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Public libraries have changed beyond anyone's predictions in the past ten years and are at a vital stage in their historical development. This timely book is the first standalone text to examine the role and services of the UK public library in the 21st century context. The book discusses the nature and functions of the modern public library service, from its beginnings as the street-corner university, through its delivery of state-of-the-art services and beyond. At the heart of the book is a passionate argument for the professional and public significance of the public library service. The key chapters are: public libraries: the modern context historical development of public libraries equity of access cultural and leisure roles information, advice and informed citizenship lifelong learning the impact of ICT management, governance and budgeting issues performance measurement and evaluation professional and staffing issues marketing, branding and buildings the public library of tomorrow. Readership: Of interest to all students and researchers of library and information science, as well as professionals in public libraries, this book is an advocacy tool for an essential service consistently under pressure.
For the first hundred years or so of their history, public libraries in Britain were built in an array of revivalist architectural styles. This backward-looking tradition was decisively broken in the 1960s as many new libraries were erected up and down the country. In this new Routledge book, Alistair Black argues that the architectural modernism of the post-war years was symptomatic of the age’s spirit of renewal. In the 1960s, public libraries truly became ‘libraries of light’, and Black further explains how this phrase not only describes the shining new library designs – with their open-plan, decluttered, Scandinavian-inspired designs – but also serves as a metaphor for the public library’s role as a beacon of social egalitarianism and cultural universalism. A sequel to Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), Black's new book takes his fascinating story of the design of British public libraries into the era of architectural modernism.
This book reviews both the historical and future roles that public, private, academic and special libraries have in supporting and shaping society at local, regional, national and international levels. Globalisation, economic turmoil, political and ethnic tensions, rapid technology development, global warming and other key environmental factors are all combining in myriad and complex ways to affect everyone, both individually and collectively. Fundamental questions are being asked about the future of society and the bedrock organisations that underpin it. Libraries and Society considers the key aspects of library provision and the major challenges that libraries – however defined, managed, developed and provided – now face, and will continue to face in the future. It also focuses on the emerging chapter in cultural, economic and social history and the library's role in serving diverse communities within this new era. - Looks at all types of library in a period of major and discontinuous change, tackling the fundamental questions of the future of libraries in the context of major societal, political and environmental issues - Poses important questions for the profession and policy development - Fills a major gap in literature (recent discourse and debate on the future of democracy, for example, the library is rarely included)
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the information profession. The series IFLA Publications deals with many of the means through which libraries, information centres, and information professionals worldwide can formulate their goals, exert their influence as a group, protect their interests, and find solutions to global problems.
Between 1880 and 1914, England saw the emergence of an unprecedented range of new literary forms from Modernism to the popular thriller. Not coincidentally, this period also marked the first overt references to an art/market divide through which books took on new significance as markers of taste and class. Though this division has received considerable attention relative to the narrative structures of the period's texts, little attention has been paid to the institutions and ideologies that largely determined a text's accessibility and circulated format and thus its mode of address to specific readerships. Hammond addresses this gap in scholarship, asking the following key questions: How did publishing and distribution practices influence reader choice? Who decided whether or not a book was a 'classic'? In a patriarchal, class-bound literary field, how were the symbolic positions of 'author' and 'reader' affected by the increasing numbers of women who not only bought and borrowed, but also wrote novels? Using hitherto unexamined archive material and focussing in detail on the working practices of publishers and distributors such as Oxford University Press and W.H. Smith and Sons, Hammond combines the methodologies of sociology, literary studies and book history to make an original and important contribution to our understanding of the cultural dynamics and rhetorics of the fin-de-siècle literary field in England.
Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries argues that changes to library Strategies and Systems can lead to transformations in library Structures that can, in turn, shape and determine Organisational Culture. Drawing on Management theories, as well as the ideas of Marx and Maslow, the authors present an ambitious Analytical Framework that can be used to better understand, support and enable cultural change in public libraries. The volume argues for radical – but sustainable – transformations in public libraries that require significant changes to Strategies, Structures, Systems and, most importantly, Organisational Culture. These changes will enable Traditional Libraries to reach out beyond their current active patrons to engage with new customer groups and will also enable Traditional Libraries to evolve into Community-Led Libraries, and Community-Led Libraries to become Needs-Based Libraries. Public libraries must be meaningful and relevant to the communities they serve. For this to happen, the authors argue, all sections of the local community must be actively involved in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of library services. This book demonstrates how to make these changes happen, acting as a blueprint and road map for organisational change and putting ideas into action through a series of case studies. Managing Cultural Change in Public Libraries will be of particular interest to academics and advanced students engaged in the study of library and information science. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers and all those who believe that communities should be involved and engaged in the planning, design, delivery, and evaluation of library services.
After decades of cultural warfare and political gridlock, the U.S. is beginning to find its balance thanks to a major cultural shift toward strengthening communities and other endangered social structures. Civic Librarianship explores the ideas of this new community movement and shows how they can transform public libraries by offering a renewed sense of purpose and powerful new strategies for development.
The mixture of serious topics, tongue-in-cheek items, and outright silliness provides something to please everyone familiar with libraries, making a fun read and a wonderful gift.
Glossary of library and information.
Susan Orlean’s bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is “a sheer delight…as rich in insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in any local library” (USA TODAY)—a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution and an investigation into one of its greatest mysteries. “Everybody who loves books should check out The Library Book” (The Washington Post). On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In the “exquisitely written, consistently entertaining” (The New York Times) The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries; brings each department of the library to vivid life; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. “A book lover’s dream…an ambitiously researched, elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of history, drama, culture, and stories” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country.