They are presented here loosely to reflect three broad perspectives—the library seen as an organization that occupies a physical place and has a civic function, the library experienced as a partner with other institutions engaged in scholarly and cultural communications, and the library as a choice to help those seeking information. The role of the library in society is also a topic offered in the fourth chapter by Robert S.
Introduction
Centrifugal Force
These cities are looking to renew their downtowns and see libraries as an important factor in their redevelopment. Stern Architects designed the central library buildings, the development of the library was part of a larger investment in the city center that also included new courthouses, stadiums, arenas, symphony halls and art museums. 2 American cities are trying to find a new balance between the core and the periphery.
The Development of Modern Libraries
The first half of the 19th century brought discussions about the design of libraries as a special building type. One of the most influential building designs of the 19th century was the library that houses the books and manuscripts of the former convent of St Genevieve in Paris by the French architect Henri Labrouste (Richards, 1977).
Libraries and the City Beautiful Movement in America
While most large academic and public libraries built before World War II were designed using the closed stack model, small libraries typically provided direct access to books (Van Slyck, 1995; Breisch, 2001). Carnegie-endowed libraries were seen as vehicles for popular education and social development; their users were given direct access to books as well as an auditorium for lectures and public meetings.
Modular Design in Libraries
The technological and socially progressive underpinnings of modernist design, along with the design aesthetic of the machine age and the rejection of historical styles, found resonance among Americans who wanted a clean start after the horrors of World War II. Too often, however, the simplicity and aesthetic elegance of the best modernist design was confused with cheapness, and the universal nature of the international style led in many cases to a lack of consideration of local character and conditions.
The Post-modern Reaction
The growing necessity of sustainable design leads to fresh design solutions that are more resource efficient than those of the recent past.6.
Today’s Library Design Issues
It's a waste of energy to light the top of the shelves, which cast unwanted shadows, and are probably dusty anyway. This is because furnishing contributes significantly to the overall appearance of the library.
Conclusion
1998).The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Typewriting to the Computer Age. 2002).Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Through a lengthy process of planning, implementation, review and improvement, the goals of the quality program were achieved.
The Search for Excellence
As the pace of technological change accelerated and expectations for services increased, it became clear that change would be a constant, but often unpredictable factor in the library and information environment. In the library world, excellence traditionally stands for extensive collections, spacious facilities, sufficient staff and yes, service orientation.
Defining Quality
However, "a primary objective of TQM is to improve the quality of customer outcomes..." (Shaughnessy, 1995, p. 2). The framework adopted by the Library is now recognized as a business excellence rather than a quality framework.1 Interestingly, the reason for the change was the unpopularity of the terminology "quality".
Adopting a Business Excellence Framework
One of the "principles of business excellence" on which the ABEF is founded is: "the potential of an organization is realized through its people's enthusiasm, ingenuity and participation." (ABEF, 2003). All the 12 principles (see Table I) were philosophically acceptable to the Library management and essentially consist of statements of good management practices.
Libraries as Business Organisations
In the decision-making process, the question of the relevance of a business framework for libraries was inevitably discussed at length. Leadership in the library and information community; satisfaction of the scholarly information needs of the University;
Challenges and Insights
Recognizing and rewarding active participants in the process provides visible symbols of the values espoused. Open discussion of the concept with all staff to explore and agree on the intended meaning for use in the UWL context contributed to staff buy-in.
Organisational Culture
Applying the principles embedded in the ABEF allowed changes to be integrated into the library's "normal" workflows. Flexibility” is an agreed personal trait and both personal traits and values are components of the “Ideal Culture”.
Benchmarking
While organizations outside the library and information sector may have different goals and objectives, what is sought through benchmarking is creative, innovative solutions to common issues and problems. However, partnering with recognized leaders outside the library and information sector provided the opportunity to observe continuous improvement and innovation initiatives outside established organizational Table III.
Success and Sustainability
Achievements are also reviewed and recorded in the annual report to the University Council; this allows key stakeholders to comment on our progress. 2For a description of the "Investors in People" standard and its application in the University of Wollongong Library, see the following publications: Denny, Lorraine (2000).
Conclusion
In Meaningful Measures for Emerging Realities: Proceedings of the 4th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services (J. Stein, M. Kyrillidou and D. Davis, eds.) p. In recent years, there has been an increasing debate within the library community regarding the civic role of the public library.
Context
The purposes of the public library are many and varied, but essentially they are two—to promote enlightened citizenship and to enrich personal life. For example, the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), a national organization that promotes preservation and design of public markets, parks and squares, has drawn attention to the library's key function as one of the primary public spaces.
Paradox
Putnam and Feldstein also discuss the library's unifying value, its inclusive and tolerant attitude toward all, as an aspect of its value to local communities. They consider this unifying role to be "one of the core missions of the Chicago Public Library: to reflect and serve the diversity of the city's residents by helping those residents discover the sympathies and interests that unite them." (p. 54).
Need for a Service Model
The lack of a practical framework for putting the Public Library into action may be due to the fact that leading librarians and theorists are interested in different societal aspects of the library and do not usually view these aspects as part of a coherent whole. Another parallel and important aspect of the public library discussion was led by librarians, including Nancy Kranich, who were concerned about access to information and the library's role in ensuring information equity in the digital age.
The LFF Civic Library Model
The sense of place, the concept of "ordinary", is influenced not only by the architecture of the library, but also the design and use of its external spaces and how they relate to the surroundings. Examples such as these suggest that the local library has a crucial role in helping newcomers become part of the community's civic and social life.5.
Civic Libraries in Practice
6Virginia Beach Public Library profile based on an interview with the director and information from the library's website. 9The Flint Public Library profile is based on an interview with the director, materials from the library's website, and brochures.
Conclusion
InZweizig's (1973) dissertation of Syracuse University, he noted that “Librarians have long focused on the user in library life. Predicting the amount of library use: an empirical study of the role of the public library in the lives of the adult public.
How Publishers Decide What to Publish
STM magazine publishers used SGML to develop the MAJOUR (Modular Application for Journals) Document Type Definition (DTD) header in the late 1980s. In the online world, subscriptions and licenses continue to be a good value for libraries and users, and a return on investment for publishers.
How Publishers Market and Sell Content
The role of the librarian must also be considered in a geographical or cultural context. B would gain access to any of the 20 in A's collection to which it did not already have a subscription.
Usage Data as a Metric
In medicine and the life sciences, usage data informs decisions about which areas to talk to scientists about, potentially pointing to journal content to acquire and which functionality to support with additional investment. Usage data is emerging as an important aspect of discussions about the pricing of electronic information.
Areas of Potential Cooperation and Collaboration
By adhering to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (http://www.openarchives.org/ . OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html), the articles are findable through their metadata. By using the DOI (http://www.doi.org), authors can ensure that their articles are permanently available on the web.
Conclusions
The case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC position paper, http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html. Guide to Open Access Journal Publishing, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/oajguides/business_planning.pdf.
Government: Two Steps Forward, One Step Backwards?
Overview
One of the programs available is the Project on Government Secrecy, http://www.fas.org/sgp/. Grants.gov (http://www.grants.gov/), which provides cross-departmental and agency access to federal grants;.
Issues
14 million have used government websites to gather information to help them decide how to vote. If any redesign of government websites does not comply with Section 508, those with disabilities will not be able to access diverse government content on the Web, thereby increasing the digital divide.
Definite Barriers to Information Access (One Step Backwards)
OMB, as mandated by the E-Government Act of 2002, should investigate this issue as it considers the impact of modified URLs, dead links, and broken redirects on long-term public access to website content. As federal government websites evolve to include more information or attention-grabbing features such as Flash (Macromedia) graphics, the complexity of URLs increases.
A Modest Research Agenda
Explore how people with disabilities navigate, select, and use government websites and their content. If Accenture's characterization is correct, are there differences in the stages of mature delivery and transformation of services within a government agency's websites, between entities, and between government branches.
Implications of E-Government to Libraries
Web pages and their content disappear without warning, and web-based addresses for documents and services are often revised without proper redirection. New information should never be posted on an agency's website; a document can be considered to be.
Conclusion
This chapter examines the role of libraries and librarians from the perspective of the information seeker in general and of business school students in particular. Finally, an updated model of the typical information seeker's perspective of libraries and librarians is proposed.
Background
This chapter begins with a discussion of two models of information search from the library and information science literature that reflect the role of libraries and librarians in information search. Information channels and information sources that have thresholds for use will not become part of information seeking behaviour.
Information Seeking Behaviors Today
However, much remote access was limited to the librarian, and the use of CD-ROMs required users to visit the library for access. While the librarian may perceive this as a trivial complaint and consider access via the library website to be very accessible, information seekers may disagree.
MBA Students’ Perceptions of Librarians and Libraries: A Case Study
Only 15% of respondents indicated that they tend to personally visit a library when doing business research. 53% (n¼241) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would use a website created by librarians.
Discussion
Whatever technology libraries and librarians adopt must fit the culture of the organization and the behavior of the people in the information-seeking environment. Inquiries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science Criteria for selecting an information source.
The Changed Information Landscape
The ongoing information revolution has been simultaneously the most serious crisis the field has ever faced and its greatest opportunity. Additionally, statistics predict the impending retirement by the end of the next decade of 68% of the nation's librarians (Tenopir, 2004; Lynch, 2002).
It Is Not Just Technology: The Changing Research Paradigm
This article focuses specifically on the changes underway in the evolution of LIS education; it is set up as a discussion of crisis and opportunity. The knowledge gained from this approach has entered LIS education and influenced the changes identified in the KALIPER study discussed below.
Operating in a Highly Competitive Environment
Researchers seeking the answers to the three big questions identified by Bates have moved LIS education into a Copernican universe with information at the center and, as Taylor predicted, libraries as one of the planets in the universe. This has led to a gap in the library's journal literature between dry and inaccessible reports of pure research.
Documenting LIS Education in the Midst of Change
This is the result both of the divorce between information science-oriented faculty and practicing librarians and of the fact that LIS schools in the US tend to be part of large universities that value (and reward) pure research over applied research. Additionally, at the end of the HRISM experiments, Kellogg funded the most comprehensive study of LIS education in nearly a century—.
The KALIPER Project
The Kellogg Foundation, which sought to influence change in LIS education, funded several experiments in change at a group of LIS programs, including the University of Michigan, Florida State University, Drexel University, and the University of Illinois. The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) grant focused on the revision of core curriculum courses (shortly after the development of a comprehensive distance learning program). ALISE devoted an entire issue of the Journal of Library and Information Science Education (Summer, 2001), and articles on the research have appeared in major library journals and on the Internet (Pettigrew and Durrance, 2001).
KALIPER-Identified Trends and Their Current Manifestation
1This short description from the University of Michigan School of Information is adapted from the strategic assessment document prepared by the School in December 2003. Members of the School of Information Studies faculty teach both online and on campus.” (Syracuse) The number of programs that provide the LIS degree in distance education is so large that the phenomenon itself has spawned a large number of studies.
Information Education: Competition or Convergence?
The latest convergence examples to emerge from the new information landscape are interdisciplinary experiments, such as that at the University of Michigan School of Information. As the number of information schools grows, more deans have begun to attend these meetings.
