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Many university libraries are adopting a faculty liaison librarian structure as an integral part of their organization and service delivery model. This paper aims to examine, in a pragmatic way, the variations in the definition of the role of the faculty liaison librarian, the expectations of those librarians, their library managers and their clients and the impact of environmental factors. The faculty liaison librarian role is not entirely new, evolving from the traditional subject librarian and university special/branch library role. However the emerging role is characterized by a more outward‐looking perspective and complexity, emphasizing stronger involvement and partnership with the faculty and direct engagement in the University's teaching and research programs.

Following a review of the literature and other sources on the rationale and role of library liaison, the current developments, drivers and expectations are discussed.

The study finds that dynamic external and internal environments of universities are driving the evolution of library liaison, so the role description is still fluid. However, the breadth and weight of expectations is now such that the effectiveness and sustainability of the role has to be addressed.

While a dynamic, broader and more intensive role for the faculty liaison librarian is emerging, more thinking is needed about the extent of that role and its sustainability. What, for example, are the priorities for the faculty liaison librarian? What traditional activities can, and may, have to be abandoned? These considerations are necessary not only to guide the librarians, but also to help define the attributes and skills required for the position and to determine the institutional support it requires.

This is a contemporary critique of the well‐established, but diverse library service – the faculty liaison librarian structure.

Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

Roles of academic libraries have recently been regularly discussed among Library and Information Science (LIS) scientists and practitioners. A shift of roles induced by various factors forces academic libraries to reconsider their operational guidelines and plan future scenarios. This article provides an analysis of the framing of roles assumed by academic libraries and identifies key factors and agents that influence the process. Research consisted of an analysis of official strategic documents of Lithuanian state-owned universities that are of great importance to the strategic development of academic libraries and the anchoring of their roles. Applying Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) discourse theory and the concepts of new institutionalism as a theoretical approach, key factors and agents influential to the role of academic libraries were identified. Modernity, market, and quality as three interrelated discourses highlight the proposition that modernity is inseparable from the development of information technologies and infrastructure and that various professional networks in the library environment act as powerful institutional agents. Practices of market law application in universities have influence on the institutional logic of libraries which increasingly relies on the criteria of efficiency and rationality.

The overarching aim of this article is to consider to what extent the perceptions of librarians in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Sweden reflect a unified view of their professional role and the role of their institutions in supporting the formation of the public sphere and to what extent the variations reflect national contexts.

The multi-country comparison is based on online questionnaires. The central research questions are how do librarians legitimize the use of public resources to uphold a public library service? How do librarians perceive the role of public libraries as public spaces? How do librarians perceive their professional role and the competencies needed for it? Consideration is given to how the digital and social turns are reflected in the responses.

The results show evidence of a unified professional culture with clear influences from national contexts. A key finding is that librarians see giving access as central for both legitimizing library services and for the library's role as a public sphere institution. Strong support is shown for the social turn in supporting the formation of the public sphere while the digital turn appears to be a future challenge; one of seemingly increased importance due to the pandemic.

This study shows that libraries across the seven countries have expanded beyond simply providing public access to their book-based collections and now serve as social, learning and creative spaces: both in the physical library and digitally. Qualitative research is needed concerning librarians' notions of public libraries and librarianship, which will provide a more in-depth understanding of the changing professional responsibilities and how public libraries recruit the associated competencies.

The article provides a much needed insight into how librarians perceive the role of public libraries in supporting the formation of the public sphere and democratic processes, as well as their own role.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of prioritizing tasks, actual sharing of libraries, collaboration policies and the directions via quantifying the relative importance of services for each value based on users’ perceptions observed from in-depth analysis of the investigation results. Through this, the study expects that libraries will provide high – level the sharing economy services, reflecting users’ needs.

This study surveyed public library users across the country have through the survey method and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to examine the perceptions of users on the roles of libraries in the sharing economy’s environment to deduce the directions and priorities to activate the roles and functions of libraries in the era of the sharing economy.

The research results are as follow: first, public library users’ awareness of the concept of the sharing economy was low, but they observed a relation between the two concepts after understanding the concept of the sharing economy. Second, The users’ personal characteristics were observed to mostly affect knowledge information service, experience talent sharing, material sharing and space sharing. Lastly, the study sought to identify the relative importance (preference) of various library services which pursue the value of the sharing economy through AHP analysis method. The values of the sharing economy were preferred in the order of social>economic>technical>relational values which can be enumerated to convenience>knowledge>space>education>contents>new technology>experienced talent>object>network.

This study has a great significance in that it analyzed actual library users’ perceptions on the concept of the sharing economy and the functions and roles of libraries in the era of the sharing economy from a multifaceted angle. In addition, this study carries an important meaning as it provided an opportunity to vitalize libraries and explored the measures to actualize the roles of libraries in tandem with the environment of the sharing economy by recognizing the values of libraries based on the new concepts and values of the sharing economy and presenting the functions and roles of the libraries from the aspects of the sharing economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of public libraries in the context of Big Data.

A mixed method approach was used and had two main data collection phases. A survey of public libraries was used to generate an overview of which professional roles connect public libraries with Big Data. Eight roles were identified, namely, educator, marketer, data organiser, data container, advocator, advisor, developer and organisation server. Semi-structured interviews with library directors and managers were then conducted to gain a deeper understanding of these roles and how they connect to the library’s overall functions.

Results of the survey indicated that librarians lack a proper comprehension of and a pragmatic application of Big Data. Their opinions on the eight roles are slightly stronger than neutral. However, they do not demonstrate any strong agreement on these eight roles. In the interviews, the eight roles attained more clear support and are classified into two groups: service-oriented and system-oriented roles.

As an emerging research field, Big Data is not widely discussed in the library context, especially in public libraries. Therefore, this study fills a research gap between public libraries and Big Data. In addition, Big Data in public libraries could be well managed and readily approached by citizens in undertaking such roles, which entails that public libraries will eventually benefit from the Big Data era.

Research into the library as place investigates the role of public library buildings as destinations, physical places where people go for various reasons ranging from making use of the library's resources and services or seeking to fulfill an information or reading need to less easily identified reasons that may include using the library's building as a place to make social or business contacts, to build or reinforce community or political ties, or to create or reinforce a personal identity. This study asks: How are one rural US public library system's newly constructed buildings functioning as places? The answer is derived from answers to sub-questions about adult library users, user, and staff perceptions of library use, and observed use of library facilities. The findings are contextualized using a framework built of theories from human geography, sociology, and information studies.

This case study replicates a mixed-methods case study conducted at the main public libraries in Toronto and Vancouver in the late1990s and first reproduced in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2006. It tests methods used in large urban settings in a rural, small-town environment. This study also expands on its antecedents by using thematic analysis to determine which conceptualizations of the role of the public library as place are most relevant to the community under investigation.

The study relies on quantitative and qualitative data collected via surveys and interviews of adult library users, interviews of library public service staff members, structured observations of people using the libraries, and analysis of selected administrative documents. The five sets of data are triangulated to answer the research sub-questions.

Thematic analysis grounded in the conceptual framework finds that public realm theory best contextualizes the relationships that develop between library staff members and adult library users over time. The study finds that the libraries serve their communities as informational places and as familiarized locales rather than as third places, and that the libraries facilitate the generation of social capital for their users.

This chapter summarizes the core human rights and social justice functions of libraries.

After reviewing how each chapter of this edited volume offers evidence of libraries’ clear contributions in the area of human rights and social justice, this chapter explores in greater detail how the current environment in which libraries operate impacts their ability to promote human rights and social justice.

In many communities, libraries are the only institution capable of fulfilling a wide array of social justice and human rights roles. As they seek to fulfill these roles, however, libraries face significant challenges related to the lack of emphasis on considerations of human rights and social justice within the pedagogy, research, and practice of our field.

This chapter serves as a call to action for library practitioners, educators, and researchers to better articulate the social justice and human rights roles of libraries to policy-makers, funders, politicians, and community members.

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the specific roles information professionals have adopted in the past 14 years. It aims to identify the roles reported in the literature concerning developments in the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession.

This study adopted the method of systematic review. Searches were conducted in February and March 2014 on different LIS databases. From a total of 600 papers, 114 were selected, based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. A thorough full-text analysis of the papers revealed six roles that librarians have adopted: teachers, technology specialists, embedded librarians, information consultants, knowledge managers and subject librarians.

New and evolving roles were identified, mainly in the context of academic libraries. Librarians’ educational responsibilities and their active involvement in the learning and research process were highlighted in all role categories identified. Collaboration among faculty and librarians was reported as a way of ensuring successful instruction. Librarians’ personal views of their new and emerging roles were more frequently reported; further research is needed to shed light on academics, students and other users’ perceptions of librarians’ engagement in the learning process.

The study considered only peer-reviewed papers published between 2000 and 2014 in English. It focused on information professionals’ roles and not on librarians’ skills and their changing professional responsibilities.

This review paper considers the development of the LIS profession in a changing environment and offers an understanding of the future direction of the LIS profession.

Libraries assemble very large quantities of materials. These collections perform three quite different roles: archival, dispensing, and bibliographic. The bibliographic role of the collection is compared with bibliographies and catalogues. The distinction between materials and collection development is basic. Collection development in libraries is analogous to file organisation in computing systems and, although commonly viewed narrowly as selection for acquisition, includes a range of decisions which determine the profile of any collection. The rise of remotely‐accessible materials makes possession less important relative to access, has important consequences for all three roles of collections, and indicates a shift in emphasis away from collection development and conventional catalogues and toward bibliography and cooperation.