Search results

“Integration” in this project focuses on both technical integration and organizational integration to bring a form of coherence and unity to the support and delivery of information services. Immediate success in integration did not happen. After six years, the Integrated Information Center is still evolving. Unexpected progress has been made with the end‐users. The technological issues have progressed very well. However, the organizational issues have been the most difficult to manage.

Describes how recent technological developments have changed the way that information is stored, managed and accessed. The impact of the Internet has created a need for public libraries to realign their position in the information marketplace. Addresses the challenges facing the library director in creating and selling the multidimensional library of the future, setting out ideas on the skills that will be required in terms of marketing, fund‐raising, and gaining staff commitment to the changes. Critical to this is the mix of physical and virtual, the idea of the library and the reality of the library. In future, public libraries will need integrated services, use of technology, and the right leadership.

Qualitative evaluation concerns the examination and analysis of individual experiences. This type of research tends to answer questions of why, how, what is the process, what is the relationship, and so on in an effort to understand the essential nature of a service or process. While statistics tell us how many questions we have answered, qualitative evaluation tells us how well we have met the patrons' needs.

Many librarians have hypothesized that psychological and sociological variables can be used to explain library use. This article examines the possibility of utilizing biological variables to explain library use.

Few librarians think of U.S. documents as a source for professional reading, growth, and information, yet several agencies of the government are involved with library programs, services, and research. This bibliography is a compilation of some of the most recent documents about libraries published by these agencies. It is an eclectic group, ranging from scholarly research studies to descriptions of model programs. Most of these studies are known only to a small segment of the library profession and have not received wide distribution in the field. The quality of the documents is quite good, particularly the research reports being done out of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) Library Programs Office. Much of the information contained in the surveys and research reports is not available in any other form.

The Productivity Oversight Committee of Norfolk, Va., recognizes a good idea when it sees one. An award was given to the Norfolk Public Library, where the children's department had proposed saving $18,000 by buying a rotating collection of story hour books, sending the kits to the library's 11 neighborhood branches, instead of purchasing multiple copies. In recognition, the library was given a ten percent bonus of $1,800 to help implement the idea.

Adamovich, a former state librarian and Director of Cultural Affairs in New Hampshire and now a U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science Commissioner, gives her widely experienced view of youth services and the bottom line.