The Academic Library (2nd ed.)

Jean Steward (Director of Information Services and Librarian, University of East Anglia, UK)

Program: electronic library and information systems

ISSN: 0033-0337

Article publication date: 1 July 2006

249

Keywords

Citation

Steward, J. (2006), "The Academic Library (2nd ed.)", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 40 No. 3, pp. 299-300. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330610681394

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Given the very significant changes in higher education over the last few years, and of technological innovations, with the consequent changes in academic librarianship, it is hardly surprising that the second edition of The Academic Library has been published only five years after the first edition. Peter Brophy has updated the text throughout and added a new chapter on performance measurement.

The aim of the work is “to provide an introductory textbook which covers the major issues in academic libraries at the present time”. The first two chapters provide an overview of the higher education context and a brief history of higher education libraries. The chapters are succinct and well structured. Brophy provides a good summary of key facts with an overview of the main issues that impact on libraries, ranging from modularisation, franchising and lifelong learning to copyright and conservation issues and the development of information strategies.

In Chapter 3 Brophy starts to define what an academic library is in the twenty‐first century. His emphasis is on the library as primarily a service and it is, therefore, logical that the next chapter should focus on library users. The main library services are described in the remaining 11 chapters of the book. Each chapter gives a solid overview of the topic covered and the issues and challenges faced in each service area. The real strength of the book is that Brophy offers a clear vision of academic librarianship, relating each topic back to the UK higher education context and its inter‐relationships with other aspects of service delivery. The chapter on resource management, for example, sets this in the context of an institutional information strategy and, as well as describing capital and revenue budgets, takes a wider look at financial regulations and audit.

There are strong sections on management, including a chapter on strategic management and planning, as well as on resource and collections management. The chapters focussing on ICT and library systems provide an excellent summary of the impact of the Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme and its successors, and their importance in the development of the current hybrid library services. The weakest chapter is that on services. This describes a ragbag of services delivered by libraries that, although relevant, could perhaps have been included within the other chapters of the book.

The book is clearly laid out, with summaries of chapter sections in the contents list, an index and a useful list of acronyms. The suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter include references to web sites (including supplier web sites) as well as books. It should be essential reading for students and young professional librarians and would serve as a strong advertisement for the profession if recommended by careers advisors.

Brophy's final chapter looks at the academic library of the future. If the government's promotion of lifelong learning continues, he posits a future where the average library will be providing a service for up to 100,000 postgraduate students simultaneously. This possibility, combined with rapidly changing information resources and delivery mechanisms, globalisation and regionalisation, and virtual learning developments provides a challenging scenario. Given the rate of change and the quality of the book, it could be under five years before Brophy writes a third edition of this textbook.

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