Search results

Discusses two recent conferences, “Virtually yours: models for managing electronic resources and services”, Chicago, IL, 23‐25 October 1997, and “Wired and wary: legal issues for librarians in the digital world”, Boston, MA, 7 November 1997, concerned with library management of electronic information sources. Focusing on those elements of the conferences with financial implications, concludes that definitive answers to financial management questions continue to be a missing element in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the motivations, creation, and implementation of workflow and organizational redesigns within two academic library acquisitions departments: the University of Alabama (UA) and the University of Florida (UF).

Both institutions utilized a combination of goal identification, staff contribution, and Blackwell's workflow consulting services to build and implement new acquisitions workflows.

A comparison of the projects reveals two paths to conducting a reorganization of acquisitions in academic libraries, but with the same goal: doing more with less staff while promoting a more cost‐efficient model of operations.

In evaluating these analysis projects at UA and UF, common successes that are applicable to future undertakings were identified.

As Illinois completes 30 years of library systems and 100 years of the Illinois Library Association, it is appropriate to review “recent” history as a harbinger of what may lie ahead for the Illinois Library and Information Network (ILLINET). The network of libraries in Illinois, formally named in 1975, recognizes the cooperative efforts of library staff members in over 2,700 libraries and the leadership of the Illinois State Library in bringing resources to bear on the needs of all citizens of the state. Libraries of all types (academic, public, school, and special) become members of ILLINET when they join their regional library systems.

The purpose of this paper is to mainly find out how well is time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) suits for a university library setting in Estonia. For this purpose, all activities related to acquisitions process were identified and recorded in detail, and the cost of all these activities related to acquisition process in Estonian university libraries based on the example of the TDABC method were anlyzed.

The data used in this paper is based on a review of relevant literature to provide an overview of the concept of the different cost accounting methods suitable for the measurement of the acquisition process. Through a case study, conducted among Estonian university libraries, the TDABC approach was used to analyze the acquisition process in university libraries. More specifically, the acquisition process studied concerned print format books, audiovisual documents and sheet music, and covered acquisition processes such as receipt of orders, ordering documents, communication with bookshop (if necessary), receiving documents and communication with the customer.

On the basis of the current study it can be said the TDABC methodology seems to be one of the best tools for understanding cost behavior and for refining a cost system for university libraries. While analyzing the results, it appeared that the difference in time and cost for acquiring a document can be remarkable and concerns both – acquiring foreign documents (documents from other countries) and acquiring domestic documents, and between the university libraries chosen for the current study.

The subject of cost accounting as a performance measurement method is in general an unexplored field in Estonian university libraries. Time guidelines for acquiring the documents were, however, quite common in the 1980s in the USSR, including Estonia. Soviet-wide regulatory documents were issued on all library work processes, but each library could still implement their own rules. In the 1990s, the regulations were consigned to oblivion. Very few cost surveys involving different library activities have been carried out in Estonia and none have been published. Where such studies have been conducted, the results remain for internal use only.

The literature on collection development largely discusses all kinds of managerial and practical issues. However, there appear to be gaps in LIS literature regarding tracing the semantic developments of the subject. The paper attempts to explore the relationship between the use of varying collection‐related terminologies and ever‐emerging forms of scholarly publishing in libraries.

An extensive review of the available literature was made to illustrate the impact of the developments in both production and formats of information sources on libraries' collection related patterns and expressions since the last quarter of the twentieth century.

It was found that the related emerging terminology has been expanding rapidly because of the direct impact of the never‐ending developments, though with different pace in different countries. The varying use pattern reflects the expansion in the aims and ways of functioning of a modern library.

The paper falls in the category of “literature review” and provides an overview of the connection between developments in theory and practice of collection managing aspects.