Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present the current state of digitization and digital collection development in public libraries in Croatia.

This paper is based on an online survey of public libraries in Croatia on digital collection development and digitization. In total, 165 public libraries were invited to participate in the survey, and Web survey was chosen as the most appropriate tool for surveying geographically dispersed libraries.

The findings indicate that public libraries in Croatia have taken steps towards enlargement of digital content in their holdings by digitizing their existing library collections. Although the number of digital collections in public libraries in Croatia is still rather small, it is expected that it will increase in the near future. It is also encouraging that public libraries started digitization projects on their own, thus gaining the necessary experience and skills that would help them and other libraries in future digitization projects. Still, they need additional education about digital collection development and process of library material digitization.

The paper article contributes to the growing body of knowledge about digital collections development and digitization in public libraries, as well as about benefits digital collections can provide for libraries in general.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

The history of the public library is long and rich, and continues to reflect this institution's initial mission: to respond to the needs of an evolving democratic society. From its early days as a subscription service for the middle-class, through its evolution to become an educational site for the lower-classes and new immigrants, the public library has served as a touch-stone for urban industrial society in North America (Lerner, 1998, p. 138; Shera, 1974). Over the past century, public libraries have evolved to respond to the growing needs of the communities they serve and continue to do so with recent advances in technologies (such as DVDs, electronic books, the Internet, etc.), and with a more global outlook on the ways that people seek and share information. Indeed, the public library's constituents today are exceedingly diverse, including children and adults from a broad range of socio-economic, cultural, and educational backgrounds, all of whom seek information for a variety of personal and work-related purposes. The fact that public libraries have been fulfilling patrons' information needs for well over a century is a testament to their enduring success and versatility as information providers, and also points to the overall effectiveness of public librarians as intermediaries in the provision process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the circumstances and implications of an episode of accounting change arising from the extended use of accrual accounting within the Australian public sector. The matter under scrutiny is the reporting of the library collections of Australia's public universities as assets in general purpose financial reports.

A survey is undertaken of the annual reports of Australia's 36 public universities for the period 2002 to 2006. The analysis of the findings is informed by new institutional sociology (NIS), with a focus on mimetic processes, and the concept of “accounting's margins”.

The survey reveals considerable diversity and subjectivity in the accounting practices adopted, as well as instances of sudden and dramatic changes in carrying values. The financial reporting of library collections is depicted as a “chaotic margin” of accounting, and the technical propriety of attempting to express and account for these non‐financial resources in financial terms is rendered problematic.

The study questions the reliability and usefulness of the information reported, with implications for the accountability of the institutions surveyed as well as the accounting profession in the comparatively neglected domain of the public sector.

“Public librarians are not interested in collection development issues.”

The purpose of this research is to investigate the language of “weeding” (library deselection) within public library collection development policies in order to examine whether such policies and practices can be usefully connected to library and information science (LIS) theory, specifically to “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as suggested by Buschman (2017) in the pages of this journal.

This is a policy analysis of collection deselection policies from the 50 public libraries serving US state capitals, using Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique.

“Weeding” as described by these public library collection deselection policies is clearly pragmatic and oriented to increasing circulation to patrons, but the “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as reflected by many of those reviewed might better be defined as the pragmatism of Melvil Dewey rather than that of John Dewey.

Although this work reviewed policies from a very small sample of US public libraries, collection, selection and deselection language as shown in the policies studied appear to be consistent with neoliberal priorities and values in terms of prioritizing “circulation” and “customers,” which may have additional implications for the current transition from print to electronic materials in public libraries

John Dewey’s political philosophy and Carol Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique have not been widely used in policy analysis by LIS researchers, and this paper offers a number of suggestions for similar public library policy investigations.

This paper aims to determine the adequacy of the public library system with respect to the total population as well as the viable population of different regions of Tehran city, the capital of Iran, especially pertaining to book collections in accordance with the IFLA/UNESCO Guidelines.

A survey was conducted through a questionnaire distributed to librarians of the public libraries under study. The other resources of data used for this study are annual reports and official records of the libraries at the provincial and national level.

The findings reveal the ratio of book collections with respect to the viable population of different regions of Tehran. Only one of 22 regions has a book collection as per IFLA/UNESCO Guidelines.

This paper highlights how public libraries in Tehran are providing access to information resources and whether the book collections of the libraries are adequate as per international standards. It also suggests certain improvements for the existing system.

The monetary valuation of cultural heritage of a selection of 16 major public, not-for-profit Australian cultural institutions is examined over a period of almost three decades (1992–2019) to understand how they have responded to the paradoxical tensions of heritage valuation for financial reporting purposes.

Accounting for cultural heritage is an intrinsically paradoxical practice; it involves a conflict of two opposite ways of attributing value: the traditional accounting and the heritage professionals (or curatorial) approaches. In analysing the annual reports and other documentary sources through qualitative content analysis, the study explores how different actors responded to the conceptual and technical contradictions posed by the monetary valuation of “heritage assets”, the accounting phraseology of accounting standards.

Four phases emerge from the analysis undertaken of the empirical material, each characterised by a distinctive nature of the paradox, the institutional responses discerned and the outcomes. Although a persisting heterogeneity in the practice of accounting for cultural heritage is evident, responses by cultural institutions are shown to have minimised, so far, the negative impacts of monetary valuation in terms of commercialisation of deaccessioning decisions and distorted accountability.

In applying the theoretical lens of paradox theory in the context of the financial reporting of heritage, as assets, the study enhances an understanding of the challenges and responses by major public cultural institutions in a country that has led this development globally, providing insights to accounting standard setters arising from the accounting practices observed.

Reviews the development of public libraries in Brazil, taking a close look at the reasons why such institutions have not developed their collections in a systematic manner. Posits the necessity of organizing collection development activities rationally. Highlights the difficulties public libraries routinely face in Brazil for fulfilling this task. Argues that a better management of public library collections can bring concrete benefits to Brazilian society, as well as help librarians to obtain better support from their clientele and from more senior management.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the overall quality of the Louisville Free Public Library's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender collection.

The study implements an inductive check‐list method. Where other check‐lists compare a list to the collection, ignoring the number of items which do not appear on the list, an inductive method takes a sample of the entire collection, and compares it with several evaluative lists, demonstrating what percentage of the collection is not considered “desirable” by common evaluative lists.

The results found that 31.9 percent of the LFPL's GLBT collection can be found in the evaluative lists used. Previous inductive evaluations suggest that this number indicates a quality core GLBT collection.

A sample collection was chosen using GLBT‐related subject headings; however, evidence shows that a portion of the actual GLBT collection (perhaps as much as 37.5 percent) lack appropriate subject access control. This results in a potentially flawed sample.

This study provides public librarians with a standard by which they can evaluate their GLBT collections and their library's attempt to meet the needs of a frequently underrepresented minority.

Very few inductive evaluations have been published, and almost none has been published studying GLBT collections. The paper attempts to fill that gap, and provide a deeper standard by which GLBT collections can be evaluated.