Rapid developments in information technology and media have resulted in increasingly diverse strategies for information retrieval by readers and users. The duty to cope with this phenomenon and to master the situation forms one of the biggest challenges facing libraries. In order to strengthen the awareness of the potential of tools for management and strategic planning, a two-day meeting was held under the auspices of IFLA's Management & Marketing Section in Bergen, Norway in August 2005. Managers of different types of libraries, researchers and educators from five continents shared their experiences with research methods, data collection, evaluation, performance measurement, best practice strategies and policies. This book contains their presentations in the form of full length articles.

Technological advances allow libraries to more readily serve patrons’ needs. But how can a librarian effectively communicate what services libraries offer? Marketing and Promoting Electronic Resources: Creating the E-Buzz! explains the foundations of marketing and promotion, focusing on practical and creative techniques that have worked in academic, public, and special libraries. Respected authorities from various libraries offer their insights and advice for effective marketing strategies for electronic resources such as e-serials, databases, and e-books, helping library patrons to better understand the resources now available to them. This book provides librarians with practical suggestions on how to best let their patrons know about the available e-resources and instruct them on how to use them effectively. Librarians in any type of library setting, even if previously unschooled in marketing campaigns, can find fresh ideas to apply in their own setting. This invaluable tool discusses in detail how to develop a marketing plan, create and finance a promotional campaign, and how to use new technologies to reach out to your library patrons in the most effective way to promote your e-resources. This material was published as a special issue of The Serials Librarian.

The ever-shifting landscape of electronic resources challenges even the most tech-savvy information professionals. Now, however, you can surmount those challenges, with the solid backing offered in this practical book. Despite their being visible, valuable, and expensive components of public and academic library collections, electronic resources remain somewhat mysterious to many librarians. How do you deal with vendors, how do you decide which e-resources to buy, how do you optimize access for remote users, and perhaps most importantly, how do you motivate your public to use them? Created by three front-line practitioners, this guide answers all of those questions and more, offering practical advice to information professionals involved in any aspect of electronic resource management—from selecting, acquiring, and activating to managing, promoting, and deselecting. It features clear instructions along with definitions, checklists, FAQs, and sidebars comprising sensible tips and anecdotal asides for the involved librarian. Written in a lively style and brimming with helpful information, this is the guide you'll wish you had in library school, and a resource you will refer to again and again.

Taking a fresh approach, this comprehensive guide outlines the step-by-step process of collection development and management. Expert librarian Peggy Johnson offers tips for organizing and staffing, conceiving policy and creating budgets, and developing, marketing and evaluating collections.

This work presents a thorough examination of librarianship and the social and economic contexts in which the profession and its institutions operate. As a basis of analysis, Buschman employs critical education scholarship and the research of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, whose seminal work on the public sphere—the arena in which the public organizes itself and formulates public opinion—serves as a meta-framework for Buschman's study of librarianship. Buschman asserts that a significant shift has occurred from the library as a contributor to the public good to a model where economic rationality directs policy. He challenges much of the current thinking and assumptions guiding libraries, exploring the circumstances in which librarians and libraries operate and linking the profession back to democratic and public purposes as the core essence of the field. Chapters include: • Crisis Culture and the Need for a Defense of Librarianship in the Public Sphere • The New Public Philosophy and Critical Educational Analysis • The Public Sphere: Rounding Out the Context of Librarianship • Studies in Librarianship and the Dismantling of the Public Sphere • Follow the Money: Library Funding and Information Capitalism • Follow-the-Leader Library Management and the New Public Philosophy • On Customer Driven Librarianship • Drifting Toward the Corporate Model: ALA • Notes on Postmodern Technology, Technocracy, and Libraries • The Public Sphere and Democratic Possibility Highly recommended for courses in policy and librarianship, as well as for academic and public library directors, this work will also be of interest to theorists in the social sciences.

This guide to ERM fundamentals will prove invaluable, both as a primer for those preparing to enter the field as well as a ready reference for current practitioners.