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Books in Library and information systems

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    • Refocusing Academic Libraries through Learning and Discourse

      The Idea of a Library
      • 1st Edition
      • Mary K. Bolin
      • English
      Organizational Transformation in Academic Libraries: Discourse, Process, Product helps inform discussions in academic libraries on organizational patterns and divisions of labor. The book gives librarians leverage to think outside traditional bureaucratic structures and re-think how libraries serve their patrons. It examines existing structures and proposes new organizational models and lays out a process for planning organizational transformation and implementing a new organization. Seven chapters offer a radical vision of library transformation, proposing a collaborative process for changing academic libraries into organizations fit for the second quarter of the twenty-first century and beyond. Academic libraries are changing in the face of information technologies, economic pressures and globally disruptive events such as the current pandemic. As a result, practical solutions for transforming organizational and workflow structures for the future are desperately needed. The title analyzes existing organizational structures and proposes new ones that can be adapted to individual libraries. It discusses the challenges posed by virtual learning environments, digital initiatives and resources, changes to cataloging standards and succession planning, as well as changes brought about by the current pandemic.

    • China's Publishing Industry

      From Mao to the Market
      • 1st Edition
      • Qidong Yun
      • English
      China's Publishing Industry presents a portrait of the contemporary Chinese publishing industry in its political and commercial contexts, and analyses how its structures are influenced by the state and by market forces. Starting with an overview of the publishing business in China, this book takes a long view of the profound changes in China's publishing industry, covering a period from the 'socialist transformation' under Mao to the more recent reforms, such as the conglomeration and corporatisation, of the industry. The book investigates the impact of the changing social, economic and ideological environment on the structure and operation of the publishing industry, and explores how the burgeoning digital publishing business is shaped by the broader social context. It reveals that the process of commercialisation in China's publishing industry has been marked by persistent tensions and contradictions, and demonstrates, through case studies, how these tensions have impacted everyday practices.

    • Archives in the Digital Age

      Standards, Policies and Tools
      • 1st Edition
      • Lina Bountouri
      • English
      Archives in the Digital Age: Standards, Policies and Tools discusses semantic web technologies and their increased usage in distributing archival material. The book is a useful manual for archivists and information specialists working in cultural heritage institutions, including archives, libraries, and museums, providing detailed analyses of how metadata and standards are used to manage archival material, and how this material is disseminated through the web using the Internet, the semantic web, and social media technologies. Following an introduction from the author, the book is divided into five sections that explore archival description, digitization, the preservation of archives, the promotion of archival material through social media, and current trends in archival science.

    • Inherent Strategies in Library Management

      • 1st Edition
      • Masanori Koizumi
      • English
      Inherent Strategies in Library Management describes general and specific strategies for libraries based on core library values, and does so through concrete research. Many strategic management books for libraries introduce concepts of business management to the library world, but often neglect traditional library culture and core values. This book reexamines management through the lens of libraries themselves, rather than relying on strategies borrowed from the business world, in an attempt to bring to light the factors and decision-making processes behind how librarians have run their libraries over the past fifty decades. In other words, their decisions can be regarded as inherent management, born naturally from the core foundations, considerations, and operations of libraries. In addition, this book investigates the broad influences of business management theories on libraries, including a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of their use.

    • Collective Action 2.0

      The Impact of Social Media on Collective Action
      • 1st Edition
      • Shaked Spier
      • English
      Collective Action 2.0 explores the issues related to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in detail, providing a balanced insight into how ICTs leverage and interact with collective action, which will have an impact on the current discourse. Recent events in different authoritarian regimes, such as Iran and Egypt, have drawn global attention to a developing phenomenon in collective action: People tend to organize through different social media platforms for political protest and resistance. This phenomenon describes a change in social structure and behavior tied to ICT. Social media platforms have been used to leverage collective action, which has in some cases arguably lead, to political revolution. The phenomenon also indicates that the way information is organized affects the organization of social structures with which it interoperates. The phenomenon also has another side, which is the use of social media for activist suppression, state and corporate surveillance, commodifi cation of social processes, demobilization, or for the mobilization of collective action toward undesirable ends.

    • Staff-Less Libraries

      Innovative Staff Design
      • 1st Edition
      • Carl Gustav Johannsen
      • English
      Staff-Less Libraries: Innovative Staff Design considers the challenges of this approach, its pros and cons, identifies international experiences, and discusses best practices. It presents a step-by-step approach to implementing a staffless library and/or services, and seeks to inspire professionals to share experiences and optimize their library. Staff-less public libraries, enabled by technological developments, represent a significant and innovative aspect of the development of public libraries. The concept radically enlarges the availability of user access to public libraries. Some Danish public library branches have, for example, increased their weekly opening hours from 20 to 80 hours per week. In Denmark, the concept has been quite successful, increasing the number of staff-less libraries from 81 public library units in 2011 to 260 in 2014. From a longer view, however, the staff-less library concept contributes to the modernization of public libraries by further opening the library. Many library professionals have been surprised by the near absence of vandalism through the staffl-ess opening hours. According to the latest trend, the staffless library model is gradually moving from thinly populated rural areas and suburban neighborhoods to urban contexts. This book explores the concept, hence furthering the debate.

    • Stepping Away from the Silos

      Strategic Collaboration in Digitisation
      • 1st Edition
      • Margaret Coutts
      • English
      For over twenty years, digitisation has been a core element of the modern information landscape. The digital lifecycle is now well defined, and standards and good practice have been developed for most of its key stages. There remains, however, a widespread lack of coordination of digitisation initiatives, both within and across different sectors, and there are disparate approaches to selection criteria. The result is ‘silos’ of digitised content. Stepping away from the Silos examines the strategic context in the UK since the 1990s and its effect on collaboration and coordination of exemplar digitisation initiatives in higher education and related sectors. It identifies the principal criteria for content selection that are common to the international literature in this field. The outputs of the exemplar projects are examined in relation to these criteria. A range of common practices and patterns in content selection appears to have developed over time, forming a de facto strategy from which several areas of critical mass have emerged. The book discusses the potential to improve strategic collaboration and coordinated selection by building on such a platform, and considers planning options in the context of work on national digitisation strategies in the UK and internationally.

    • Navigation Design and SEO for Content-Intensive Websites

      A Guide for an Efficient Digital Communication
      • 1st Edition
      • Mario Pérez-Montoro + 1 more
      • English
      Navigation Design and SEO for Content-Intensive Websites: A Guide for an Efficient Digital Communication presents the characteristics and principal guidelines for the analysis and design of efficient navigation and information access systems on content-intensive websites, such as magazines and other media publications. Furthermore, the book aims to present the tools of information processing, including information architecture (IA) and content categorization systems, so that such designs can ensure a good navigation experience based on the semantic relations between content items. The book also presents best practices in the design of information access systems with regard to their main structures, including search query forms and search result pages. Finally, the book describes the foundations of search engine optimization (SEO), emphasizing SEO oriented to publications focused on communication and the coverage of current affairs, including images and videos.

    • Citation Tracking in Academic Libraries

      An Overview
      • 1st Edition
      • Judith Mavodza
      • English
      Citation Tracking in Academic Libraries: An Overview presents results from the overarching need for researchers to get relevant advice for their scholarly pursuits. This is even more critical in the fast changing environment, where even those who are established scholars find the new scholarly publishing paradigm hectic, and amateurs get easily intimidated. In the wake of the competitive ranking of universities, there is an added requirement for faculty to be involved with research activities so they can enhance the standing of their parent institutions. That means there is a need to use valid and authentic platforms for publishing. Making reference to already existing texts and answering questions that have been encountered by the author, the book is compiled to make easy, short, and concise reading that is an overview on the tracking of citations. Besides giving suggestions on how academic librarians can provide support to scholars, it includes the benefit of having librarians who are also scholars.

    • Emerging Technologies for Librarians

      A Practical Approach to Innovation
      • 1st Edition
      • Sharon Q Yang + 1 more
      • English
      Emerging Technologies for Librarians: A Practical Approach to Innovation focuses on the practical applications of emerging technologies in libraries, defining the technologies in the context of their use in real situations. Each chapter includes an overview of the use of emerging technologies in a particular work area that is followed by a list of relevant applications. Chapters cover work areas such as advertising, distance learning, metadata. and digital libraries, and also focus on applications, including mobile computing and web conferencing, followed by a conclusion. This book serves as a guide for those interested in learning about, and implementing, the available technologies that enhance library services, and also lists and discusses the types of emerging technologies that are available for a specific area of work.