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All personnel in libraries are key to good service. The visibility of library support staff and their important positions of initial contact with library users make their efforts especially crucial. Training programs for support staff often include discussion of the library mission, how library resources connect with users, how to communicate with library users, and how library service can be enjoyable. When managers plan staff training and continuing education programs for support staff, readers' advisory is a very good topic.

With the aim of discovering the important factors in training staff to use newly installed automated circulation systems, libraries in New Zealand with such systems were sent a questionnaire in 1988. This asked questions about how libraries had trained staff to use the system, and the outcome of this training in terms of satisfaction with their decisions regarding training, and of sparseness of mistakes made by staff after implementation of the system. Three facets of the administration of training were vitally important: (1) The vendor of the system must be heavily involved in the training; (2) As many staff as possible must be given a detailed training in the whole system; (3) As much of the training as possible must be given before system implementation.

After outlining the unique functions of the Lending Division, the paper explains the interaction between it and the British Library as a whole. Policy‐making in such an organisation is complex and this is achieved by a series of meetings ranging from the British Library Board, which deals with major decisions for the whole Library, through senior management at the Lending Division holding regular meetings to discuss all aspects of its work to meetings between junior management with their staff, where minor and major problems can be ironed out. The staff structure of the Lending Division emphasises the low ratio of senior to junior staff. Because of its size and uniqueness the Lending Division pays particular attention to communications both within and without; internally this is achieved by meetings between various grades of staff and a Newsletter, externally by a number of publications, participation in conferences, extensive advisory machinery and the publication of its own journal.

Observes that staff development, undoubtedly, effectively enhances staff performance and job effectiveness, and the climate of interpersonal relations in an organization. Focuses on the need for professional staff development in an academic library and describes the state of the art of professional staff development at the University of Science and Technology Library, Kumasi, Ghana.

A brief historical background of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) and its library is given. This article then provides a brief overview of the concept of staff development and discusses in detail the various staff development efforts of librarians by ATBU Library, Bauchi. These include staff orientation, staff meetings, in‐service training, academic library staff seminars and representation on Schools Boards of Studies. Other relevant activities include professional activities, library use instructions, sabbatical leave, personnel training and outreach as well as library research. Finally, the article advocates that staff development should also aim at staff retention through the provision of incentives for staff.

The aim of this case study is to provide valuable insight into the selection, implementation and upkeep of a library staff wiki for libraries considering how to better manage information and improve communication, especially at libraries with multiple desks, shifts and locations.

Spartanburg Community College (SCC) evaluated the library’s needs and selected Wikispaces in this case study. A wiki manager was designated, who completed the initial set up, trained staff, wrote policies and procedures and delegated maintenance activities. Library staffs were surveyed about how they used the wiki and what its impact has been on their experience.

The library staffs report that they refer to the wiki quiet often in their time at the desk and that it has had an extremely positive impact on their service. The designation of a wiki manager was a key in keeping the wiki up-to-date and viable. The careful consideration of policies and procedures, including structure, format and naming conventions, has also contributed to the continued viability of the wiki as it has grown. The wiki has improved communication among staff and allowed for more consistent service to patrons.

This case study outlines best practices that were important in creating SCC’s library staff wiki, which has proved an invaluable tool to the library staff at both service desks and at all library branches.

This paper analyses the opinions of the Botswana National Library Service's (BNLS) Headquarters (HQ) staff and staff of the Botswana public libraries on strategic human resource management issues, which were tested by six hypotheses.

The analysis was carried out by statistical means. The t‐test was the method used for comparing the two groups' mean scores. Analyses were repeated using the Chi‐squared test.

The study identified a number of issues where staff had differences of opinion: changing employees' expectations about work, transformational leadership, job satisfaction, performance feedback and delegation of responsibility. The paper briefly discusses the issues where the status of the library influenced staff opinions.

It is to be noted that the data collected from HQ has to be used with caution because the number of respondents there was smaller than the respondents from public libraries.

The author throws light on human resource management techniques in the everyday library environment. This paper may help policy makers to identify ways in which they can motivate their employees; it may help policy planners to identify their staff's different requirements.

This paper provides a useful and insightful application of a general human resource management tool to the specific organizational context of public libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to study of services of front desk staff using SERVQUAL aims to measure the perception and expectations of the library users. The librarians, keeping in view the expectations will get an idea that how much the services should be improved while the users will have an idea that what they want, and what are they provided with. In additions, the difference between the perception and expectations of the male library users and female library users is explored to give an idea to the librarians that what dimension of the services they need to explore.

Quantitative research method was used to conduct this study. The SERVQUAL instrument was used to measure the levels of perception and expectation through a structured questionnaire at the five points Likert scale. The tool was used with the permission of the author Berry et al. (1985). All the libraries of affiliated medical college with the University of Health Sciences were the population for this study. Through random sampling technique, 20 questionnaires per medical colleges were filled by the students of medical colleges. In total, 202 questionnaires returned and were analyzed after data entry in Statistical Package for Social Science version 19.

Mean of the total respondents indicate that the improvement in all the five dimensions of the service quality is required as the expectations found to be higher in all the five dimensions as compared to the perceptions. Perceived values are higher among female library users, so the library front desk staff requires increasing the perceived values of male users through improving their services to male library users. While comparing the expectations between male and female users, the results indicate that male library users want more responsiveness and reliability from the staff.

This study measures the perceptions and expectations of the student library users of the medical college affiliated with University of Health Sciences, Lahore. Only main libraries excluding the small departmental libraries are included in this study. This study can be generalized in other private medical colleges as well as other researchers can study further in their own environment.

The results indicate that the expectations are higher. Keeping in view, the librarians will work to meet the expectations of the users. The expectation of the female users are higher in tangibility and empathy dimensions, while the male users expect more in reliability, responsiveness and assurance dimensions. In short, all the results showed that the expectations were higher than the perceptions. Keeping this study in view, the librarians can improve their weak areas of front desk staff services to meet the expectations of the users.

It is the first study of its type to measure the service quality of front desk staff. The service quality of front desk staff is never been measured in medical colleges using SERVQUAL in Lahore. The results of this study provide the guidelines to satisfy library users. The difference between the perception and expectations provides librarians and library managers with a road map to develop the service quality of front desk staff to meet the expectation level of the user’s for their satisfaction. This study can be generalized to the medical colleges other than Lahore.

This paper seeks to describe an approach to staff development and workforce planning which is implemented as part of a process of internal reviews of service areas within an academic library.

The paper describes the factors leading to the development of such a process within the Deakin University Library.

A number of different factors – internal to the library, at the university level and in the wider environment – have driven the need for such reviews and influenced their design. The approach developed focuses on comparing current workforce capabilities (competencies and resource levels) with the set of competencies and resources required to deliver the projected services to the standards required. This account highlights the links between the review process and the implementation of a library‐wide staff development framework.

A number of practical implications may be drawn: the value of a flexible approach taking into account the local and institutional environment; the critical importance of organizational needs driving individual staff development and the benefits of mapping links from strategic goals to staff development.

The paper focuses on an emerging process for service delivery in an academic library.

To give an overview of some recent research into human resource (HR) deployment in library services in UK universities and colleges of higher education.

The aim of the research in question was to evaluate the effectiveness of HR deployment. This implied a positivistic methodological approach, maintaining that the reality under examination, HR deployment, existed objectively and independently of the researcher. However, the research aimed to discover not only what happened but also why. So there was an overlap between the positivistic and phenomenological approach. To this end, the research collected quantitative data via a survey and the present paper provides a summary of the research aim, objectives, methodology and results.

The research findings indicate that staff deployment patterns in the context investigated are suboptimal and that, in consequence, individual libraries should be open to scrutiny in comparison with others not only in terms of their quantifiable patterns of library usage but also in terms of the patterns of their staff provision and staff deployment.

The findings only relate to UK universities and colleges of higher education.

The present research suggests five actions for practitioners.

The present research highlights the lack of benchmarking facilities in UK universities and colleges of higher education relating to HR deployment in libraries, and recommends that Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) extends the existing data collection in the Annual Statistical return to include this HR area.