It is often difficult to link scientific knowledge to practical results in the world we live in. Further, it is almost impossible for most of us to link science, "better" and the everyday world unless we appeal to technology as the medium through which science expresses knowledge in the world.
A RECONSIDERATION
To the credit of the methodologies developed over the past decade (the most discussed in the literature today is LibQual+), they have emphasized community satisfaction rather than collection. In fact, in most cases our profession has adapted and continues to adapt to the changing conditions of its environment by adopting new procedures, policies and even principles.
DEFINITIONS
COLLECTION MANAGEMENT
Tangentially, the engagement process involves marketing the desires, plans, challenges, opportunities, and constraints of library leadership to the community as a means of promoting community understanding of the library. This issue will re-emerge below as one of the general causes of logistical problems encountered in collection management.
EVALUATION
The community-centred evaluation involves studying both the use made of the collection and the user's attitudes towards it. In the latter case, some user studies assess outcomes that are said to result directly from the consultation of the collection.
WEAKNESSES OF CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES
Furthermore, as an example of just one consideration that should be fairly simple but does not appear to be, we do know that convenience plays a role in use and in satisfaction, although we cannot claim that we either the nature, relative importance or others do not know. implications of that condition. And again, the conventional studies only provide a static, snapshot perspective on an environment that is its complete opposite.
THE ELUSIVE ‘SILVER BULLET’
Taking that conclusion a step further, one may also find that the greatest single weakness of the conventional evaluation methodologies, even when combined, is their lack of ability to be instructive about, or even reflective of, the dynamics which is inherent in the interactions and potential interactions. of the community and the information universe via collection management. Be that as it may, current technology can do little more than speed up conventional ways of getting fragmented views of the community, the user, use and the collection.
CONVENTIONS PERSIST
Moreover, he argues that human beings tend not to "feel an urgent need to think of something new when there is already a model ready at hand." And then we are inevitably faced with option number two: to accept that the old system has had its day, even if there is no new system ready to take its place.
EVALUATION OF THE PROCESS
Insight into the deeper nature of this process can be gained from Bertalanffy's summary of the systems view of social organizations. For the purposes of collection management, selected intellectual capital of the host organization, i.e. its tacit knowledge, is at the heart of this feedback process.
THE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT
This pragmatic beginning paved the way for a period of empiricism that began in the first quarter of the 20th century, when patterns of information use began to be observed and analyzed. From that foundation, the current era, characterized by what Smiraglia calls historicist epistemology, emerged in the second half of the 20th century to emphasize the role of the user's cognitive functions in information seeking.
BROADER IMPLICATIONS FOR THE LIBRARY
Infusion of the community spirit into the corporate spirit is the basis for a successful business. This scenario captures at once the strategy and spirit of the collaborative environment in which collection management and evaluation could function well.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The criteria applied to the evaluation of hoarding management, rather than the evaluation of hoarding per se, would emphasize issues of structure and process: they would place much weight on the presence of hoarding management policies and community involvement in the creation of theirs; on the policy monitoring and review process; on policy integration in the planning and policy making of the host institution; and for the quality of communication. It is about using an assessment of the collection management process as the central element of the collection assessment, supplemented peripherally by those other methodologies.
NOTES
Several decades of experience in academic libraries have led me to the conclusion that the ultimate indicator of a library's success must be found in the level of support the host organization gives it relative to its support capacity. It is implicit in this essay that these strategies can be applied in respective appropriate ways to all types and sizes of libraries.
SITES AT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES SERVING
DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS
INTRODUCTION
However, distance learning is part of a larger universe and can be seen as a subfield of instructional technology. Library education is just one of the services that distance education must continue to review and improve.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY/PROBLEM STATEMENT
I have provided a snapshot of the services that are actually offered through academic library websites today, interviews that discuss how some of the decisions are made about what and how these services are offered, and student surveys to assess their needs. Student surveys will also provide a more rounded picture, with opinions on the importance and value of library services in real use.
THEORETICAL CONSTRUCT
Written language, mathematical notation, and, more recently, the universal computer are examples of cognitive tools.'' This explains how patrons using library services can construct their own meaning from what they research in the library.
LIMITATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS
SUMMARY
What are the needs of students in terms of library services and do they reflect the needs that librarians think they are?
LITERATURE REVIEW
From an instructional perspective, academic librarians and library websites provide a large number of services to students. Much of the related literature dealing with library websites and remote library services is based on the experiences of the authors of the various studies and their opinions.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
One of the problems with viewing websites is their dynamic and changing nature. (1) Nova Southeastern University http://www.nova.edu/library/main/. 1) Touro University International http://support.tourou.edu/virtual_libraries/. 1) The Union Institute http://www.tui.edu/vermontcollege/templates/.
CONCLUSION
FINDINGS
There was also no significant correlation between the amount of distance education offered and the size of the institution (0.238). The amount of distance education provision made no difference to the total number of website features found.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
How this varies depends on the amount of distance education the institutions offer. Also, there was no significant correlation between the amount of distance education offered and the size of the institution (0.238).
CONCLUSIONS
Information retrieval in theory and practice: Rethinking public services in libraries. Reference & User Services Quarterly. Assessing User Needs, Satisfaction, and Library Performance at the University of Washington Libraries.Library Trends.
APPENDIX. STUDENT WEB SURVEY FORM
Measures of library use and user satisfaction with academic library services. Library and Information Science Research. This section will explain the types of features that you would like to see in a library website for distance learning students.
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LIBRARY SUPPORT SERVICES
MISSISSIPPI PUBLIC COMMUNITY AND JUNIOR COLLEGES
As distance education increases, so does the need for quality student support services (Gubbins, 1998) in a user-friendly format, so that students can be nurtured, encouraged and supported throughout their academic careers (Wagner, 2001). Providing student support if and when needed is critical to the success of the distance learning program.
NEED FOR THE SURVEY
Of the class enrollments, 2,309 out of 4,781 (approximately 48%) of the unduplicated number of principals responded to the survey. At the time of the survey, approximately 10,000 students were enrolled in online courses, but each student was asked to complete only one survey, even if enrolled in more than one class.
ANALYSIS OF DATA
Forty-one percent of respondents chose MELO as their choice for receiving guidance in using library resources. Faculty instruction was also a preferred choice with 30% of respondents reporting that faculty provided guidance on using library resources.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Factors deterring faculty from participating in distance learning.Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 5(4). Student support in distance education in the 21st century: Learning from service management. Distance learning The virtual university: The Internet and resource-based learning.
APPENDIX A. MSVCC STUDENT SERVICES SURVEY
State Board for Community and Junior Colleges. 2001, autumn). Mississippi Virtual Community College: Fall 2001 Survey Results Based on your experience to date, how would you rate the quality of instruction provided in online classes.
APPENDIX B. LEARNING RESOURCES DATABASES
The Mississippi Community College Library Directors were tasked by their presidents to develop an adequate library services program that would support the needs of the MSVCC students and faculty. By encouraging collaborative efforts of the Mississippi Community Colleges and by promoting economical delivery of information, MELO supports the needs and interests of students and faculty.
APPENDIX C. REVISED MSVCC STUDENT SERVICES SURVEY
Online reference help is provided via MELO's website, which gives the student access to 24/7 'live chat' reference services. Other methods of obtaining reference assistance include links on MELO that provide email addresses, electronic reference form, and telephone numbers for all community college libraries.
APPENDIX D. MSVCC FACULTY SERVICES SURVEY
Resources that I could not get online, I requested from a community college library and received them in a timely manner.
AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF LIBRARY
LEADERSHIP
OVERVIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL SENSEMAKING
Attention is paid to talk and conversation because "people actively shape each other's understandings and meaning processes" (Weick, 1995, p. 41). Once people start acting (enactment), they generate tangible results (cues) in a (social) context, and this helps them discover (retrospect) what is happening (continuity), what needs to be explained (acceptability) and what should be done next (identity growth) (Weick, 1995, p. 55).
HISTORY, VALUE, AND NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL SENSEMAKING RESEARCH
Meanwhile, social cognition and information processing models of organizations also developed in the field of psychology during the 1970s and were applied to the study of management. The publication of Fiske and Taylor's (1984) text on social cognition was a major step in the evolution of the field.
WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW: EXISTING LITERATURE ON SENSEMAKING
Out of the interest in decision making and organizational change, a new stream of literature developed during the mid-1980s that applied sensemaking to the study of strategic change. Organizational members need time to make sense of the change - interpret it, categorize it and look for examples from past experience see for example Bartunek et al., 1992, p. 207).
ANALYSIS OF ONE STUDY OF LEADER SENSEMAKING
A causal process, moving from situational understanding to vision to structure, was verified in most, but not all, cases. Some of the vectors occurred more or less simultaneously, or at least in rapid succession.
WHAT WE STILL WANT TO KNOW; A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR LIBRARY LEADER SENSEMAKING
Hellgren and Melin called for research that looks at "the dynamic interplay between dominant ways of thinking, organizational cultures, and industrial wisdom in different sectors" (1993, p. 67). Sensemaking in organizations: Towards a conceptual framework for understanding strategic change. Scandinavian Journal of Management.
VALUES IN LIBRARY DESIGN
Much research has fallen out of this model, emphasizing users' demands, perspectives and behaviors - the users' point of view. The other significant difference in the perception of building design is summarized in the following statement: ''The architects continued to see the building in much more static, symbolic terms throughout the process.
THEORY
Zerubavel (1997, p. 3) points out that "the way we draw lines" varies considerably from one society to another, as well as between historical periods within the same society. The artifact (the actual system open to user navigation) was divided into two categories of ''space'' - the physical environment and the ''intellectual''.
