E‐Learning for Management and Marketing in Libraries: Papers presented at the IFLA Satellite Meeting, Management and Marketing Section, Geneva, Switzerland, July 28‐30, 2003

Citation

Pymm, B. (2006), "E‐Learning for Management and Marketing in Libraries: Papers presented at the IFLA Satellite Meeting, Management and Marketing Section, Geneva, Switzerland, July 28‐30, 2003", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 598-599. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610706488

This collection of eleven papers focuses on various online education initiatives being undertaken in a wide variety of libraries and universities in Europe, North America, Africa and India. Seven of the papers are in French with only the abstracts translated into English. For someone with my level of long ago schoolboy French, I found this challenging to say the least, and in the end gave up on a number of contributions. The final 20 or so pages summarises the issues raised during the two day conference providing a list of rather random key points (in English), followed by commentaries from the major participants (mostly in French). Again, a fairly idiosyncratic collection of commentary and experience covering various online education programs in place in libraries for their clients and in university education programs for students of librarianship.

The title of this collection is misleading – the theme of marketing and management isn't the focus of many papers. Thus the very first paper in the collection deals with a graduate program in library and information studies now in its tenth year of delivery via the Internet. This is followed by papers dealing with the potential of the Internet for training librarians and others in Tunisia; the technical and pedagogical aspects of delivering project management and marketing via the Net; e‐learning of marketing in the UK; e‐learning and information literacy; self study vs a learning community; distance learning in Senegal and others in a similar vein. It really is a mix of topics of which some are quite interesting and others also, probably interesting but due to my language skills (or lack thereof) just too much like hard work to get to grips with.

This eclectic collection is nowhere near focused enough to be of great use to anyone. The odd paper will hit the mark but overall, even if you can readily understand both languages, I doubt there is a great deal here to make you rush out and grab this title. Not recommended except for extremely specialized collections.