This volume examining key factors related to successful reference service practices provides librarians with an important and significantly different perspective on the reference process. Author Jo Bell Whitlatch describes the major factors that need to be considered to obtain a comprehensive view of the reference process in academic libraries, arguing that the understanding of the reference process can be enhanced by borrowing from current research in other disciplines that place an increasing emphasis on service organizations rather than on manufacturing organizations. The book...

This book offers solutions to the problems of recruitment, education, and training of cataloging librarians. Sheila S. Intner and Janet Swan Hill have compiled a series of informative essays that provide creative solutions on a wide array of issues in the library cataloging field. These include recruitment methods of practitioners for future librarians, training strategies to produce skillful and effective librarians, professional expectations and satisfaction of librarians, impact of library computer systems, and the response to the changing organization methods that create good library...

This book offers a completely new approach to the measurement of academic library effectiveness. Based on a significant empirical investigation, it contradicts established practices such as the measurement of outputs as indicators of effectiveness and the tendency to focus the evaluation of library effectiveness on the success of isolated activities. The book also explores in detail the fundamental inadequacy of library-based bibliographic instruction and information-seeking skills development. It argues that a student learns in order to become information literate and does not become...

This contributed volume offers a summary of the latest ideas and applications concerning decision making software, as applied to administrative decision making and public policy-making. Stuart Nagel, the editor of this work, defines the essence of decision-aiding software to be software that is designed to enable users to process a set of (1) goals to be achieved, (2) alternatives available for achieving them, and (3) relations between goals and alternatives in order to choose the best alternative, combination, allocation, or predictive decision-rule. Containing contributions from both...

Comprehensive planning has become an essential element in the management of the modern university library. The purpose of this book is to help those now engaged in this important management function by summarizing the history of academic library planning and analyzing its practice in a group of major libraries over the past several decades. The most significant changes confronting academic libraries for the past several decades have been technological, social, and economic. Strategic planning is used as the tool for making these libraries more responsive to their environments and for...

Libraries are becoming increasingly automated. Many libraries have already become automated, and librarians have had to confront a new set of problems in their jobs. Many other libraries are not yet automated, but will soon be acquiring new technology and new problems. This book provides detailed techniques for coping with the problems inherent in automation. While other works offer thorough coverage of the library automation process, this volume provides case studies of the personal experiences of librarians who have had to solve problems related to automation. Included are case studies...

This book explores the usefulness of looking at very small aspects of human behavior in order to understand computer-human interaction difficulties with hypertext. The focus is on both mechanical actions and talk as social action. While this approach has been used fruitfully to study human-human interaction, Gray has constructed a unique study of human interaction with machines.