Raising The Tech Bar At Your Library

This book explains how librarians can capitalize on the growing interest and need of patrons for help with technology by expanding their library's tech services to build community engagement and support. Keeping up with technology is more critical and difficult than ever. This challenge exists not only for library staff but for their patrons as well. Today's librarians are often barraged with increasingly complex questions from their patrons about technology—from loading eBooks onto their readers to helping resurrect dead laptops. Why not capitalize on this opportunity and transform your library into a first-stop, go-to resource for your community's tech needs? Raising the Tech Bar at Your Library: Improving Services to Meet User Needs demonstrates a variety of ways to expand library services to better serve your community, including how to establish tech bars and tech centers, provide tech training and one-on-one tech help, host drop-in demos, and create a coding "dojo." The book covers after-school programs, makerspaces, and embedded librarianship as well. The authors draw on their personal experience to offer a practical blueprint for launching your tech initiative, starting with the preliminary steps of evaluating community needs and getting administrative and public buy-in to obtaining funding, training non-tech staff, setting up and launching your program, and evaluating the services you've established. The book ends with a look to the future that supplies provocative and exciting ideas of how libraries with innovative, tech-focused leadership can push the edge even further. This book serves a wide audience—all public librarians as well as library administrators, those who work in IT departments as well as adult or youth services, and reference librarians who are interested in expanding into this important and exciting area.

Information systems are central to libraries, and managing information systems is critical to serving library communities. Both a textbook for LIS courses and a handbook for practitioners, this volume thoroughly addresses modern libraries' challenges of integrating information technology. Written by Joseph R. Matthews and Carson Block, both experts on library information systems, this book describes the evolution of library information systems, their enabling technologies, and today's dynamic IT marketplace. It explains specific technologies and related topics, including standards and standards organizations, telecommunications and networks, integrated library systems, electronic resource management systems, repositories, authentication and link verification, electronic resources, and nextgen library systems. Readers will also learn the latest about information systems management, covering technology planning, basic technology axioms, the impact of technology on library services, system selection and implementation, system usability, and general technology management. The final section considers current trends and future developments in LIS, including those related to mobile devices and apps as well as the growth of digital libraries.

This guide will empower libraries to design and prototype technology-based outreach ideas safely, quickly, and with confidence, leading to better service for all members of the community.

Cape Cod is home to thirty four libraries, each with its own wonderful history. One library was named for an extraordinarily feisty woman. Two others burned down during blizzards. A French Marquis funded a Lower Cape library, and one in Mid-Cape had Kurt Vonnegut as a board member. One on the Outer Cape holds an annual Turnip Festival, and three others don't have computers. A stained-glass Town Seal is in an Upper Cape library's dome, while another has a schooner inside. A brand of canned coffee even paid for one library's construction. Join local author Gerree Hogan as she reveals stories of intrigue, politics, betrayal, heroes, and whimsy that make these libraries so unique.

Proceedings of the 22d-33d annual conference of the Library Association in v. 1-12; proceedings of the 34th-44th, 47th-57th annual conference issued as a supplement to v. 13-23, new ser. v. 3-ser. 4, v. 1.