Library Users and Reference Services

Library Users and Reference Services PDF Author: Linda S Katz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136588027
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book

Book Description
This useful book helps reference librarians understand the information seeking needs and behaviors of the diverse groups of people in the communities they serve. With the increasing diversity of the American population, librarians striving to plan and deliver excellent reference services must enhance their understanding of how best to assist many types of individuals and groups, from children to the elderly. Library Users and Reference Services provides much-needed help in this area, delivering strategies and methods to aid readers in their quest for increasingly effective service for all members of the communities in which they work.Library Users and Reference Services is divided into four sections of chapters which cover a broad range of topics to assist readers in planning and delivering appropriate services. Section One explores customer service, economics of information, and marketing as key concepts useful in studying information needs of specific groups in the population. Section Two focuses on scholars and students in three broad academic disciplines: science, humanities, and social sciences. Section Three covers groups with special characteristics such as age, economic standing, gender, or profession. Section Four discusses evaluation and provides guidance in the use of the most widely accepted measures for assessing reference effectiveness.The book’s final chapter explores redesigning reference services for the future, providing a glimpse of how such services may change. Library Users and Reference Services is a practical guide to help readers understand the many issues related to serving diverse populations in a community. Reference librarians and graduate library school students and faculty will learn more effective ways to help a heterogeneous public with the help of this new book.

Designing Instruction for Library Users

Designing Instruction for Library Users PDF Author: Marilla Svinicki
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000103625
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
This book discusses the principles of learning theory and instructional design, and provides the reader with the theoretical framework needed for design decision-making. It is helpful for the academic librarian who has responsibility for teaching students library skills.

Managing and Adapting Library Information Services for Future Users

Managing and Adapting Library Information Services for Future Users PDF Author: Osuigwe, Nkem Ekene
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1799811182
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description
Information in today’s modernized world has become much more attainable with the use of technology. A resource that has fallen victim to this are library services. What was once a staple of knowledge and communication has failed to keep pace with recent advancements in information service providers. Library practitioners need to learn how to manage change, build influence, and adapt their services to remain relevant within local communities. Libraries can continue to play a key role in future aspects of information provision, but proper research is a necessity. Managing and Adapting Library Information Services for Future Users is a collection of innovative research that encapsulates practices, concepts, ideas, and proposals that would chart pathways for libraries of all types to envision and understand how to thrive and remain relevant in the competitive information provision environment. It is expected to motivate librarians and information scientists to probe further into how libraries would better serve user communities of the 21st century who have options of accessing information from sources other than from libraries. While highlighting topics including artificial intelligence, human design thinking, and alternative finance, this book is ideally designed for librarians, information specialists, architects, data scientists, researchers, community development practitioners, policymakers, faculty members, and students seeking current research on emerging advancements in library optimization.

Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries

Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries PDF Author: Callan Bignoli
Publisher: American Library Association
ISBN: 0838949789
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 20

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Meeting the Needs of Student Users in Academic Libraries

Meeting the Needs of Student Users in Academic Libraries PDF Author: Michele Crump
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1780633238
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book

Book Description
Meeting the Needs of Student Users in Academic Libraries surveys and evaluates the current practice of learning commons and research services within the academic library community in order to determine if these learning spaces are functioning as intended. To evaluate their findings, the authors examine the measurement tools that libraries have used to evaluate usage and satisfaction, including contemporary anthropological studies that provide a more detailed view of the student’s approach to research. The book takes a candid look at these redesigns and asks if improvements have lived up to expectations of increased service and user satisfaction. Are librarians using these findings to inform the evolution and implementation of new service models, or have they simply put a new shade of lipstick on the pig? Takes an honest look at learning commons in academic libraries and discusses what is working and what is not Explores behind the statistics as to why users come to the library; does the librarians’ concept of ‘the library as place’ match user perception? Looks at the anthropology of the user to gauge satisfaction with the services and space provided by the library via recent survey findings

The Academic Library and Its Users

The Academic Library and Its Users PDF Author: Peter Jordan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351895273
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Get Book

Book Description
The many recent changes in higher and further education mean that it is more important than ever to analyse the needs of academic library users, and both promote and provide the service they require. This constructive book, pervaded throughout by the impact of IT on the learning environment, surveys the influences on today's academic library, and explains how to increase user satisfaction through quality management. The author focuses particularly on users' behaviour in the library, the problems they cause or encounter, and how libraries cope. The book examines the varying needs of undergraduate and graduate, mature and part-time students, overseas students, franchised students, distance learners and other groups with special needs, explaining ways in which these needs can be identified and the service evaluated. One chapter is devoted to research and researchers' information demands. The particular requirements of subject communities and their consequences for academic libraries are also investigated, as well as the requirements of teaching staff and ways in which the library can work with them. The author emphasizes the importance of user education programmes and explains how to promote the library effectively with limited resources. For librarians, heads of services and senior library managers in further and higher education, and those, such as subject librarians, responsible for specific student groups, this book provides a comprehensive and realistic guide to providing and promoting a quality service. Students of librarianship and information management will gain valuable insight from this book into user analysis and improving the performance of information provision.

FoolÕs Gold

FoolÕs Gold PDF Author: Mark Y. Herring
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786453931
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Get Book

Book Description
This work skeptically explores the notion that the internet will soon obviate any need for traditional print-based academic libraries. It makes a case for the library’s staying power in the face of technological advancements (television, microfilm, and CD-ROM’s were all once predicted as the contemporary library’s heir-apparent), and devotes individual chapters to the pitfalls and prevarications of popular search engines, e-books, and the mass digitization of traditional print material.

Information Access and Library User Needs in Developing Countries

Information Access and Library User Needs in Developing Countries PDF Author: AI-Suqri, Mohammed Nasser
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1466643544
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book

Book Description
While high quality library and information services continue to thrive and strengthen economic and social development, much of the knowledge that exists on user’s needs and behaviors is fundamentally based on the results of users in English-speaking, western developed countries. Information Access and Library User Needs in Developing Countries highlights the struggles that developing countries face in terms of information gaps and information-seeking user behavior. The publication highlights ways in which users in developing countries can benefit from properly implementing LIS services. Researchers, academics, and practitioners interested in the design and delivery of information services will benefit from this collection of research.

A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom

A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom PDF Author: Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF)
Publisher: American Library Association
ISBN: 0838913253
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

Book Description
Collecting several key documents and policy statements, this supplement to the ninth edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual traces a history of ALA’s commitment to fighting censorship. An introductory essay by Judith Krug and Candace Morgan, updated by OIF Director Barbara Jones, sketches out an overview of ALA policy on intellectual freedom. An important resource, this volume includes documents which discuss such foundational issues as The Library Bill of RightsProtecting the freedom to readALA’s Code of EthicsHow to respond to challenges and concerns about library resourcesMinors and internet activityMeeting rooms, bulletin boards, and exhibitsCopyrightPrivacy, including the retention of library usage records

Useful, Usable, Desirable

Useful, Usable, Desirable PDF Author: Aaron Schmidt
Publisher: ALA Editions
ISBN: 9780838912263
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness

The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness PDF Author: Ryan Dowd
Publisher: ALA Editions
ISBN: 9780838916261
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
"Homelessness is a perennial topic of concern at libraries. In fact, staff at public libraries interact with almost as many homeless individuals as staff at shelters do. In this book Dowd, executive director of a homeless shelter, spotlights best practices drawn from his own shelter's policies and training materials" --