' advisory, information literacy, and other key aspects of reference librarianship;selecting and evaluating reference materials, with strategies for keeping up to date;assessing and improving reference services;guidance on conducting reference interviews with a range of different library users, including children and young adults;a new discussion of reference as programming;important special reference topics such as Google search, 24/7 reference, and virtual reference; anddelivering reference services across multiple platforms As librarians experience a changing climate for all information services professionals, in this book Cassell and Hiremath provide the tools needed to manage the ebb and flow of changing reference services in today's libraries.

Specifies the top resources in major subject areas and genres and shows students how to approach the reference transaction by matching specific types of questions to the best available resources regardless of format.

Worldwide development of agriculture and industry creates burgeoning demands on natural resources. Management of the rivers and the surrounding landscape is one of the important tasks for today and for the foreseeable future. Lessons learned from centuries of management (and mismanagement) have been distilled into principles and practices which form the subject matter for this book. It provides both a global perspective and an entrée to the special problems associated with management of transboundary rivers.