Beyond Mentoring: A Guide for Librarians and Information Professionals looks at mentorship, mentorship programs, what works, what doesn’t, and different techniques, such as group and peer mentoring. The book considers many aspects of mentoring, various programs, and their successes and failures, going beyond the usual types of mentoring by looking at newer models. An example of the cohort model from the American Library Association Emerging Leader model is included as a case study. In addition, another case study on the Sunshine State leadership Institute provides a toolkit for building your own program. The final section of the book offers perspectives and tools that people can use in designing their own programs.
Map Librarianship identifies basic geoliteracy concepts and enhances reference and instruction skills by providing details on finding, downloading, delivering, and assessing maps, remotely sensed imagery, and other geospatial resources and services, primarily from trusted government sources. By offering descriptions of traditional maps, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other geospatial technologies, the book provides a timely and practical guide for the map and geospatial librarian to blend confidence in traditional library skill sets.
New Roles for Research Librarians: Meeting the Expectations for Research Support presents strategies librarians can use to adapt to the new conditions and growing expectations that are emerging from students and researchers. Even if they have never completed a PhD, or even been engaged in independent research themselves, this book will provide a new roadmap on how to deal with the new work environment. The book provides different approaches that include the library in the research process, an area that is often neglected by researchers during their planning and strategic work on research projects. Users will find content that offers tactics on how to create a new dialogue between the librarian and the postgraduate student, along with comprehensive discussions on different starting points, and how communication and collaboration can help reach the best of both worlds.
Lessons in Library Leadership: A Primer for Library Managers and Unit Leaders takes on the topic of management positions within libraries and how many of them are filled by candidates with no formalized training. This lack of preparation often leads to added stress as they scramble to learn how to lead, to formulate departmental goals, to conduct effective assessment, to think and plan strategically, to counsel employees, and much more. This book will serve equally as a primer for librarians new to management and those needing a refresher in basic management concepts. Seasoned managers may also look to this guide as a quick reference resource covering multiple management subjects. The contents of the monograph include basic concepts, real word examples/case studies, and bibliographic information for further management skill development.
The Mindful Librarian: Connecting the Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship explores mindfulness, approaching it in such a way as to relate specifically to the many roles or challenges librarians face. Coinciding with the increased need to juggle a variety of tasks, technologies, ebooks, and databases, the new Association of College & Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy, and the challenges faced by solo librarians in school libraries which have suffered cutbacks in help in recent years, the time is exactly right for this publication. The authors hope to be helpful in some small way towards improving the joy and quality of life that librarians and library science students experience in their personal lives and jobs. The loftier goal would be to create a new lens from which to view librarianship, having a transformative impact on readers, and opening a new dialog within the profession. The topic of mindfulness is not new; it has been connected to various religious traditions in a wide variety of ways for centuries, most notably Buddhism. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, a secular version was popularized largely by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his work on MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) at the University of Massachusetts’s Medical School. The medical benefits and the overall quality of life improvements from its adoption have exploded in recent years, in particular, the last two decades which have seen mindfulness traditions incorporated into education to a greater degree and with very positive results.
The Invisible Librarian: A Librarian's Guide to Increasing Visibility and Impact provides insights into what many librarians are feeling, including questions such as "do they feel invisible?" and "How many times have they heard somebody say ‘but everything is on the Internet’?" If you are a librarian struggling to find the best strategy for the future of the profession in a rapidly changing information environment, this book is for you. People don’t realize that librarians make information available and not just by search engine. This book will make people think differently about librarians, making a case for their value and impact that is compelling, convincing, and credible. Given their versatility and knowledge, now is the time for librarians to become champions of the information age as they improve the visibility and impact of libraries to readers, to stakeholders, and in society. By the end of the book, librarians will have a Visibility Improvement Plan to guarantee future success.
Within most libraries in the United States today there is an information professional who has become the ‘go-to’ person for grasping and grappling with copyright questions. While not an attorney, this librarian has developed an awareness and understanding of copyright law, legislation and practice as they relate to a wide variety of library activities. This practical handbook provides a broad overview of copyright librarianship. It is written for information professionals whose area of expertise, specialization or job it is to inform and educate others about the ethical use and best practices surrounding copyrighted materials It is written about the person with solid analytical skills and the ability to adapt and adjust in a rapidly changing environment; someone who can serve as an intermediary between information producers and consumers; someone who is knowledgeable about the law and providing access to information; someone who is well positioned within an organization to answer questions about copyright and provide reliable, accurate, and relevant answers, information, assistance, and guidance when needed. In short: a copyright librarian.
Graphs are about connections, and are an important part of our connected and data-driven world. A Librarian's Guide to Graphs, Data and the Semantic Web is geared toward library and information science professionals, including librarians, software developers and information systems architects who want to understand the fundamentals of graph theory, how it is used to represent and explore data, and how it relates to the semantic web. This title provides a firm grounding in the field at a level suitable for a broad audience, with an emphasis on open source solutions and what problems these tools solve at a conceptual level, with minimal emphasis on algorithms or mathematics. The text will also be of special interest to data science librarians and data professionals, since it introduces many graph theory concepts by exploring data-driven networks from various scientific disciplines. The first two chapters consider graphs in theory and the science of networks, before the following chapters cover networks in various disciplines. Remaining chapters move on to library networks, graph tools, graph analysis libraries, information problems and network solutions, and semantic graphs and the semantic web.
In the last two decades, advancement in technology has transformed every aspect of librarianship. Law Librarianship in Academic Law Libraries discusses issues and model practices in academic law libraries. This text will help librarians and library school students understand the operation, resources and facilities that are available in the academic law library. It explains the practices and trends that are widely practiced in different parts of the world. This book describes the expectations of an aspiring professional with an interest in specializing in law librarianship; revealing facts pertaining to management and administration which are not necessarily taught in library schools. The first chapter introduces the history of academic law libraries, and defines law librarianship. The remaining chapters are dedicated to different aspects of law librarianship including the importance of emerging technologies and how they are implemented in the academic law libraries setting, finishing with a concluding chapter on global opportunities available for law librarians.
The library and information profession builds skills and expertise that cover a wide spectrum. These skills are often desirable in other fields and industries. Likewise, the skills we build before entering the library and information professions can help us as professionals. Skills to Make a Librarian looks at both sides of this equation through a collection of essays by current and former librarians and information professionals who make use of this wide range of cross disciplinary skills.