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Social capital, understood as intangible community values available through a network of connections, is a factor in the development of societies and improving quality of life. It helps to remove economic inequalities and prevent poverty and social exclusion, stimulate social and regional development, civic attitudes and social engagement and build a civic society as well as local and regional identity. Many of these tasks may be implemented by libraries, which, apart from providing access to information, may also offer a number of services associated with social needs. The purpose of this paper is to present the roles and functions that libraries may serve in local communities in terms of assistance, integration and development based on classical social capital theories.

The paper reviews the classical concepts of social capital in the context of libraries. It analyses the findings of Pierre-Félix Bourdieu, James Coleman, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Putnam, Nan Lin, Ronald Stuart Burt, Wayne Baker and Alejandro Portes. Based on their respective concepts, the paper analyses the role of the contemporary library in the social life of local communities. In particular, it focuses on the possible new functions that public libraries may serve.

A critical review of the concept of social capital revealed certain dependencies between libraries and their neighbourhoods. With new services that respond to the actual social needs, libraries may serve as a keystone, namely they may integrate, animate and engage local communities. This, however, requires a certain approach to be adopted by the personnel and governing authorities as well as infrastructure and tangible resources.

The social engagement of libraries is usually described from the practical perspective (reports on the services provided) or in the context of research on the impact of respective projects on specific groups of users (research reports). A broader approach, based on original social theories, is rarely encountered. The paper draws on classical concepts of social capital and is a contribution to the discussion on possible uses of those concepts based on an analysis of the role of libraries in social life and in strengthening the social capital of local communities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the trends for digital library education in Europe. It addresses two questions: what are the roles for digital librarians? How should they be educated?

The analysis is based on the results of the project “European Curriculum Reflections on Library and Information Science Education” and the proceedings of the Workshops on Digital Library Education, held in Italy in 2005 and in Croatia in 2006.

Three approaches to education for digital library are described: the emergence of the concept of “memory institutions”; the library‐based approach to knowledge management; and the isolation of IT from library and information science (LIS) schools.

The roles of the digital librarian are suggested, and the structure of a course for digital library education is proposed, but further research is needed on the definition of the digital library concept.

A digital librarian should have a combination of technological and librarianship competences.

The paper addresses the issue of education needed for digital librarians in Europe.

GUEST editor of this South African issue of THE LIBRARY WORLD is Hendrik M. Robinson, Director of Library Services, Transvaal Provincial Administration, Pretoria.

As her many friends and colleagues all over the world already know, Barbara Kyle retired prematurely at the end of June from her twin posts on the staff of Aslib: Research Librarian and Editor of this Journal. Thus ill health has interrupted a career of singular éclat in the realm of librarianship and imposed a burden of rest and recuperation on one whose capacity for living is everywhere a legend. And ‘everywhere’, it must be said, contains in this context no hint of poetic licence, for rarely can the British documentalist abroad have engaged in converse with his colleagues without the name of Kyle being mentioned with respect, admiration, or personal affection—frequently the rare tribute of all three.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse recent developments in the relationship of large public libraries with digital technologies, suggesting a way of rethinking the future of large public libraries.

This paper bases its critical analysis on a review of the literature and reference to specific cases. Historical quotes preceding sections augment the argument that many of the current concerns about digital technologies are not new issues for libraries.

Issues around library take up of digital technology are continuations of debates that have occurred throughout the history of public libraries about the role of the library. In Australia, library policy makers are focusing on technology and an imagined user in an effort to prove the legitimacy of large public libraries to funding bodies, the library profession and library users. Such attempts seem doomed to fail.

Public libraries need to be clear about their purpose as publicly funded institutions in the digital age. This requires a renewed understanding of a library's publics and a critical understanding of the nature of services available using digital technologies.

This paper presents an alternative way of thinking about the future of large public libraries, with much of the discussion also relevant to local public libraries.

After such an inspiring address by Sir Edward Boyle and the brilliant lecture by Lord Verulam I am really left rather breathless and I expect your capacity for taking any more is almost negligible.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how social media can be an effective tool for academic libraries to support their communities in the digital environment and relay information about their cultural functions.

This paper involves a literature review to discuss the implementation of academic libraries’ cultural functions through social media account. This paper also observes some academic libraries’ accounts that use social media to carry out their cultural functions.

Social media provides opportunities for academic libraries in performing and developing their cultural functions. Academic libraries already use social media to deliver and communicate their cultural functions. However, some challenges might arise and necessitate a review of the library’s resources and the skills of library professionals.

This paper fills the lack of empirical studies analyzing the implementation of academic libraries’ cultural functions through social media accounts and contributes to the literature about the cultural functions of libraries in the digital environment. This paper can help those academic libraries wanting to leverage, bring innovation and increase their cultural functions in the digital environment through their social media accounts.

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.

Based on the study of overall situation of the tagging function in the provincial public libraries and library of major colleges and universities, this paper aims to examine the difference of tagging behaviour of its users in library and social community sites. The authors also want to understand the causes of a variety of annotation behavior in social community sites and libraries.

The authors collected all system log data of tags, comments and ratings users added in Wuhan University library, and then found the tags, comments and rating of corresponding books in Douban. Then, the authors did questionnaire survey to the Wuhan University students.

The authors found that the annotation service in the library is not perfect as that in social community site. Enthusiasm of users annotating books in the library is far less high than that on the social community sites. Lack of understanding of the annotation service is the main reason why users are not concerned or do not use the tagging service. But users have the needs of the organization of personal information in the library using tags.

This paper investigated the library users’ behavior in the using library OPAC course and compared the difference of annotation behavior between library and social community site.