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Since its inception in 1997, Ask a Librarian (UK) has been a model for best practice in collaborative digital reference in public libraries. Innovative development currently includes trialling the integration of virtual reference with the standard Web‐form service. In addition to a description of the Ask a Librarian service, this paper provides an overview of digital reference practice, procedures, and issues, with particular emphasis on collaboration.

To date, there has been little research into users of the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013. This paper addresses that gap by presenting key findings from the AHRC-funded Digital Library Futures project. Its purpose is to present a “user-centric” perspective on the potential future impact of the digital collections that are being created under electronic legal deposit regulations.

The study utilises a mixed methods case study of two academic legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; and Cambridge University Library. It combines surveys of users, web log analysis and expert interviews with librarians and cognate professionals.

User perspectives on NPLD were not fully considered in the planning and implementation of the 2013 regulations. The authors present findings from their user survey to show how contemporary tensions between user behaviour and access protocols risk limiting the instrumental value of NPLD collections, which have high perceived legacy value.

This is the first study to address the user context for UK Non-Print Legal Deposit. Its value lies in presenting a research-led user assessment of NPLD and in proposing “user-centric” analysis as an addition to the existing “four pillars” of legal deposit research.

Aims to present a background to the use of electronic resources, especially e‐books, in public libraries, which appears to threaten some basic activities that define a reading culture dependent on the print book.

There are initiatives afoot which are working to integrate e‐books into the culture and process of resource‐sharing. This paper reviews some of the issues with e‐books, and specifically how the Co‐East partnership proposes to contribute to the initiatives concerned with improving accessibility.

It is important that public libraries do take that first step in implementing an e‐books service and take care in its promotion. Their traditional role, after all, is providing the bridge between rights holders and the public and, with the advent of “disruptive technology”, this role is more crucial than ever.

An important precedent for this project has been the findings from the Essex e‐books project, and especially user feedback. Although no one was asking about e‐books, users from all age groups were curious enough to participate in the project, and forthcoming in offering their opinion, much of it positive, about the reading experience and the mobile technology.

With digital technology libraries can archive considerable resources of detailed information about their users. This data is generally regarded as confidential between the library and the individual, but it has potential interest for commercial organisations, law enforcement and security agencies, and libraries themselves, to assist in marketing their services. The Privacy in the Digital Library Environment project at Loughborough University, 2000‐2002, investigated the issues this raises. Findings suggested that users had low levels of anxiety about privacy when using libraries, but this was because they expected that libraries would not pass on personal data to other bodies. Librarians, whilst respecting privacy as a professional value in principle, did not give it a high rating against other values. Additionally, a significant minority of libraries was not well prepared for data protection. To assist the professional community, guidelines for privacy policy were drawn up on the basis of suggestions made by survey respondents.

There is a growing perception that higher education increasingly follows what Cary Nelson calls the business or “Industry .. handbook of relevant strategies and techniques” of employee management, seen by many in the demise of tenure and the increase in part‐time hiring. As an academic/corporate convergence this trend, however, extends beyond higher education’s use of corporate employee management strategies. As higher education becomes a profitable venture, following business’s “handbook” becomes symptomatic of a profound blurring between corporate and academic entities that beckons a reassessment of higher education’s overall direction in light of its relationship with the corporate world. As we’ll see in the demise of tenure and the growth of the part time position, academia is increasingly following the corporate or “industry ... handbook of relevant strategies and techniques” of employee management (Nelson, 1997b). The presence of a corporate paradigm in academia is, however, not limited to employee management practices. As higher education becomes profitable through the use of new technologies, following the corporate “handbook” becomes symptomatic of a far more significant blurring between corporate and academic entities that, because of the drastic and fundamental changes it poses for academia, warrants that academia both reconsiders its internal structure and its overall degree of separation from the corporate arena.

This research note focuses on the quest to move beyond the poverty paradigm in researching, planning, and developing distressed urban neighborhoods. It is based on the notion that the poverty paradigm hides more than it reveals about the positionality of people in neoliberal society. It argues that low incomes and joblessness are structural components of neoliberal economies. Therefore, they cannot be eliminated without making fundamental changes in the way that neoliberalism operates. Thus, in a neoliberal society, with a small, passive government, both low incomes and joblessness will grow over time, especially among blacks, Latinos, and immigrants of color. Within this context, the distress found in inner-city neighborhoods is a product of failed urban institutions and the lack of investments in such places. However, there are no laws of socioeconomic development that say low income and joblessness must equate with living in distressed neighborhoods, where dilapidation, crime, and violence are characteristic features of the landscape. This reality is a public policy decision. Therefore, it can be changed by altering the investment strategy in distressed community and by radically transforming the institutions operating in these communities. If this happens, it will be possible to produce communities where low-income workers live in energetic places where they enjoy a high quality of life and standard of living. In such regenerated neighborhoods, it will also be possible to develop innovative strategies that put the jobless to work.