The Social Future Of Academic Libraries

Edited by a thought leader with an international reputation, it brings together renowned authors from across the globe who are breaking traditional moulds and boundaries in a way that will have a profound impact on the way libraries and library services are conceptualized in the years to come. They represent the key links in the knowledge chain: authors, publishers, academics, community knowledge creators, librarians and institutions; the student perspective is also provided.

Volume 8 of the series Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library is focused on new services, directions, job duties and responsibilities for librarians in academic libraries of the 21st century. Topics include research data management services, web services, improving web design for library interfaces, cooperative virtual reference services, directions on research in the 21st-century academic library, innovative uses of physical library spaces, uses of social media for disseminating scholarly research, information architecture and usability studies, the importance of special collections and archival collections, and lessons learned in digitization and digital projects planning and management. Data management services are highlighted in the context of a consortium of smaller liberal arts and regional institutions who share a common institutional repository. Survey research plays a role in a number of chapters. One provides insight into how academic libraries are currently approaching web services, web applications, and library websites. A second survey is used to explore the role of librarians as web designers, and provides detailed information related to job titles, job duties, time percentages related to duties, and other duties outside of web design. Comments of those surveyed are included and make interesting reading and a deeper understanding of this new function in libraries. More generally, is a survey study exploring how librarians feel about the changes that are currently happening within the profession, as well as how these changes have personally affected their job duties and their current job assignments. Case studies are include one that features QuestionPoint in the context of a cooperative virtual reference service; another shows how research and scholarship can be disseminated using social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, ResearchGate and Google Scholar, among others; a other studies explore the importance of user engagement and buy-in before moving forward on digitization; and one shows how information architecture and usability emerge from the redesign of a public library website and whose successful completion involves user surveying, focus groups, peer site reviews, needs analysis, and usability testing. Two chapters deal with the changing legal context: the importance and understanding of copyright and author rights in the 21st-century academic library, and the basics Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). It is hoped that this volume, and the series in general, will be a valuable and exciting addition to the discussions and planning surrounding the future directions, services, and careers in the 21st-century academic library.

Providing practical and theoretical chapters on academic library services for graduate students, this volume helps information professionals support this often-overlooked campus population to address their multiple roles and identities as students and as future faculty members or professionals. As more and more students attend graduate programs, many higher education institutions have established professional development programs to help graduate students learn the wide range of skills needed to be successful as both students and as future professionals or academics. To presuppose that graduate students are proficient library users is a mistake. Graduate students need and want help, and many libraries are now offering specialized services for this diverse population. Contributors to this edited volume provide case studies and practical advice on academic library services for graduate students that support their multiple roles on campus and address the complex social and emotional issues related to their other roles as parents, working adults, caretakers, and more. As academic libraries shift from functioning primarily as collections repositories to collaborating as key players in discovery and knowledge creation, value-added services for graduate students are even more central to libraries' changing missions. This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing professional conversation and is a useful tool for librarians who want to better support graduate students at their institutions.

The collection of knowledge and practical wisdom in this book will help academic and public libraries find ways to honor their missions while planning for the broader institutional changes already underway.

Leading the 21st Century Academic Library: Successful Strategies for Envisioning and Realizing Preferred Futures will explore the new roles and directions academic libraries are taking in the 21st century as a consequence of visionary leadership in exploring diverse futures.

In Information Tomorrow, Rachel Singer Gordon brings together 20 of today's top thinkers on the intersections between libraries and technology. They address various ways in which new technologies are impacting library services and share their ideas for using technology to meet patrons where they are. In addition to a preface by the editor, the book's foreword by Stephen Abram and 16 chapters feature insights and opinions from these library leaders, bloggers, and futurists:

This book reviews both the historical and future roles that public, private, academic and special libraries have in supporting and shaping society at local, regional, national and international levels. Globalisation, economic turmoil, political and ethnic tensions, rapid technology development, global warming and other key environmental factors are all combining in myriad and complex ways to affect everyone, both individually and collectively. Fundamental questions are being asked about the future of society and the bedrock organisations that underpin it. Libraries and Society considers the key aspects of library provision and the major challenges that libraries – however defined, managed, developed and provided – now face, and will continue to face in the future. It also focuses on the emerging chapter in cultural, economic and social history and the library’s role in serving diverse communities within this new era. Looks at all types of library in a period of major and discontinuous change, tackling the fundamental questions of the future of libraries in the context of major societal, political and environmental issues Poses important questions for the profession and policy development Fills a major gap in literature (recent discourse and debate on the future of democracy, for example, the library is rarely included)