Reference And Information Services In The 21st Century

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.

This textbook and ready reference for today's reference-services librarian nicely combines theory and practical application. The authors utilized an advisory board and focus groups as well as their own significant expertise and experience to create a new approach to a basic facet of librarianship. They address the classic practices of using the reference interview to identify the question and instructing individual users to find authoritative answers rather than quantities of information. Next, they zero in on how to answer types of questions, suggesting the best available resources, print and electronic. Other sections discuss such topics as readers'-advisory work, user instruction, assessing reference services, and the impact of technology on reference functions. This volume will be useful to library-school students, current reference practitioners, and library managers.

Search skills of today bear little resemblance to searches through print publications. Reference service has become much more complex than in the past, and is in a constant state of flux. Learning the skill sets of a worthy reference librarian can be challenging, unending, rewarding, and-- yes, fun.

Public Libraries in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact of recent policy initiatives directly targeted at public libraries along with broader developments in the public sector environment within which they operate. Key features include: • An exploration of the context within which public libraries are operating and analysis of their role in local and national life; • Examples of best practice in service delivery; • Evaluation of the challenges and opportunities confronting public library managers; • Wide ranging coverage, including information from published and unpublished sources, supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders in the public library sector. The book provides a unique and thorough guide to the contemporary discourses surrounding issues of identity, social purpose, value and strategy facing the public library service.

The 21st Century Academic Library: Global Patterns of Organization and Discourse discusses the organization of academic libraries, drawing on detailed research and data. The organization of the library follows the path of a print book or journal: acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation, reference, instruction, preservation and general administration. Most libraries still have public services and technical services, and are still very print-based in their organization, while their collections and services are increasingly electronic and virtual. This book gathers information on organizational patterns of large academic libraries in the US and Europe, providing data that could motivate libraries to adopt innovative organizational structures or assess the effectiveness of their current organizational patterns. Contributes to the literature on the globalization of information and of library and information science Analyzes and presents data in a way that allows librarians and library administrators to consider what organizational patterns are the most effective for the goals they are pursuing Includes emerging patterns that are not widely seen in the academic library population

Libraries today provide a wider variety of services, collections, and tools than at any time in the past. This book explores how reference librarianship is changing to continue to help users find information they need in this shifting environment.

Highlights the most important topics, issues, questions, and debates affecting the field of communication in the 21st Century.

Libraries and librarians have been defined by the book throughout modern history. What happens when society increasingly lets print go in favour of storing, retrieving and manipulating electronic information? What happens after the book? After the Book explores how the academic library of the 21st Century is first and foremost a provider of electronic information services. Contemporary users expect today’s library to provide information as quickly and efficiently as other online information resources. The book argues that librarians need to change what they know, how they work, and how they are perceived in order to succeed according to the terms of this new paradigm. This title is structured into eight chapters. An introduction defines the challenge of electronic resources and makes the case for finding solutions, and following chapters cover diversions and half measures and the problem for libraries in the 21st century. Later chapters discuss solving problems through professional identity and preparation, before final chapters cover reorganizing libraries to serve users, adapting to scarcity, and the ‘digital divide’. Describes how electronic resources constitute both a challenge and an opportunity for libraries Argues that librarians can re-define themselves Puts the case that libraries can be reorganized to optimize electronic resource management and information services based on contemporary technology and user needs