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The academic library is an important component of any university and is responsible for providing academic and research support to all members of the university community. At present, higher education institutions in Thailand are trying to evaluate and improve their quality by implementing quality assurance models/mechanisms. Libraries, as critical supporting organizations in these institutions, also need to improve their quality. As a service organization, academic libraries are faced with the need to satisfy their clientele and to measure and evaluate their services. There is a need, therefore, for librarians to take positive steps to insure that their clients receive quality services.

Putting together a volume of Advances is an interesting effort that combines a little planning and a lot of serendipity. In the years that we have been editing this annual, Ed Garten and I have spent considerable time searching through tools like Dissertation Abstracts for research studies of interest, tracking people who are doing interesting work, and commissioning articles in contemporary areas of interest. But, as often as not, some of the best of our articles have come about as a result of a chance meeting at a conference, a consulting gig, a conversation with a colleague, or some other happenstance. The papers included here are no different, reflecting both heavy scholarship and more practical information about how we as a profession administer our libraries, the programs we offer, and the work we do. As in past volumes, the context is international in scope, and the strength of the volume may be that it reinforces the idea that, while libraries (and other organizations) in Sweden, Thailand, Canada, South Africa and the United States are very different, the challenges faced and techniques used by managers are not. As a result, we the editors present these articles to you in hopes that they provide some grist for the mill as you try to bring order to your part of the world.