Award-winning publisher will offer free tips and other guidance from its premier series to support continuing LIS education.

August 8, 2011 (New York, NY) — For more than 20 years, librarians’ bookshelves have been filled with Neal-Schuman’s solid-colored 8 ½ x 11 How-To-Do-It Manuals® on such nitty-gritty topics as strategic planning, marketing, web page development, and customer service.  Many of the books in the series such as Connecting Young Adults and Libraries and Book Repair are now the de facto standard references in their specialties.

Neal-Schuman President Patricia Glass Schuman is pleased to announce that beginning on August 10, 2011, the practical advice and expert guidance from the How-To-Do-It series will be available by free email subscription or RSS feed directly from Neal-Schuman Publishers.

Readers who sign up for this new free online service will receive tips on a diverse range of topics, from preparing for a book discussion with ready-made questions to writing a winning grant proposal. As with the How-To-Do-It Manuals® themselves, each concise, easy-to-follow installment will be carefully designed to give librarians a new idea or concept they can immediately implement in their library.

The first How-To-Do-It Tip was selected from Conducting the Reference Interview: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians®, Second Edition by Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Kirsti Nilsen, and Marie L. Radford, and offers advice for avoiding the common causes of miscommunication at the reference desk (whether physical or virtual). The tips are available online at www.neal-schuman.com/blog. Future tips will follow the same format and cover areas such as management, implementing new technology, new ways to connect with users, and more.

About the How-To-Do-It Series that Spawned this Free Online Service:

The now 181-volume strong series was inspired by Neal-Schuman’s 1988 publication of The How-To-Do-It Manual for Small Libraries edited by Bill Katz, which offered broad guidance for small libraries. Neal-Schuman launched its How-To-Do-It Manuals® the following year, starting with Using Lotus 1-2-3 by Robert Machalow. Today, the series features a wide array of practical guides, each focused on an important aspect of running a successful library. Recent titles include Metadata for Digital Collections (2011) by Steven J. Miller, Finding the Answers to Legal Questions (2011) by Virginia Tucker and Marc Lampson, and Winning Grants (2010) by Pamela H. MacKellar and Stephanie K. Gerding. The manuals have garnered acclaim from a number of professional sources. The Journal of the Medical Library Association praised Training Paraprofessionals for Library Service, Second Edition (2009) by Pamela J. Morgan for its “clear, concise format.” Library Journal called E-Journals (2005) by Donnelyn Curtis and Virginia M. Scheschy “an indispensable reference for every serial and acquisitions librarian…an essential purchase for all libraries” in a “starred” review.

These valuable excerpts will help librarians in all settings — public, academic, school, special — by giving them practical, hands-on guidance written by librarians, for librarians. In addition to reading the tips on Neal-Schuman Publishers Blog at www.neal-schuman.com/blog, readers may subscribe to How-To-Do-It Tips via RSS feed or email delivery by clicking the corresponding buttons at the top of this blog page.

About Neal-Schuman Publishers

Neal-Schuman Publishers is a leading publisher of professional books for librarians, archivists and knowledge managers. Founded in 1976, Neal-Schuman Publishers is based in New York City, with offices in London, UK.

For More Information

Contact Laura Berlinsky-Schine

laura.berlinsky-Schine@neal-schuman.com

100 William Street, Suite 2004

New York,NY10038

212-925-8650

www.neal-schuman.com