Editorial

New Library World

ISSN: 0307-4803

Article publication date: 20 July 2010

514

Citation

Ashcroft, L. (2010), "Editorial", New Library World, Vol. 111 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2010.072111gaa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: New Library World, Volume 111, Issue 7/8

When Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Sherburn-in-Elmet Library and Information Centre in North Yorkshire, he paid tribute to the range of services available in one place. The Centre incorporates a children’s centre, district council services, Citizens Advice Bureau, Credit Union facilities as well as the library. Gordon Brown described it as a full community service and a model for the future. The paper from Niels Ole Pors analyses the introduction of citizen services in public libraries in Denmark. It reports on a study employing interviews with library staff, administrative staff and citizen service users. Amongst the findings is the indication that it is frequent library visitors who use citizen services most in the library and it is considered convenient rather than extremely important.

A survey of 835 institutions worldwide by the Ciber research group for the US Charleston Annual Conference (www.katina.info/conference/program.php) found that more than one third expect to cut their spending on information resources in the coming two years and 28 per cent expect to cut staffing budgets. Academic libraries in particular are likely to freeze staffing levels, not replacing those who leave. The paper from Ricardo Andrade and Raik Zaghloul discusses the restructuring process of the University of Arizona Libraries. They detail three phases of restructuring and the largest change of creating a Research Support Services team, moving from a subject specialist model to a domain model, which has allowed the team to accomplish their work with fewer staff. This provides an approach of how a research university is responding to economic and technological challenges.

The strategy for 2010-2012 from Joint Information Systems Committee mentions a significantly enhanced culture of e-learning. It considers online learning and notes the use of virtual learning environments as having good benefit including making more course material available online and being a way to reach students who for various reasons may not be able to attend an institution on a regular basis. Information literacy is of great importance and, in their article, Eric Resnis, Katie Gibson, Arianne Hartsell-Gundy and Masha Misco present a case study which investigated students’ information literacy practices at Miami University. This study is distinctive in that it reports on the collaboration between librarians and faculty and makes use of faculty perceptions of students in their courses. Many among the faculty and librarians are still working together on improving the information literacy skills of students.

A report from Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (2009) considers various. Included in this report are social learning spaces, which are popular with students. However, the report notes that these social learning spaces often need to repurpose library storage space and depend on digital equivalents to print materials. Thus, they are expensive to build, maintain and support, which must be considered at a time when capital and estate budgets are likely to be cut. Margaret Brown-Sica, Karen Sobel and Erika Rogers discuss planning processes for learning commons design in their paper. They discuss one of the planning methods used at the Auraria Library, which involved user-centred and participatory action research principles. They point out that no library can use plans for or duplicate learning commons from other libraries, but it is better to gather information from and with users in order to provide the amenities, atmosphere and tools they need.

The UK Research Reserve (UKRR) is a scheme led by the British Library and Imperial College which has been granted £10 m by HEFCE. A total of 15 higher education libraries have now signed up to UKRR to create a central repository of research material – a scheme developing a more coherent way for researchers to access material. For many universities implementing an institutional repository is an accomplishment, and the article from Marsha Winter and Portia Bowen-Chang reports on the challenges of implementing an institutional repository at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, using DSpace software. They reveal the factors that require significant attention and the challenges that come with using this software, but note the benefits including promoting the intellectual output of the university.

The International Association of Music Libraries Excellence Award is given for “sustained good work […] which has the potential to be adopted by others”, and each year a strong panel of judges is established. A recent survey has revealed that higher education library directors see deeper cooperation as “probably the only way to achieve significant cost savings while at the same time sustaining momentum in developing new services”. In his paper, Karl Madden provides a review and context for cooperative and collaborative management of musical materials. He comments that cooperative collection management of music is generally too troublesome to undertake for cost saving purposes alone, and that cooperation requires standardized policy statements detailing individual and collective goals/outcomes.

Linda Ashcroft

References

HEFCE (2009), Aspects of the Impact of the Economic Recession on University Library and IT Services, Higher Education Funding Council for England, Bristol

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