The Sydney Public Library began as the Australian Subscription Library and Reading Room which opened in Sydney on December 1, 1827, with 1,000 volumes. The Municipal Council of Sydney took possession of the library in 1909. The library evolved from a closed access, fixed shelf position library to an open access system in 1910. A complete…

Professional librarians working in public libraries are generally evaluated in a number of ways, including standardized forms. By collecting and studying these forms, it was proposed that certain management traits and behaviors could be identified and compared. A total of 115 libraries serving municipalities with populations of more than 50,000…

This paper reports on the employment need for catalogers as perceived by library science students and practicing library administrators. Library literature provided several contradictory views on whether there is or is not a significant need for catalogers today; and, if there is, whether entry level catalogers or those with experience are in…

Mentoring in the fields of academia, business, and government has been studied since the early 1970s. The field of library science has recently begun to study this activity among the members of its profession. More research is needed to determine the extent of influence this area of career development has had on the careers of librarians. This…

A structured questionnaire was mailed to the directors (n=124) of all of the academic libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to obtain information on the status of participative management for support staff groups in major research libraries. Thirty of the 69 library administrators responding to the survey report that…

Historical studies of public libraries are important because they provide insight into the development of these institutions and serve as an aid to future researchers. This paper examines the development of the Tuscarawas County Public Library (TCPL), in Ohio, for the years 1937-60, in order to discover how the library's building, budget,…

This study examined the problem of planned organizational and technological change in a university library catalog department implementing the shared cataloging system of OCLC, Inc. Information on the implementation experiences and problems of OCLC member libraries was gathered from published reports and on-site visits to three university…

This study examines the role of the user study as a management tool in academic libraries and proposes a task-oriented survey method to estimate the library clientele's need for documents. Research on work and task-oriented information studies is discussed and applied to the development of a survey instrument. A case study employing the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the current levels of automation and plans for future automation in state-supported, two-year community college libraries. A second purpose was to examine the impact of independent variables, such as enrollment and professional staff, on library automation. Eighty community college library directors and…

The first of five chapters in this master's thesis examines the current status of media facilities and historical factors that have contributed to their development. An analysis of the design of media facilities following the principle of "form follows function" begins in the second chapter, which expounds a theoretical model of the…

Support staff of circulation, reference, interlibrary loan, media services, special collections, information, and reserves make up a large portion of library work forces, and each year are asked to take on more tasks, many requiring advanced skills. This study determined: (1) if there is an actual need for continuing education for support staff;…

This paper analyzes the job advertisements that appeared in "MLA News" (a publication of the Medical Library Association) from January 1991 through December 1991. It replicates two earlier studies, in 1977-78 and 1986, and compares results. Each of the 179 job advertisements for 1991 was studied for: (1) administrative level; (2) area of…

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of public library service given to those over age 64 in the seven Ohio counties which make up the Northeastern Ohio Library Association (NOLA). Based on a survey of the 34 public libraries in NOLA, this study of older adult services may be used as a basis for setting performance goals and…