Library & Information Science books

Librarianship may be said to be facing an identity crisis. It may also be said that librarianship has been facing an identity crisis since it was proposed as a profession. With the advent of technology that lowers barriers to the access of information, the mission of a library has become indistinct. This volume will explore the current purpose of librarianship and libraries, how we become “Masters of our Domains”, develop expertise in various elements of the profession, and how we extend outward into our communities.

Emotions are prevalent in the library workplace leading to many questions and areas of analysis worth exploring. For example, what tools for developing emotional intelligence are used effectively in library workplaces? How can emotional labor be managed to minimize the negative effects of emotion work? How can library employees express authentic emotions while still adhering to service expectations? How does dispositional affect how one experiences emotions - influence relationships in the workplace? What role does emotion play in effective as well as ideal library leadership and management? In this volume, we consider how emotions or related concepts such as affect, mood, or discrete feelings intersect with library administration. Offering eleven chapters ranging through inward reflection to outward practice, fourteen authors explore how theory has been applied in the study of emotion in the library workplace and provide a look at future trends in the area. Library managers will take away increased knowledge about how the library workplace can and should operate with consideration toward emotion, and will glean ideas for implementation with their own staff and services.

An important component of library administration and organization in the modern age is managing projects. Once the realm of technology and business gurus, formal project management tools, techniques and schemas have become more commonplace in libraries. Using formal project management components can help libraries achieve their desired outcomes with less stress for employees. However, there can be an entry barrier to project management, since the concepts are still somewhat out of the range of the usual library administration experience. This volume of Advances in Library Administration and Organization attempts to put project management into the toolboxes of library administrators through overviews of concepts, analyses of experiences, and forecasts for the use of project management within the profession.

At the heart of any discussion about the future of libraries is the future of librarians—and how well our instructional programs, especially the Master of Library Science (MLS) degree, prepare them for their careers. Building on the Re-envisioning the MLS initiative from the University of Maryland’s iSchool and the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC), this book continues the critical conversations around preparing future librarians. Library and information science (LIS) programs are the foundation of librarianship, and their design requires input from everyone in the field—from academics designing programs and courses, to practitioners reflecting on how prepared (or unprepared) they are to serve their communities, to hiring authorities considering qualifications of candidates. The second installment of this two-part volume explores many of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the future of the MLS degree, including the changing nature of the communities that libraries serve and how LIS education should address these changes, how archival training must accommodate big data, the specialized skill sets librarians need on the job, and how best to prepare librarians for their role as educators. These conversations will never be fully resolved, as LIS education must continue to evolve to ensure the efficacy of libraries and the librarians at the heart of the work.

At the heart of any discussion about the future of libraries is the future of librarians—and how well our instructional programs, especially the Master of Library Science (MLS) degree, prepare them for their careers. Building on the Re-envisioning the MLS initiative from the University of Maryland’s iSchool and the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC), this book continues the critical conversations around preparing future librarians. Library and information science (LIS) programs are the foundation of librarianship, and their design requires input from everyone in the field—from academics designing programs and courses, to practitioners reflecting on how prepared (or unprepared) they are to serve their communities, to hiring authorities considering qualifications of candidates. The second installment of this two-part volume explores many of the challenges and opportunities inherent in the future of the MLS degree, including the changing nature of the communities that libraries serve and how LIS education should address these changes, how archival training must accommodate big data, the specialized skill sets librarians need on the job, and how best to prepare librarians for their role as educators. These conversations will never be fully resolved, as LIS education must continue to evolve to ensure the efficacy of libraries and the librarians at the heart of the work.

Rural and small public libraries provide invaluable services to their communities. These information institutions operate in areas that, when compared to national averages, have poor broadband accessibility and weaker connection speeds, low home internet adoption rates, higher unemployment rates, and less per capita access to doctors and other healthcare providers. Public libraries help to bridge these divides and help to mitigate the impact of these geographic and socioeconomic disadvantages. However, librarians are only able to do so much when they are funded by limited, primarily local revenues and are not able to achieve economies of scale that come with larger service population bases. Thus, this volume begins by defining the challenges that rural and small libraries face before shifting to an analysis of ways that these obstacles can be overcome or mitigated. Building off of this foundation, the authors explore ideas for enhancing community partnerships and outreach, using rural and small public libraries as centers for local cultural heritage activities, and training rural public librarians to better serve their publics. The authors of this volume bridge the gap between academic research and practical application, creating a volume that will allow rural librarians, trustees, and their allies to argue for greater support and enact change to benefit their service communities.

Award-winning information theorists and practitioners Pearlstein and Matarazzo have assembled a group of top international authors with experience in public, academic, government, and special library settings, including experienced independent information professionals, to address the critical issues facing Information Management (IM) today. This new handbook provides a context for approaching the world in which information professionals work; a tool, the Balanced Scorecard, to help demonstrate contribution and value; and a review of opportunities for new areas of employment and career development, ripe for applying the Information Services skill set. Through combinations of topical chapters with common themes, the professor and student will find a multi-perspective approach to the IM landscape. Used as a ready-reference, the IM practitioner will find both theoretical and pragmatic approaches to inform their decision making on traditional as well as new challenges. For information and IM professionals, librarians, and students, this must-have handbook provides invaluable insights from the leading names in the field, enabling you to make the best decision no matter what challenges you face.

This book critically examines the organization of knowledge as it is involved in matters of digital communication, the social, cultural and political consequences of classifying, and how particular historical contexts shape ideas of information and what information to classify and record. Due to permeation of digital infrastructures, software, and digital media in everyday life, many aspects of contemporary culture and society are infused with the activity and practice of classification. That means that old questions about classification have their potency in modern discourses about surveillance, identify formation, big data and so on. At the same time, this situation also implies a need to reconsider these old questions and how to frame them in digital culture. This book contains contributions that consider classic library classification practices and how their choices have social, cultural and political effect, how the organization of knowledge is not only a professional practice but is also a way of communicating and understanding digital culture, and how what a particular historical context perceives as information has implications for the recording of that information.