This article offers five ideas librarians should review every now and then to make sure the right services are being offered in the most effective manner to the people they serve. These five exercises or ideas may not be completely easy but neither are they difficult or expensive. However, they will guarantee an increased awareness of, and…

Flexible scheduling of school library media is accepted notion in major library school associations and the classes meet in the library media center based on instructional and curricular need instead of fixed scheduling of school library in which classes have specified library times each week. The controversy regarding fixed and flexible school…

The strategies to be followed by a Library Media Specialist when his or her position is reduced due to budget reductions or reorganizations in the school district are discussed. The strategies include, learning the timeline for district budget adjustment project, distribution and discussion of library advocacy information with building…

The ways in which one can keep the library media plan on track in the face of the realistic challenges faced by media are discussed. A system for prioritizing tasks, both planned goal-related tasks and tasks that walk in the door in varying degrees of emergency status and by need of more time management strategies could be used. [For Part I, see…

How do you simultaneously renovate a grocery store into a state-of-the-art resource library, supervise the daily operations of five libraries, lead a team in reimagining reference service, and plan your wedding? Ask Lois Langer, coordinating librarian of Hennepin County Library. Her answer: "Project management--you can do anything,…

Not all volunteers respond the same way to the same stimuli. The purpose of this article is to suggest several ways to nurture volunteers in a library media center setting. Some might respond best to a printed word of appreciation or recognition in a district newsletter, while others would value a book or pin as a gift. Perks, like allowing…

The author argues that there is a need to reassess the direction of the academic library and the working practices of the staff within it to reclaim our libraries for their users and to examine the epistemology of library and information services. He argues that in order for academic libraries to find their place in the tertiary education culture…

This document was developed by the Middle Tennessee State University James E. Walker Library Collection Management Department to provide policies and procedural guidelines for the cataloging and processing of bibliographic materials. This document includes policies for cataloging monographs, serials, government documents, machine-readable data…

A valuable resource for new or experienced school librarians, "Collection Development for the School Library Media Program: A Beginner's Guide" is an easy-to-use guide to collection development. It provides practical and relevant information about collection development issues such as: the school users, policies, selection criteria and sources,…

In this article, the author recounts her experience in 2005 as a library director at the Mount Laurel Library in New Jersey. She thought her people at the library were in fairly good shape in terms of the professional staff's understanding of the confidentiality rules governing their customer information. However, she was wrong. This was driven…

From the ascendance of the reference database and web sites offering endless opportunities for cyber-promotion to the crowds swarming through the doors to avail themselves of new computers, the Internet has transformed the way public libraries do business. That is not news. What is exciting, though, is how the Internet continues to change public…

When a challenge gets difficult, it's hard to believe that people challenge instructional materials because they care. It's even harder to remember that educators want the general public, legislators, taxpayers, and parents to care about education. Library media specialists and administrators have the same lens of stress that all adults have,…

This brief 3-page paper gives a broad outline of the type of qualifications needed for a librarian to become a library director. Four requirements that candidates should meet are suggested: (1) a work record involving both public and technical library services; (2) a second Master's degree or doctoral degree; (3) evidence of initiative as revealed…

An experimental "management-by-objectives" performance system was operated by the Libraries and Information Systems Center of Bell Laboratories during 1973. It was found that, though the system was very effective for work planning and the development of people, difficulties were encountered in applying it to certain classes of employees.…

Enumerates principles and practices helpful in improving library administration while coping with budget cuts. (PF)