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ANYBODY whoses daily work involves the planning and spending of money must at all times be concerned by efforts to ensure that value is being obtained for the money spent. Those of us who, as librarians, are spending the money of fellow tax‐payers, are naturally doubly concerned about this problem. In addition, the very phrase “value for money” to a Yorkshireman is a continual challenge, and a point on which he instinctively feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has some secret inborn knowledge.

At the end of World War II the destruction of German libraries and the political division of the former Reich led in the Federal Republic (BRD) to a planned development of research collections and of collection‐based bibliographic tools highly relevant to the present‐day Anglo‐American debate on so‐called holdings and access policies. Unhappily, the authors argue, current financial constraints in the Bundesrepublik after weakening the thrust of acquisitions work now pose a threat to the access tools themselves.

BOOKS are among the greatest and most wonderful achievements of human genius, they are also a powerful means of struggle for progress. The book accompanies man all his life; it is a creation of his brain and soul. It reflects the life of mankind and is the result of collective efforts of author and publisher, type‐setter and illustrator. But foremost a book is always and everywhere a social and political phenomenon. One of the most apt evaluations of the book was given by V. I. Lenin in 1917, when he was known to state to A. V. Lunacharsky, “The book is a great force indeed”.

Reports on a survey of charging policies and practices in London‐based public, academic and special libraries and information services with the object of establishing which pricing mechanisms are in operation and which services are being provided at a fee. The pricing mechanism cited by most respondents was “what the market will bear” rather than a direct adherence to cost‐based prices. The majority of libraries of all types have formalized some sort of differential pricing scheme in relation to user type and type of usage. There is a high commitment in academic and public libraries to a basic free level of service. Regulatory charges are largely the domain of public and academic libraries. Services acting as candidates for the generation of income differ between library types, but are mostly concerned with products rather than ideas/advice. “Value‐added” work is largely conducted by special and academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper, originally published in 1956, is to examine the assumptions about people's needs for and rights to information which lie behind the establishment of privately and publicly owned libraries, to consider how far these assumptions are valid, and finally to discuss the proper part to be played by privately owned libraries in the national library service.

Identifies and reflects on the assumptions in quotations from charters and terms of reference of a variety of libraries and from official statements about library provision.

Publicly supported libraries should satisfy the demands of the general reader for everything that is in print, including foreign material, and in doing so should give greater consideration to the geographical and temporal convenience of the reader in the case of both reference and loan material; that all demands on the interlibrary loan system should be met where possible from the stock of publicly supported libraries: that special libraries should give priority to the demands of their special clients but that they should consider increasing services to outsiders on a fee basis.

Suggests that it would be possible, when assessing the different categories of library, to have slightly varying criteria in mind and each librarian would be able to gauge the quality of his services by reference to explicit particular ends.

During the 1980s' Decade of the Disabled, legislation, advocacy activities, and special programs stimulated increased awareness of the rights of people with disabilities for better access to education, employment, housing, and information. In response to the growing need for easier access to information found in a public library, staff at the Phoenix Public Library designed a library Special Needs Center to make the services and resources of the library totally accessible. The following policy and mission statements illustrate this effort.

When the conference organizer first approached me some months ago and persuaded me to deliver this paper, the title—initially ‘Cuts in Special Libraries’—rapidly crystallised to ‘Cuts and the Special Library’. This happened because I decided that I must cover the two aspects, namely public sector cuts which will impinge on special libraries and cuts in the provision of resources in the special library itself. I came to this conclusion since I see the two as interacting, as well as stemming from the same general economic climate in this Country; hence both aspects will affect most, if not all, of us who work in special libraries.

This paper aims to understand job satisfaction as correlate with organizational change among personnel in computerized-based special libraries in Southwest, Nigeria.

The study used a survey approach in collecting data. The population of the study comprised all intermediate and senior personnel of the special libraries in Southwest, Nigeria involved in the study on grade levels 06 to 17. Based on the 180 response sample drawn, 148 responses were received from the survey.

The degree and level of satisfaction derived from one’s job is sine qua non to the level of productivity obtained in due cause. Job satisfaction varies from individual to individual and from place to place. Although, organizational change is the basis for spontaneous increase of job dissatisfaction. Findings of the study revealed that organizational change is seen as a precursor to influencing job satisfaction of employees but the level of job satisfaction of employees depend on the impact of organizational change.

It should be noted that a number of limitations exist relative to this research, the review of which should both place the research findings discussed, in an appropriate context and thereby suggest direction for future research. This study focused on employees attitudes in special libraries in six states of the federation at one time. Considering the fact that a very wide and varying cultural environmental differences which without doubt affected personnel dispositions in many different ways.

This paper differs from the previous literature in presenting statistical evidence to confirm the relationships between job satisfaction and organizational change and a range of potential outcomes.

This study was conducted to investigate the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in special libraries in Kerala, India.

The following methods were used to collect data for the study: questionnaire survey of librarians and library users, semi‐structured interviews with librarians, and observational visits in the libraries. This study was confined only to the automated special libraries in Kerala.

The analyses revealed that though the libraries had hardware, software, and communication facilities to some extent, ICT‐based resources and services were not reaching the users to the expected extent. Library automation in special libraries in Kerala was largely commenced during the period 1990‐2000. CDS/ISIS was used more in the libraries than any other software. The library catalogue found to be the most popular area for automation. The ICT‐based resource used by the largest percentage of the users was the e‐mail. Most of the libraries were hampered by lack of funds, lack of infrastructure, and lack of skilled professionals to embark on automation of all library management activities and application of ICT. A good number of the library users were not satisfied with the application of ICT in their libraries and indicated “inadequate ICT infrastructure” as their major reason for dissatisfaction. They proposed a variety of measures of formal orientation and training on ICT to become more effective users.

The study provides recommendations to enhance library automation and effective and efficient application of ICT.

Application of Industry 4.0 in the library is still exploratory and despite an increase research on the rising trend, many challenges remain in designing a more packaged and accessible information using industry 4.0 components, especially for the special need library users such as the visually impaired, auditory impaired, wheel chair bound among others. Existing research, tends to focus on how special need library users can utilize information services using the third industrial revolution components. However there is very slim evidence that researchers have approached the issue of how industry 4.0 can be impactful on special need library users. This chapter tries to provide an overview of how special need library users can be supported to access and utilize library services effortlessly using industry 4.0 components like IOT services, cyber-physical systems, and cloud computing.