In her biography about her horticulturalist father, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, Mary Turner Carriel wrote the following of Turner's quest to fence prairies; words that may also serve as an allegory for present-day libraries: What he could have done to tempt the pioneer from his home in the East to settle upon the fertile lands in the West. The first…

The core mission of libraries has always centered on making content and related services available to patrons. The form in which that content is delivered has changed continually. The most ancient libraries or archives organized clay tablets or cylinders written in cuneiform. Centuries ago, the transition from scrolls to codices must have been…

Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

People using libraries will expect to receive more of what they provide in more ways and in more places. It's already the case that people presume they should be able to do things they can do at the library through the web. Because they can do that, they presume they can use the libraries through their phones and their tablet computers. To some…

This paper outlines the emerging trends for leadership in the knowledge era. It discusses these within the context of leading, creating and sustaining the performance development cultures that libraries require. The first step is to recognise that we all need to take leadership personally no matter whether we see ourselves as leaders or followers.…

Experienced librarian and coach Ruth Metz outlines a focused and results-oriented plan for achieving the best results from staff members through a coaching style of management. Real-world examples and coaching scenarios specific to library work will help librarians: (1) Be both a coach and a player by learning the terminology and techniques; (2)…

There have been substantial changes in the labour market over the past few years and survey results indicate 60% of staff will leave public library service over the next decade. While this creates opportunities for library staff, limited training budgets and a focus on compliance and specific library skills training have led to a gap in the formal…

It's an obvious observation that librarians today find themselves dealing with collections of ever larger proportions of electronic content. The degree to which that shift has already taken place varies from one type of library to another. Some organizations, especially those involved with specializations in biomedical, scientific, or business,…

On June 15-16, 2010, California State Librarian Stacey A. Aldrich, initiated a strategic planning summit in Sacramento, California. The purpose of the summit was to build the future pathways for the California State Library (CSL)--one of California's oldest cultural institutions. This was accomplished by developing a CSL strategic plan (values,…

Although there have been changes in information technology and in higher education since the publication of College and University Archives: Selected Readings in 1979, the core fundamentals of college and university archives remain the same. If academic archivists are to make progress in their mission to ensure selection, preservation, and…

The study's purpose was to investigate the views and opinions of librarians about the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies into library operations and services. The Delphi technique was chosen as the method of inquiry in this study, in which a group of panelists graded the desirability and probability of a list of statements. Thirty-nine…

The current rate of change suggests scholarly communications issues such as new publication models and technology to connect library and research tools is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. As models evolve, standards develop, and scientists evolve in their communication patterns, librarians will need to embrace transitional…

The public library is a product of modernity that follows in the wake of industrialization, urbanization, and popular movements, while at the same time the public library itself supports the building up and development of the modern. This article will examine the arrival of modernity and the prerequisites for the rise of public libraries, as well…

This study examines the influence of culture on digital libraries of the first wave. The local cultures of innovation of five European national libraries (Biblioteca nacional de Portugal, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, the National Library of Scotland, and the British Library) are reconstructed in case histories from…

Personal Digital Assistant serials are not just a subset of electronic serials from an acquisitions/collection development point of view because of their total dependence on patron-owned technology. Even if viewed as a "free" resource there are issues of expense and effort involved in gathering, classifying, and providing access and awareness of…