Responding To Rapid Change In Libraries

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.

In this book, the author attacks these and other pressing issues facing today's academic librarians. Her trailbrazing strategies centre on keeping the customer's point of view in focus at all times to help you to integrate technology to meet today's student and faculty needs.

Essential facts, advice, lists, documents, guidelines, lore, wit, and wisdom: Along with fun and irreverence, it's what readers have come to expect from the "Whole Library" series. In a one-volume compendium that's by turns encyclopedic, useful, and engaging, this latest entry provides an overview of digital libraries, covering the state of information, issues, customers, challenges, tools and technology, preservation, and the future. From blogs to Wikis, highlights include: digitization project planning tips and tools; the value proposition of the digital library; lists of Internet libraries, libraries that I.M., libraries that podcast; and interpretations of NextGen demographic data. Collecting insights from library luminaries as well the perspectives of interesting experts from outside the ranks of library professionals, "The Whole Digital Library Handbook" decodes the jargon and cuts to the chase.

Useful, useable, desirable: like three legs of a stool, if your library is missing the mark on any one of these it's bound to wobble.

Libraries have always played a special role in times of disaster by continuing to provide crucial information and services. The Stafford Act of 2011, a federal government directive, designates libraries as among the temporary facilities delivering essential services, making a Continuity of Operations Plan imperative for libraries. Peppered with informative first-person narratives from librarians recounting emergency situations, Halsted, Clifton, and Wilson cover such topics as: An eight-step approach to developing a risk assessment planHow to draft a one-page service continuity planInformation on how to use mobile devices and social media effectively in times of disasterSample disaster plans, along with model exercises, manuals and customizable communicationsPublished in cooperation with the Medical Library Association (MLA), this nuts-and-bolts resource will enable libraries of all kinds to do their best while planning for the worst.

"The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science provides an outstanding resource in 33 published volumes with 2 helpful indexes. This thorough reference set--written by 1300 eminent, international experts--offers librarians, information/computer scientists, bibliographers, documentalists, systems analysts, and students, convenient access to the techniques and tools of both library and information science. Impeccably researched, cross referenced, alphabetized by subject, and generously illustrated, the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science integrates the essential theoretical and practical information accumulating in this rapidly growing field."

This book, first published in 1983, stresses the need for libraries to weed out expenditures which do not contribute to their basic role - the collection and organization of information - when planning where and when to spend money. It illustrates how priorities and goals must change in accordance with changes in libraries’ roles in the information world.

Library workers at all types of organizations, as well as LIS students learning about this newest Core Value of Librarianship, will find this book an easy-to-digest introduction to what staff at a range of libraries have accomplished in incorporating sustainability into their decision making and professional practices. In addition, a discussion about the role of economics and sustainability will challenge readers to stretch in new ways to positively impact their communities. As a core value of librarianship, sustainability is not an end point but a mindset, a lens through which operational and outreach decisions can be made. And it extends beyond an awareness of the roles that libraries can play in educating and advocating for a sustainable future. As the programs and practices in this resource demonstrate, sustainability can also encompass engaging with communities in discussions about resilience, regeneration, and social justice. Inspiring yet assuredly pragmatic, the many topics explored in this book edited by members of ALA's Sustainability Round Table and ALA’s Special Task Force on Sustainability include a discussion of why sustainability matters to libraries and their user communities; real-life examples of sustainability programming, transformative community partnerships, collective responses for climate resilience, and green building practices; lessons learned and recommendations from library workers who have been active in putting sustainability into practice; the intersection of sustainability with the work of equity, diversity, and inclusion; suggestions regarding the revision of library and information science curriculum in light of the practical need to build community resilience; an examination of how libraries’ efforts to support Doughnut Economics can bolster the United Nations' work on the Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to address the global impacts of climate change; and potential collaborators for future sustainability-related initiatives.