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The purpose of this paper is to review the considerations necessary in developing modern library spaces.

Both internal and external segments of library space are analyzed from the positions of their physical availability to users, services offered and future prospects.

The findings indicate that the library space consists of two segments: internal and external. Internal space is physical space with traditional documents and services, and the external segment is physically intangible virtual space dealing with virtual services using electronic resources.

The two segments of library space have not previously been considered together in one paper. Also, virtual library resources and services, in respect of relating them to the certain segment of library space, have not been considered previously.

In this way, the aim of this study is to expand and evelop the application of this technique in FMEA to rank failure modes of ESQ of academic libraries in an intuitionistic fuzzy environment. Assessment of electronic service quality (ESQ) of libraries is significantly important according to their major roles. It should be noted that the ESQ has a significant impact on customer satisfaction, which improves organizational performance. Accordingly, low ESQ means waste of organizational resources and poor user satisfaction. So, there is a dire need to reflect reasons inducing failure modes in academic library ESQ. Thus, investigation of failure modes affecting academic library ESQ is highly important. One solution in this area is utilization of the intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) as one of the widely used methods for prediction and identification of failure modes.

The present study in terms of objective is applied and in terms of the type of method is descriptive-analytical. The research sample included four experts of Yazd academic Libraries (Iran). To collect data, three types of questionnaires were distributed among experts. The purpose of the first questionnaire was to identify and reach an agreement on e-library failure modes. Type II questionnaire was used to determine the importance of identified risk factors and Type III questionnaire was used to prioritize the factors.

Results indicate that the difficulty of using websites, lack of provided information feedback to users and lack of links on the website to users' are the main priorities for improving ESQ in the studied academic libraries.

In this approach, the Intuitionistic fuzzy Elimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution method were used to rank failure modes in academic library ESQ within the FMEA framework.]

Discusses the new Dr Martin Luther King Jr Library in San Jose´, California, which will house the collections of the San Jose´ Public Library’s main branch and the San Jose´ State University’s Library system in one new building. Outlines the conception of the project, the site selection and the planning process. Considers the communities served, usage patterns and services. Focuses on the management structure and operations in light of a, perhaps controversial, aspect of mixing city and university library staff under the same roof, some performing similar functions, but with different supervisors and employing agencies. Discusses the new library in the context of other joint‐use libraries and in the context of economies of scale and future trends. Evaluates the arising challenges and opportunities.

The purpose of this viewpoint paper is to consider how academic reference librarians might be guided by non‐academic librarians as their roles shift and/or expand in a many different directions.

Connections between the work of academic reference librarians and the work of public, special, school, law and medical librarians are drawn. Areas where expertise can be garnered are identified.

Several relevant areas of expertise from non‐academic library fields are identified as being potentially useful to academic reference librarians, depending on the priorities of their individual institutions. As an example, the public library “service response” framework is applied to the academic library setting.

As academic reference librarians are being asked to take on a wider range of roles on their campuses, this paper offers a possible framework for professional development.

The future of academic reference librarians has not been viewed in the light of adopting expertise from colleagues in other types of libraries on such a broad scale, and with a view to creating a suite of services best suited to individual environments.

When is a library not a library? When it's a Learning Centre. Sheffield Hallam University has integrated several former departments, including the library and others such as the Learning and Teaching Institute, into the Learning Centre, a new department headed by the former university librarian Graham Bulpitt. The name, Mr Bulpitt says, was chosen to emphasise that it was more than a replacement for the existing library. The Learning Centre is ‘an integrated environment which anticipates changes in teaching and learning, and developments in information technology.’

The purpose of this paper is to present a high‐level investigation of the physical‐conceptual continuum occupied by both digital and physical libraries.

A framework is provided for thinking about the notions of place and library. The issue of materials and the ideas they represent is considered. Places for people are considered, including issues of people's sense of place in physical and digital spaces. The issue of physical and digital spaces as places for work, collaboration, and community‐building is considered.

As more digital libraries are built, and as more physical libraries offer electronic access to parts of their collection, two trends are likely to result: the role of the library as a storage space for materials will become decreasingly important; and the role of the library as a space for users, for individual and collaborative work, and as a space for social activity, will become increasingly important.

Digital libraries are unable to fulfill some of the functions of the physical library as physical spaces, but are able to offer functions beyond what the physical library can offer as cognitive spaces.

Areas of likely future development for digital libraries are suggested, as vehicles for enhancing cognitive space by augmenting representations of ideas in materials.

This paper argues that in many ways digital libraries really are places in the conceptual sense, and will continue to broaden and enrich the roles that libraries play in people's lives and in the larger social milieu.

To keep librarians and colleagues informed about the issues and programs of the Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus in February 2007.

Provides a review of the conference.

Acquisitions staff, catalogers, public service staff, administrators, IT personnel, information providers from the vendor side, content managers, and others all came together to assess what needs to be done to continue high servicing of both born digital and electronically available resources in a hybrid environment that continues to describe all library settings today. As the percentage of electronic resources quickly grows, there are new challenges in acquiring, caring for, servicing, preserving, using and citing them that keep librarians up at night to consider short‐and long‐term solutions in how they should be organized bibliometrically and how we can re‐engineer some of our procedures to best treat the wide range of e‐Resources now common in all libraries.

The program blended services with processing reinforcing the importance of electronic resources for the “total” library environment. It seemed like there was nothing left out.

The most serious barrier to achieving a “forgiving building” is the cost of its special building systems. The library is increasingly becoming a “hi tech” and “smart” building. A sophisticated facility is required to support current collections and the emerging electronic and optical technologies that will occupy (and perhaps dominate) the future library. It is far less expensive to provide the capacity to support future components at the time of initial construction than to subsequently renovate a building to provide needed capacities at a later date. The real challenge for librarians is to convince those who fund library construction that the “forgiving building” is the least expensive alternative in the long run.

One of the greatest challenges facing academic libraries is maintaining necessary space for collections and services. Academic administrators are forced to balance the need for space to support new and expanded programs, while supporting the traditional needs of the educational enterprise. With many of these situations, the answer comes from redeploying library space for other purposes. The net result for libraries is that functions and services run for years might no longer be possible with these changes in space. This is exactly the problem faced by the Kresge Business Administration Library at the University of Michigan when a major gift led to a construction project that saw the library’s footprint decrease by over 80%. As Kresge went through this change, there was a concerted effort to retain jobs, even though many would be dramatically changed with the new world order. This chapter focuses on the response undertaken at Kresge Library to balance the changing needs of the library that accompany dramatic space reduction. Additionally, this chapter will explore the literature on staffing trends in light of major changes to our work, political posturing to generate more work or “business” for library staff, exploration of the assessment program to ensure that we have the right staffing levels.

Limited physical and financial resources and changing customer behaviors compelled the University of Arizona Science‐Engineering Library to pursue more flexible collection management options, such as removing print copies of journals as the library purchased the electronic backfiles. The purpose of this paper is to describe a process used at the library to compare electronic journals to their print counterparts.

The library's approach was to study the electronic content provided through Elsevier's ScienceDirect for completeness and quality of text and images. This was to ensure that the removal of print would minimally impact library customers while reclaiming building space that could be better utilized to meet changing customer needs.

The process uncovered the reality that the electronic backfiles were not always adequate substitutes for print copies. In response, it was necessary to open a dialogue with the publisher to share the library's findings that resulted in improved electronic backfiles.

This paper weighs the advantages and disadvantages of taking a transformational approach to collection management.