The Gerstein Science Information Centre (Gerstein Library) is one of 40 libraries within the University of Toronto (U of T) and is the largest academic science and health science library in Canada. It offers 109 computers and two networked printers for student, staff, and faculty use. In addition, the library provides patrons' laptops with…

How have college and university-based archives and special collections fared over the past few years in the midst of an historically grim economic downturn? The authors conducted in-depth interviews with directors of 13 archival repositories at state universities and private colleges in the Appalachian region of Virginia, West Virginia, North…

Anyone at the helm of a small public library knows that every little detail counts. But juggling the responsibilities that are part and parcel of the job is far from easy. Finally, here's a handbook that includes everything administrators need to keep a handle on library operations, freeing them up to streamline and improve how the organization…

Technological innovations have transformed all areas of community college libraries. Automated library systems, office software, and Internet access have altered work processes for library personnel and have changed research methodologies for students and faculty. The purpose of this bounded multiple case study was to explore how the adoption of…

Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Patrons' privacy is precious to most librarians. Yet new Web services thrive on collecting and sharing the very information that has long been protected. This points to an emerging tension as libraries embrace digital services.…

During a six month contract with the Royal University of Bhutan, the author was required to develop the initial stages of a first library qualification to be offered in Bhutan. Questions raised by this project included: is a first qualification in librarianship needed in Bhutan? What are the potential student numbers in such a programme? What…

Declining reference statistics, diminishing human resources, and the desire to be more proactive and embedded in academic departments, prompted the University of South Florida Library to create a taskforce for re-envisioning reference services. The taskforce was charged with examining the staffing patterns at the desk and developing…

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…

Purposeful assessment of space for the understanding and improvement of the academic library is a relatively new area of inquiry. This essay offers a framework to consider different factors affecting such an assessment and insights for undertaking a meaningful inquiry about the relationship of space to an academic library's evolving purpose as…

Stanford University is going through the difficult and highly fraught process of figuring out a plan for the library of the future. Coming on the heels of the "bookless library," touted as the vision for a new engineering library, a preliminary proposal in 2007 to tear down the seismically unsafe Meyer Library and digitize and house off campus…

Scenario planning as a strategic tool for future planning was explored. The case study showed how the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library applied the process to draw up its preferred future, and illustrated the importance of involving all stakeholders in every stage for the shared future to be acceptable to all.

"Embracing the chaos" is an ongoing challenge for librarians. Embracing the chaos means librarians must have a plan for responding to the flood of new products, widgets, web tools, and gizmos that students use daily. In this article, the author argues that library instruction and access services have been grappling with that chaos with…

The transformation of information from a scarce to a superabundant commodity has driven three paradigms in the design of library space. These are the reader-centered, book-centered, and learning-centered paradigms. The first two competed inconclusively with one another throughout most of the twentieth century. Revolutionary changes in information…

As higher education confronts shortages in hungry times, will officials who previously viewed the library as a sacred cow think it's time for a barbecue? Don't light the charcoal yet. Interviews with chief academic officers and an online survey taken by over 130 leaders in academic affairs yield surprising results. It's no secret that academic…

The rumored death of librarianship caused by the advent of technology has not, and will not, come to pass. In this article, the author describes how technology has exponentially increased the librarian's ability to provide library service at the Calcasieu Parish Public Library, where she serves as head of Collection & Computing Services. The…