Have you given thought to the whole life-cycle of managing a library collection? This is a topic discussed in depth in Making a Collection Count: A Holistic Approach to Library Collection Management, and today co-author Holly Hibner speaks with us about her book. Holly is currently the Adult Services Coordinator at the Plymouth District Library in Plymouth, Michigan. Holly was the recipient of the Michigan Library Association’s Loleta D. Fyan Award in 2007 and is the co-founder of the popular blog Awful Library Books.

• Why did you and your co-author Mary Kelly decide to write Making a Collection Count: A Holistic Approach to Library Collection Management?

Gluttons for punishment? Just kidding. Someone at Chandos contacted us, saying she had seen some of our previously-published articles and presentations on Slideshare. She asked if we had considered writing a book (we hadn’t!). Mary and I are always looking for a new experience, and we love projects that push our skills to the limit and force us to learn new things. A book seemed like the perfect way to share our passion for collection management, while learning something new.

• How does the holistic approach you take differ from other resources on library collection management?

There are plenty of books about collection development. They talk about the selection process and the weeding process, but we hadn’t found anything that looked at the big picture of collection management. Our approach considers every stage in what we call the collection lifecycle, from selection to weeding and everything in between. We believe that a collection is only successful if every stage in the lifecycle is constantly evaluated. A collection has to be managed at every step.

• What will readers discover from your book?

Readers will be inspired to look at the collections they manage from different points of view. They will discover techniques for things like taking a physical inventory and evaluating their collection management workflow. They will find that managing a collection is a challenging and rewarding experience!

• What is the most common challenge facing librarians in collection development?

Keeping up with ever-changing formats is a challenge common to librarians in every type of library. Librarians have to decide what formats will work in their collections, and for their patrons. They also have to plan their budgets accordingly, considering which titles they will purchase in multiple formats. Librarians who started out managing a collection of books may soon find themselves managing a collection of books, e-books, DVDs, BluRays, CD-ROMs, and audio books!

• What do you consider to be the most important change to the field of librarianship that you have witnessed?

Librarians have had to adapt to technology. They have had to keep up with those changing formats I mentioned above, and be able to search more sophisticated catalogs and databases. Librarians have become trainers, teaching our library users how to find and use information in a variety of formats.

Learn more about Making a Collection Count: A Holistic Approach to Library Collection Management on its Web page, and don’t forgot to check out the blog Awful Library Books for more from Holly.

 •  What will readers discover in Practical Open Source Software for Libraries?

 

I hope that in reading Practical Open Source Software for Libraries librarians will learn that open source is about so much more than cost savings and code.  In addition to the theoretical lessons in the book though, they will walk away knowing about at least one new open source tool (hopefully many more) that they can use to provide better services in their libraries today.

•  What do you consider the biggest challenge that you address in your book?

 As with all technologies, there are many preconceived notions about open source software that libraries have.  These notions are often fueled by fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and not in fact accurate.  In the book I try to dispel these myths and educate librarians about what open source really is and what it really means to use open source software in our libraries.

•  What is the biggest advantage of libraries adopting open source software?

Freedom!  When choosing open source software for your library you’re choosing to be in control and have the freedom over the direction the software takes.  Many people choose open source because it can often offer cost-savings, but the real power and value in open source is the freedom to use, distribute, alter, and study the software for any purpose.

•  Who should read your book?

I’d of course love if everyone read the book.  Barring that the book is geared toward those who make software decisions in the library. This does not limit the audience to administrators and systems librarians, but to those who evaluate software both for the library staff and the patrons they serve.  The book will also interest those looking to learn more about open source in general and find alternate software applications for their home computers.

Learn more about Nicole’s book on its Web page, and don’t forgot to check out her website for more information about open source software.

Having grown up in an increasingly digital environment, many of today’s college students think that they can conduct research by simply Googling a topic. But doing so will not yield fruitful results. Engaging First-Year Students in Meaningful Library Research: A Practical Guide for Teaching Faculty will help academic librarians and other instructors instill successful research skills in the new generation of scholars.

From the press release:

First-year students have had trouble conducting research tasks since the dawn of time, but today’s generation of undergraduates faces the increasingly complex online information environment with too- frequent reliance on Internet tools like Google. Academic librarians and other instructors have the immense challenge of teaching students not only how to conduct research, but often what research really is. Engaging First-Year Students in Meaningful Library Research: A Practical Guide for Teaching Faculty, to be released in North America by Neal-Schuman Publishers on January 20, 2012, discusses the importance of instilling information literacy competencies in first-year students and offers practical strategies for doing so, arming them with skills they will need throughout their college and professional careers.

Click here to find out more about this and other titles in Neal-Schuman’s press release database.

While copyright is an issue that all librarians face, questions about fair use occur frequently in the classroom. Neal-Schuman author Rebecca P. Butler, a Presidential Teaching Professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, has written a book that addresses this very complexity. She teaches, researches, and writes in the area of copyright law for K-12 educational institutions, and Copyright for Teachers & Librarians in the 21st Century is her third book with Neal-Schuman on this subject.

•   How did you learn so much about copyright law and education?

I am not a lawyer. Instead, I am a university professor (school libraries and instructional technology), as well as a former school librarian. (I have also worked as a public, special, and medical librarian, and worked in university and college libraries.) As a librarian, I always had an interest in copyright law as it pertains to the borrowing of library materials. About 16 years ago, the university that I was teaching at asked me to study copyright and inform its faculty of issues surrounding it in the university setting. I began studying and researching in this area, and discovered that I really was fascinated with the practicalities and ethics of this particular law and the issues surrounding it. Copyright has been a strong interest of mine ever since.

•  What is it that concerns you most when you consider copyright law?

The fact that many teachers and administrators still feel that as educators they do not need to abide by the law or can claim “fair use” for whatever they copy or borrow.

•   But fair use is part of the law, isn’t it?

Sure it is. However, there are four fair use factors, and often educators assume that all they need to do is follow the factor that says educational use is fair use. This is only one of the factors; the law really wants us to follow all four factors: purpose and character of use (the one educators are most likely to follow), nature of the work, amount to be borrowed, and marketability of the work.

Sample Flowchart from “Copyright for Teachers and Librarians in the 21st Century”

•   Many readers have commented on how helpful the flow charts in your book are. How did these come about?

My husband saw me working with questions and suggested that a flow chart might be beneficial to readers. I started creating them for various questions and this expanded into books.

•   Where do you get the copyright questions that you use as examples in your book?

All copyright issues and questions are based on real-life scenarios posed to me by my students and concerned school librarians, administrators, and teachers.

•   What do you want to write about next?

The next two projects I am interested in are (1) copyright law in the university setting and (2) how to teach/train students, faculty, administrators, and interested others in the verities and practicalities of the law in K-12 schools.

Learn more about Rebecca’s new book, and read some of its rave reivews, on the Web page for Copyright for Teachers & Librarians in the 21st Century.

Ulla De Stricker, co-author of The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook: Define and Create your Success with Jill Hurst-Wahl, shares some of her views about the book and the information profession with us. Ulla is a Knowledge Management Consultant on projects associated with information acquisition, knowledge worker support, and institutional memory. Kim Dority at Infonista compared reading this book to “hanging out with two really smart, experienced, and wise mentors,” so we’re lucky to get to spend more time with the author.

·  What were some key reasons making you and Jill feel the book had to be written?

Jill and I consider ourselves “natural mentors” in that we have offered support to professional colleagues for our entire careers. It was a natural evolution for us to co-author The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook: Define and Create Your Success. In it, we boil down the advice we have shared though the years with colleagues at any stage of their careers. The profession of librarianship—in all its modern variants—is changing ever faster, and the career opportunities go far beyond the standard ones in academic, corporate/government, and public/school libraries. However, it is obvious that many newly minted holders of the Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies/Science, as well as mid-career professionals, may not have had opportunities to think carefully through such questions as “What is my best professional role?” and “What type of work environment would enable me to maximize my education and abilities?”. Similarly, matters such as navigating corporate politics, succeeding in a managerial role, and developing a professional brand may not have been covered in any depth during graduate school. The book is intended to raise a number of questions for readers to stimulate their thinking and encourage them to plan – but give chance a chance when it comes to their careers.

·  What have readers’ reactions been?

It delights me to hear how the book is experienced as refreshingly direct and practical. It is gratifying to find out that it is valuable for others to read about “the way it really is.” Indeed, Jill and I made it a point to speak frankly about our own experiences in order to offer our hard-earned insights. A second feature readers appreciate is the fact that the book has relevance throughout a career—some chapters will be very apropos for students and recent graduates while other chapters will resonate more once some experience has been accumulated. We did intend the book as a permanent career companion as well as a perfect graduation gift!

·  How did you like writing this book, and do you have a favorite chapter or section?

I enjoyed every bit of the writing, yet if I were to point out two areas particularly close to my heart they would be knowing who you are and developing your brand. I’m passionate about encouraging colleagues to shed any shyness and get busy promoting their skills to potential employers—and that is not at all straightforward (quite apart from the fact that some members of our profession express a reluctance to toot their horns). At the same time, I’m down to earth about the need for information professionals to project a polished image commensurate with their competencies and to build a reputation through association work and similar profile-raising activity. Here, I always stress the good news that giving to the profession through volunteering returns benefits many times over… it pays to get involved.

·  If you could achieve one small miracle for the information profession today, what would it be?

I would dearly love to see in my lifetime a dramatic lift in the overall societal understanding of what information professionals do. In some professions, practitioners—say, veterinarians and accountants—do not need to explain their work because their value and functions are well understood by most people. Information professionals, however, very much need to explain to potential employers how their qualifications are applicable to a gamut of roles, for example in client relations, marketing, policy analysis, and more. It would be a major career boost for our profession if private sector managers, government officials, and policy makers were clear on the wisdom of investing in the skills of an information professional. The challenges of information overload, knowledge worker silos, loss of intellectual capital through retirement and attrition, and similar phenomena will not go away… and information professionals can do a lot to ameliorate them. We information professionals must address collectively the challenge of raising awareness about our potential contributions.

Learn more about The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook: Define and Create your Success on the book’s Web page, and be sure to keep up with Ulla on her professional blog www.destricker.com, which she updates with recent articles and seminars.

Finding the best way to organize images for your collection can feel like a challenging task. Today Margot Note talks to with us about her new book, Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide, and shares her enthusiasm for bringing this sometimes-theoretical subject down to earth. Margot is a Certified Archivist based in New York and is the Director of Archives and Information Management at World Monuments Fund, an international historic preservation organization. She has spent her career working in the cultural heritage sector, including in small liberal arts colleges, public and academic libraries, and archives.

 · How did you become interested in images and their collections?

While I was studying history in grad school, I found that images were often the only primary sources of information about my research subjects. My attraction to images continued as I further educated myself in library and information science and archives and records management. At my current position as Director of Archives and Information Management at World Monuments Fund (WMF), an international historic preservation organization, I manage a visual collection depicting more than 600 conservation projects in 90 countries over the past 45 years. To bring the images to a global audience, I’ve led an initiative to digitize thousands of images and create metadata for ARTstor. Through this opportunity, I’ve learned about the fundamentals of image management quickly! I’ve found that although my interest has always been in the past, preserving history relies on today’s technology.

· Why did you decide to write this book?

When I tried to gain knowledge about managing traditional image collections of slides and photographic prints while also providing access to born-digital and digitized images, I discovered that there wasn’t a detailed guide on best practices for managing hybrid collections. While much has been written on image management theory, practical viewpoints have often been ignored. Balancing theory against practice protects both digital and analog collections and ensures that digitization projects run smoothly and the resulting digital collections are of superb quality.

· Who should read your book?

I wrote the book for archivists, librarians, and curators who manage image collections in heritage institutions, such as museums, galleries, archives, and academic and large public libraries. Administrators, scholars, and students interested in the challenges confronting professionals in this specialized area would also benefit from this book.

· What will readers discover from your book?

I wanted to cover a gamut of topics, including selection strategies, digital image creation, quality control, metadata access, and preservation. The book can be used by collection managers embarking on digitization projects or who are managing an existing projects. I’ve also included a guide of issues to consider while planning a digital project, a glossary of image collection terms, and a section on further reading.

· What has been the response to Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide?

Overwhelmingly positive! It’s amazing that my work has reached Japan, Botswana, Slovenia, and other countries. Readers have found it informative and easy to read, as I tried to write in an engaging style. Too often, books on this subject are dry. My favorite part of the book is when I summarize the history of photography, which has become a new passion of mine.

Learn more about Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide on the book’s Web page.

For the last fourteen years, Jane Vincent has worked for the Center for Accessible Technology providing consultation to libraries on assistive technology acquisition and use throughout California, as well as evaluating Web site accessibility for businesses and organizations and performing assistive technology evaluations for individuals. She recently turned her expertise to writing Implementing Cost-Effective Assistive Computer Technology: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians®, newly published this October. Here, Jane dispels some of the fictions surrounding assistive technology and shares her thoughts on how to implement assistive technology in libraries successfully.

· Assistive technology is usually thought of as equipment specifically for people with disabilities. Do you think this is accurate?

Not at all! I often say that assistive technology exists not because people have disabilities, but because computers are badly designed. Take the standard keyboard—the key markings usually take up about a fourth of the available space, instead of using large print that would make the keys easier to read by elders, children, and others. Inexpensive stick-on labels can greatly improve keyboard legibility. Another example is software that reads text aloud, which is a powerful tool for blind people and people with learning disabilities, but can also be helpful to beginning readers, ESL students, and anyone whose eyes are too tired for proofreading. And so on.

That said, many libraries will likely need to implement policies to ensure that the people who most need assistive technology to use computers will have priority access. Among several checklists and guides in the book is a series of questions to work through in setting policy guidelines relevant to the specific needs of your library. This will give staff a clear way to address issues such as when one patron might legitimately have a priority claim to a specific workstation over another, and when it would be appropriate to allow someone with a disability to reserve a computer for two hours instead of one.

· Libraries have sometimes seen “cost-effective” and “assistive technology” as being mutually incompatible. What’s the most important thing libraries can do to stretch their funds?

The best way — as with any service the library implements — is to find out and respond to the needs and preferences of the community. This can be done by conducting surveys and interviews with community members — patrons, of course, but also members of local organizations who provide services to people with disabilities, and other interested groups; in fact, developing an ongoing  partnership with these organizations can have a great deal of mutual benefit. Once you know what will be most relevant to your patrons, you can acquire and implement technology that will have the largest likelihood of being used regularly, rather than trying to guess what will work and ending up with equipment that just gets dusty.

Note that “cost-effective” doesn’t automatically equal “free.”  For example, there are many good assistive utilities already built into Windows and Macintosh operating systems, but even these have some cost.

At a minimum, they will probably require a discussion with IT staff to ensure that there is a way to provide access to them without compromising the integrity of security systems already on the computers. You’ll also need to check whether the assistive technologies you’re considering will work with your login system, databases, and mainstream applications. The book covers strategies for addressing these and other “hidden” issues.

· Once the technology is in place, how do you let patrons know it’s available?

You’ll want to use your usual channels, such as newsletters and Web sites, to reach not only your target audience, but also their friends, family members, and other supporters who can pass the word along. This is also a good example of why having partner organizations can help; these groups will have proven ways to reach their own memberships with your messages.

Before the patrons start coming, you also want to make sure your staff has had an appropriate level of training. They don’t need to know all the details of using the assistive technology, but they do need an overview of what the library has implemented and what it’s used for, along with an awareness of disability etiquette and how to refer people to patrons to services that the library can’t provide. The book includes several interviews with librarians about how they implemented assistive technology, and I’m particularly pleased with the one from the Ann Arbor District Library, where I had talked to several staff members at random, each of whom had obviously been well-trained in the assistive computer services that the library was newly providing.

· You’re maintaining a blog (at www.janevincent.com/iceact) to accompany the book. What’s the most exciting thing you’ve written about?

I’d have to say the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII), which is working to create an entirely new model of assistive technology provision. Today, assistive technology in libraries is installed on individual computers, or maybe on a network; users often need to wait for specific computers to become available, and may then need to spend precious time reconfiguring settings to their preferences. In the future, with GPII, users will configure their preferences one time, and then by entering a code they can have their assistive technology come up fully configured to their needs. It will work from any Internet-connected device — not just computers, but also mobile devices, kiosks, and so on. I presented on GPII at the ALA conference in New Orleans, and was gratified to see the overwhelmingly positive response from librarians. The project’s website is www.gpii.org.

Feel free to contact Jane with your own questions—her email is jane [at] janevincent.com. Learn more about Implementing Cost-Effective Assistive Computer Technology: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians® on the book’s Web page.

Laurie Thompson, MLS, AHIP, brought over 30 years of health science library experience to her role as Editor-in-Chief of The Medical Library Association’s Master Guide to Authoritative Information Resources in the Health Sciences. She is the Assistant Vice President for Library Services at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and is active in the Medical Library Association, serving on its Board of Directors from 2006-2010. We asked Laurie to speak to us in the wake of a great review from CHOICE Magazine, which called the volume she edited “an important, useful tool that is both concise and reliable.” Here she explains how a discussion at an MLA Books Panel meeting turned into this comprehensive resource for health science librarians who must differentiate and select from among the  many resources available.

•  Why did you feel the need to create such a resource?

John N. Gathegi, an information and law professor who has also practiced as a lawyer, presents The Digital Librarian’s Legal Handbook, a jam-packed resource to help you understand every aspect of copyright law and how it affects your day-to-day-operations. From the press release:

“Intellectual property rights, particularly copyright law, is one of the most important compliance issues facing digital librarians, computing managers, and chief information officers. Copyright law can be confusing, and it is important to avoid the multitude of legal pitfalls in this area. The Digital Librarian’s Legal Handbook, to be published by Neal-Schuman Publishers on December 16, 2011, explores the intellectual property challenges in digital content, with a focus on copyright law issues. It is designed to give the digital librarian a clear understanding of copyright law and how it affects the management of digital content, providing methods for avoiding many of the legal pitfalls that abound in this area and answers to the most frequently encountered legal questions in digital libraries.”

Click here to find out more about this and other titles in Neal-Schuman’s press release database.

Teaching has become a primary job function of academic librarians, and it may be unfamiliar territory for some. Fortunately, Becoming Confident Teachers: A Guide for Academic Librarians, a new Chandos Publication distributed exclusively in North America by Neal-Schuman Publishers, will help them teach knowledgeably and effectively.

August 31, 2011 (New York, NY) —Whether they teach the occasional class, on the spur of the moment, or spend the majority of their working hours in front of students, academic librarians are teaching more frequently than ever before.   Where can they turn for tips on becoming better at it? Becoming Confident Teachers: A Guide for Academic Librarians, to be released in North America by Neal-Schuman Publishers on October 15, 2011, gives academic librarians the skills and knowledge to fill their instructional roles with confidence and enthusiasm.

Click here to find out more about this and other titles in Neal-Schuman’s press release database.