Throughout the history of public libraries in the United States, great accomplishments have been achieved through the active participation of local community members. This handbook from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission is addressed to those citizens who attain appointments to their city or county library advisory boards. Its…

This paper presents a history of the Hiram College (Hiram, Ohio) library from 1950 to 1995. It highlights important events and decisions made in the construction and opening of the new library building on September 7, 1995 and shows how this achievement has revitalized the spirit and optimism of everyone involved. The paper also presents the…

Discusses the processes involved in migrating a library's automation system. Highlights include getting information from vendor demonstrations, setting up an evaluation database to analyze RFPs (requests for proposals), making a spreadsheet that compares costs of packages, making recommendations once the data are analyzed, and implementation…

One of the most significant decisions in a library administrator's career is the decision to automate one or more of a library's operations. This book describes the present state of local library automation; the planning, selection, and implementation process; and the library administrator's role in the process. The bulk of the text provides a…

Discusses collection development policy as means to express and systematize guidelines for collection building that fulfill three basic functions: the referential, the generative, the rhetorical. Division of policy into subject categories, and use of "collection levels" to rank the collection and collecting effort for each subject are…

Discusses weeding as part of the school library collection-building process. Topics addressed include criteria for making weeding decisions, including copyright date, last date of use, physical appearance, and timeliness; meeting students' needs; weeding audiovisual materials; and developing a plan for weeding. A sidebar describes special…

This document proposes a model of the decision making process required of research libraries when they embark on digital conversion projects. A series of questions are offered that focus on facilitating the decision making process for library managers. Questions of what and how to digitize are placed in the larger framework of collection building…