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Presents the three prize winners in the John Smith & Sons (Glasgow) Ltd/University of Paisley Library Scottish Schools Essay Competition. Also publishes the five other short‐listed entries from which the winners were chosen. The contestants present a range of descriptions and personal views of particular or imaginary libraries and of their importance to their lives.

Recent advancements in technology have inspired libraries to develop creatively customized services, or personalized information clients, allowing users to organize and manage Web sites for their personal interests and needs. One example of this customer orientation is the “my library” service, described in this series of questions and answers.

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.

In a field where external factors can far too easily define who we are as professionals, it is up to us to prove our worth. Even when a position appears to lack opportunity for advancement, we can earn recognition through hard work and initiative. In doing so, we invite other opportunities to come our way. This chapter will demonstrate how the author developed his niche as classified staff in the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library at the James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona. By showing initiative early and often, the author was afforded the opportunity to work on two important digitization projects at the library. The first project involved getting the scholarly work of students in the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program represented in the campus repository. The second project involved supervising a Law Library Fellow’s internship, which included resurrecting in-house digitizing equipment. In detailing these two undertakings, the author will demonstrate why libraries play an important role in digitization. Furthermore, the author will show how up-and-coming library professionals can demonstrate the power of the library, earn recognition, and set the stage for further professional opportunities.

Wallace, ALA's own director of the Public Relations Office, cites some of the thousands of testimonials ALA has received about the fact that libraries — especially services to children and youth — change lives and often impact the nation's bottom line. Quotable celebrities, politicos, and common people add their voices to this piece on the benefits of children's library services.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how to create and sustain a successful mentoring program for reference student assistants in the liberal arts environment. The study delineates student training, program assessment and the impact on reference practice in a way that can be used at other institutions considering implementing a similar initiative.

This case study is written by professionals who have been deeply engaged in initiating, running and assessing the program. It presents the value of the program in an unbiased and objective manner by including the voices of the student mentees themselves reflecting on the experience.

The mentorship program has proven to be worthwhile and rewarding in equal measures to both the mentees and reference librarians working with our future successors. It serves an important role in inspiring and encouraging library student workers to become interested in academic librarianship as a career choice and it prepares them to be successful students in library and information science graduate programs.

Although the discussion of training reference student assistants per se is not rare in the library literature, this particular program is unique in several ways: its main intent is to mentor students who are interested in pursuing librarianship as a career goal; it occurs in the context of a liberal arts college rather than in a larger university setting, especially those offering degrees in information and library science; and it empowers students to provide in-depth independent reference services for their peers and faculty.

To better respond to user needs for personalized information services in the context of academic libraries, this study aims at developing a prototype to provide mobile curation services by using the concept of content curation.

This study used a mobile application software development process, which consisted of five phases: user and organizational requirements, architecture design, navigation design, page design and implementation and usability testing. Usability testing was conducted with a total of 20 college students by online surveys at a university.

Meta-analysis identified key user needs: diversification of services, more personalized services, active communication with librarians, quality improvement of information and interface improvement. User and organizational requirements derived four main service modules – namely, Curation Services, Live Chat, My Page and My Log. Usability testing regarding ease of use, perceived usefulness and satisfaction indicated that participants were satisfied with the prototype.

The study extends the discussion of quality academic library services by introducing the concept of content curation that uses the advantages of mobile technologies to overcome existing limitations in library services insufficient for meeting individual user needs.

Although many studies have discussed mobile library services, few studies have focused on developing a system for such services. The model developed in the study fills the research gap. Above all, the key modules specified by the prototype – Curation Services, Live Chat, My Page and My Log services – are expected to improve existing research and learning support services currently offered by academic libraries.

Although there is great potential for diversity, library and information science (LIS) is a relatively homogenous profession. Increasing the presence of librarians of color may help to improve diversity within LIS. However, recruiting ethnic minorities into LIS has proven to be difficult despite various initiative including scholarships, fellowships, and locally focused programs. The central questions explored in this research can be divided into two parts: (1) Why do ethnic minorities choose librarianship as a profession? (2) What would motivate members of minority groups to join a profession in which they cannot see themselves?

The research was conducted through semi-structured, qualitative interviews of 32 ethnic minority students from one of four ethnic minority groups (African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American) currently enrolled in an LIS graduate program. Eleven themes emerged from the data: libraries, librarians, library work experience, LIS graduate program, career plans and goals, education and family, support, mentors, ethnicity and community, acculturation, and views of diversity.

The findings seem to support many assumptions regarding expectations and career goals. The findings related to libraries, librarians, mentors, and support illustrate that many recruitment initiatives are starting in the right place. However, the most noteworthy findings were those that centered on identity, acculturation, and diversity because they dealt with issues that are not often considered or discussed by many in the profession outside of ethnic minority organizations.

This chapter looks back over my more than 20 years as a librarian, considering how the often unexpected opportunities I’ve had to work with youth and families have been centered in connectedness, hope, and love. As a youth services librarian working in the library with families or providing outreach to the most vulnerable members of the community, and currently as a community college librarian, I can think back over my career in libraries, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve shared, and feel blessed. But there are also times I feel like Sisyphus, pushing the rock that continues to roll back on me. It is disheartening to see the same struggles getting worse in our communities, to have to fight to keep our doors open every time there is a budget crunch, to hear our work diminished by others. But I have come to understand that having hope doesn’t mean not understanding how trying times are or passively accepting the ways things are until they magically change. Hope means pushing through anyway, stubborn in our love for our patrons and our peers, in our belief that books and reading can help us through, in our faith that the world needs libraries.