Books in Library and information science

Succession Planning in Canadian Academic Libraries

1st Edition
October 6, 2015
Janneka Guise
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 1 4 6 2
eBook
9 7 8 0 1 2 8 0 2 3 7 2 3

Succession Planning in Canadian Academic Libraries explores the current Canadian academic library environment, and the need for succession planning in that environment. The literature review demonstrates the lack of reported succession planning activities in Canadian academic libraries. Site visits and in-depth interviews with professional librarians at six libraries across Canada highlight best practices and barriers to succession planning. These best practices and barriers are addressed in individual chapters, with tips and strategies for library leaders.

Customer Service in Academic Libraries

1st Edition
October 6, 2015
Stephen Mossop
English
Paperback
9 7 8 1 8 4 3 3 4 7 5 8 3
eBook
9 7 8 1 7 8 0 6 3 4 3 9 5

The term 'customer service' is not new to the academic library community. Academic libraries exist to serve the needs of their community, and hence customer service is essential. However, the term can be applied in a variety of ways, from a thin veneer of politeness, to an all-encompassing ethic focussing organisational and individual attention on understanding and meeting the needs of the customer. For customers, the library’s Front Line team is the ‘human face’ of the library. How well they do their job can have a massive impact on the quality of the learning experience for many students, and can directly impact upon their success. The importance of their role, and the quality of the services they offer, should not be underestimated – but in an increasingly digital world, and with potentially several thousand individuals visiting every day (whether in person or online), each with their own agendas and requirements, how can the library’s Front Line team deliver the personal service that each of these individuals need? Customer Service in Academic Libraries contributes to what academic libraries, as a community, do really well - the sharing of best practice. It brings together, in one place, examples of how Front Line teams from libraries across a wide geographical area - Hong Kong, Australia, Turkey and the United Kingdom – work to ‘get it right for their customers’. Between them, they cover a range of institutions including research-intensive, mixed HE/FE, private establishments and shared campuses. All have their own tales to tell, their own emphases, their own ways of doing things – and all bring their own examples of best practice, which it is hoped readers will find useful in their own context.

The Myth and Magic of Library Systems

1st Edition
September 23, 2015
Keith J. Kelley
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 0 7 6 2
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 0 8 7 8

The Myth and Magic of Library Systems not only defines what library systems are, but also provides guidance on how to run a library systems department. It is aimed at librarians or library administrations tasked with managing, or using, a library systems department. This book focuses on different scenarios regarding career changes for librarians and the ways they may have to interact with library systems, including examples that speak to IT decision-making responsibilities, work as a library administrator, or managerial duties in systems departments.

How Libraries Should Manage Data

1st Edition
September 4, 2015
Brian Cox
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 6 6 3 4
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 6 7 1 9

Have you ever looked at your Library’s key performance indicators and said to yourself "so what!"? Have you found yourself making decisions in a void due to the lack of useful and easily accessible operational data? Have you ever worried that you are being left behind with the emergence of data analytics? Do you feel there are important stories in your operational data that need to be told, but you have no idea how to find these stories? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you. How Libraries Should Manage Data provides detailed instructions on how to transform your operational data from a fog of disconnected, unreliable, and inaccessible information - into an exemplar of best practice data management. Like the human brain, most people are only using a very small fraction of the true potential of Excel. Learn how to tap into a greater proportion of Excel’s hidden power, and in the process transform your operational data into actionable business intelligence.

Altmetrics for Information Professionals

1st Edition
September 3, 2015
Kim Johan Holmberg
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 7 3 5
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 7 7 3

The goal of any research assessment is to evaluate the value or quality of the research in comparison to other research. As quality is highly subjective and difficult to measure, citations are used as a proxy. Citations are an important part of scholarly communication and a significant component of research evaluation, with the assumption being that highly cited work has influenced the work of many other researchers and hence it is more valuable. Recently we have seen new online data sources being researched for this purpose and disruptive ideas with the power to change research assessment, and perhaps even science as a whole, have been born. Altmetrics is the new research area that investigates the potential of these new data source as indicators of the impact that research has made on the scientific community and beyond, and thus possibly also as indicators of the societal impact of research. This book will present some of these new data sources, findings from earlier altmetrics research, and the disruptive ideas that may radically change scholarly communication.

Supporting Research in Area Studies

1st Edition
August 19, 2015
Lesley Pitman
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 7 8 0 6 3 4 7 1 5

Supporting Research in Area Studies: A Guide for Academic Libraries focuses on the study of other countries or regions of the world, crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences. The book provides a comprehensive guide for academic libraries supporting communities of researchers, exploring the specialist requirements of these researchers in information resources, resource discovery tools, information skills, and the challenges of working with materials in multiple languages. The book makes the case that adapting systems and procedures to meet these needs will help academic libraries be better placed to support their institutions’ international agenda. Early chapters cover the academic landscape, its history, area studies, librarianship, and acquisitions. Subsequent chapters discuss collections management, digital products, and the digital humanities, and their role in academic projects, with final sections exploring information skills and the various disciplinary skills that facilitate the needs of researchers during their careers.

An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata

1st Edition
August 8, 2015
Getaneh Alemu + 1 more
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 3 8 5 5
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 4 0 1 2

An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata is a reaction to the current digital library landscape that is being challenged with growing online collections and changing user expectations. The theory provides the conceptual underpinnings for a new approach which moves away from expert defined standardised metadata to a user driven approach with users as metadata co-creators. Moving away from definitive, authoritative, metadata to a system that reflects the diversity of users’ terminologies, it changes the current focus on metadata simplicity and efficiency to one of metadata enriching, which is a continuous and evolving process of data linking. From predefined description to information conceptualised, contextualised and filtered at the point of delivery. By presenting this shift, this book provides a coherent structure in which future technological developments can be considered.

Meeting Health Information Needs Outside Of Healthcare

1st Edition
August 4, 2015
Catherine Arnott Smith + 1 more
English
Paperback
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 4 8 3
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 5 9 9

Meeting Health Information Needs Outside of Healthcare addresses the challenges and ethical dilemmas concerning the delivery of health information to the general public in a variety of non-clinical settings, both in-person and via information technology, in settings from public and academic libraries to online communities and traditional and social media channels. Professionals working in a range of fields, including librarianship, computer science and health information technology, journalism, and health communication can be involved in providing consumer health information, or health information targeting laypeople. This volume clearly examines the properties of health information that make it particularly challenging information to provide in diverse settings.

Information Professionals' Career Confidential

1st Edition
July 14, 2015
Ulla de Stricker
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 3 6 0

Based in part on a selection of the author's past blog postings, Information Professionals' Career Confidential is a convenient, browsable, and illuminating pocket compendium of insights on topics relevant for information and knowledge professionals at any stage of their careers. This book collects comments on matters of interest to new and experienced information professionals alike in 1-2 minute “quick takes,” inviting further thought. Topics range from the value of knowledge management and effective communication in organizations to assessing employers’ perception of information professionals and how best to increase one’s value through professional organizations and volunteering. This unique resource will be illuminating for anyone in library and information science, career development, or knowledge and information management.

Informed Systems

1st Edition
July 10, 2015
Mary M. Somerville
English
eBook
9 7 8 0 0 8 1 0 0 2 2 2 3

By fostering principles of systems thinking and informed learning though an inclusive, participatory design process that advances information exchange, reflective dialogue, and knowledge creation, the Informed Systems Approach promotes conceptual change in workplace organizations. Informed Systems explores theory-based participatory action research and provides examples of agile process models for activating sustainable design, dialogue, and reflection processes in today’s organizations. This book also examines forward thinking frameworks for academic libraries, and how they can be used in the context of dynamically changing scholarly communications. Chapters further the expression of collaborative information practices that enrich information experiences by simultaneously advancing both situated domain knowledge and transferable learning capacity. Design (and redesign) activities well integrated into the workplace culture are expressed through sustainable processes and practices that produce rich information experiences. Informed learning both promotes and sustains continuous learning, including collective reflection on information sources, collaborative practices, and systems functionalities. In these ways, transferable topical understandings and information resiliency manifest action oriented intention to ensure improvements of real world situations.

Related subjects

Collection development and management

Continuing professional education in librarianship

Digital libraries

Education for information science

Education for librarianship

Government information and libraries

Information knowledge management

Information policy

Information processing and control

Information science and management general

Legal aspects of library and information science

Library and information systems

Library automation and networks

Library instruction user training

Library science general

Library technical services

Library theory and research

Library user services

Scientometrics bibliometrics

Life Sciences

Physical Sciences & Engineering

Social Sciences & Humanities

Health