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The purpose of this study is to describe the full picture of how public libraries contribute to overcoming social division through their resources, programming and services.

A systematic literature review and analysis was conducted. Literature was collected from LISA and LISTA, two primary databases of library and information science literature. Through individual analyses and discussion among researchers, data from 47 documents were analyzed and classified into three categories: “digital”, “economic” and “demographic” divisions. Examples from the literature were used to illustrate how public libraries impact social division in each of these categories.

The three categories reveal that public libraries contribute to overcoming social division by reducing inequality and promoting interaction among citizens. This is done by addressing digital, economic and demographic divisions within society.

This study is the first to summarize in a comprehensive way how public libraries contribute to reducing social division. By classifying how public libraries address this important social issue, this study contributes to the literature about how social division can be overcome.

Professional work is becoming more specialized and diffused, with new specialties emerging on the boundaries of established professions. The purpose of this paper is to examine current specialties in academic librarianship in order to infer what strategies they employ.

This research uses a sample of 60 US research libraries to investigate current specialties in academic librarianship, in order to analyze and classify the specialties into groups based on similarities, and categorize academic libraries based on the staffing patterns identified, and illustrate the challenges and strategies of each classification. The sample was selected from the membership of the Association of Research Libraries, and designed to include both large and medium-sized research libraries. 888 different job titles were identified for 2,074 specialist positions extracted from staff directories containing information on 11,688 librarians. The positions were analyzed and classified using the framework provided by Cox and Corrall (2013), and the specialty composition of the libraries was investigated with Ward’s (1963) hierarchical method of cluster analysis, using 28 variables.

The cluster analysis identified subspecialties within the groups and revealed seven distinct staffing strategies of the libraries.

Describing specialties and strategies in academic libraries by cluster analysis based on huge data is a significantly novel and effective approach for capturing the concept of specialization.