James G Ollé, James Tank, George Jefferson, David Liddle, David Reid and Colin Steele
IF YOU should ever have a mind to experience the flavour of life in the British public library service during the early decades of this century, you could not do better than turn…
Abstract
IF YOU should ever have a mind to experience the flavour of life in the British public library service during the early decades of this century, you could not do better than turn to the contemporary files of the periodicals of librarianship. Apart from its beastlier aspects, to which only a George Orwell could have done justice, the library journals reflected pretty well the public library world as it used to be: impoverished and imperfect, but optimistic and resilient.
Describes the new concept to defining value for money and quality of service delivery in UK local government. Public library services in a number of selected local authority areas…
Abstract
Describes the new concept to defining value for money and quality of service delivery in UK local government. Public library services in a number of selected local authority areas are involved in pilot projects. Demonstrates the principles and practicalities of the best value process including the four Cs. These are: challenge, is the service needed at all?; compare, involving analysis, comparison and benchmarking; consult, which requires authorities to seek dialogue with the public it serves; compete, which looks for parnerships and private sector involvement.
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The appearance of a paper on outreach in an issue devoted to practical achievement might strike some readers as odd. For one thing, outreach as a theoretical concept can appear…
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The appearance of a paper on outreach in an issue devoted to practical achievement might strike some readers as odd. For one thing, outreach as a theoretical concept can appear far removed from the realities of librarianship. For another and despite any potential applications it might possess, the term is hedged about in ambiguity, misunderstanding and to an extent mistrust. Even in those circles where the term enjoys a fair degree of acceptance, one can be hard put to find a consensus as to what it actually means. And yet this is by no means the whole story because that outreach has had some influence upon library affairs during the past ten to fifteen years is quite certain. This paper re‐examines the concept and considers the extent to which it has spread among public libraries in the United Kingdom, both in terms of understanding and as regards the provision of services. An attempt will also be made to assess public library performance in respect of outreach librarianship.
Barbara Chivers and Stella Thebridge
Public libraries, in common with other local government services, are obliged to obtain best value by striving for customer service of the highest quality and greatest efficiency…
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Public libraries, in common with other local government services, are obliged to obtain best value by striving for customer service of the highest quality and greatest efficiency. This article draws on data gathered from the Developing Research in Public Libraries (DRIPL) project, which shows how an understanding of research methods is increasingly required by public library managers to move services forward in strategic and operational terms. Following a description of the principles of best value, research areas are indicated which contribute to the achievement of best value in public libraries. The article notes areas where research could usefully be incorporated and shared more widely, and suggests publicly available resources which could be used by managers for performance measurement and user consultation.
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In the past, librarians, museum curators and archivists have responded to ICT developments by adapting them to traditional working practices such as cataloguing. Recent…
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In the past, librarians, museum curators and archivists have responded to ICT developments by adapting them to traditional working practices such as cataloguing. Recent developments are creating new pressures, however, and the expectations on information professionals are changing. The most radical innovation is that of the Internet, and it may no longer be appropriate to think in traditional terms to exploit this new medium to the full. The Internet offers remote access and digitisation programmes are being designed to make use of that. So far, these programmes have concentrated on the digitisation of finding aids or of selected primary source materials, but there is also a need for other programmes (“digital exhibitions”) to be developed with a greater emphasis on collaboration and interpretation, aimed at the non‐academic, or casual user. In this way librarians, museum curators and archivists can demonstrate their readiness to embrace the visions of such programmes as the People’s Network and the National Grid for Learning and at the same time reach a whole new audience.
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OOP, GUI, AND LIBRARY WORKSTATION SOFTWARE. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) recently awarded large grants to the University of California and Pennsylvania State University…
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OOP, GUI, AND LIBRARY WORKSTATION SOFTWARE. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) recently awarded large grants to the University of California and Pennsylvania State University jointly to link the massive bibliographic databases of both institutions together, in spite of varying hardware platforms and geography. At the workstation level, the University of California will create interfaces based on DECwindows, a form of the X Windows interface. The online bibliographic systems of Berkeley and Perm State handle 200,000 to 300,000 requests per week, and currently run on an IBM 3090 in California and a DEC VAX 9000 system in Pennsylvania. This interest in bibliographic interfaces has grown rapidly in the last few years thanks to hardware developments putting more computing muscle on the desktop for librarians, their programmers, and ultimately their patrons. Recent manifestations of graphic interfaces have appeared in many libraries as HyperCard shells built as intermediaries to mainframe bibliographic software. This grant by DEC indicates that this sort of work on graphic interfaces in libraries and the system offices on campuses has not gone without notice by major vendors. With the recent explosion in the number of graphic interfaces, it is important to review these tools and their basis in object oriented programming (OOP).
SUSAN L GOODMAN, EUNICE M BLAIN, MARIA BIENER, BERYL MORRIS, KEITH BRONSON and ALASDAIR MONTGOMERY
From time to time the Editor receives mildly supplicating notes from contributors lamenting the absence of a fee for articles.