Current Topics in Library and Information Practice

Knowledge, Reading and Culture: Studies in Information Practice is an interdisciplinary inquiry focusing on four decades of work by the South African information scientist, Emeritus Professor Archie Dick. The edited volume brings together library, information and history specialists to engage with a number of Professor Dick’s areas of research focus: the culture and philosophy of information (especially with regard to questions of epistemology); information freedom (how censorship and media concentration affects political agency); reading and publishing cultures (especially in colonial and postcolonial contexts) and focuses on how these affect information education for diverse, multicultural and cosmopolitan communities. How our understanding of true belief is justified at the level of classification, indexation, curation and publishing have become significant issues in the transition to digital environments. This work seeks to harness a range of insights relating to the modes of knowledge representation in information spaces and to uncover how these impact globally significant repertoires of agency, with a special focus on how the mediation of reading and access to public knowledge is both a site of resistance and appropriation.

Recent trends in the advancement of technology, in processes and systems enable humankind to undergo a lot of challenges in upgrading their skills and systems in the information world. One needs to quickly understand these robust changes and adopt them in their work environment to keep pace with the requirements of the users catered to the value-added library services.

Thus, the book is aimed to explore such recent trends, tools and technological implementation along with its adaptability of the library systems to help the library and knowledge management practitioners.

Information pollution on a worldwide scale is a new phenomenon brought on by the advancement of modern advanced social information technology. The long-term effects of disinformation efforts are the most concerning because they are difficult to evaluate in terms of their direct and indirect effects.

Information disorder, also known as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, is currently wreaking havoc in our society. It is defined as the spreading or development of inaccurate information with or without the aim to harm. Due to the extensive harm it has already done on all of these levels—politically, economically, culturally, socially, spiritually, and even psychologically—immediate action is required to stop the situation.

As a result, the book Fake News and Information Disorder in the Era of Advance Information Technology is an effort to thoroughly examine information disorder, its related challenges, the role that libraries and other information organizations can play, and to outline approaches to addressing information pollution.

What is the public sphere, how is it best described, and what role does it play in modern life? These questions have attracted considerable attention within library and information science circles over several decades, especially regarding public libraries. Circulation of Power contributes to this discussion by proposing a new research framework and new methods for analyzing public sphere communication. Using extensive data gathered from an urban public library infrastructure, this historical case study demonstrates how public sphere communication shaped the infrastructure’s development over time, producing both changes and continuities across the case’s nine periods. Two new conceptual tools—circuits and decisions cycles—form the study’s research framework, and a new explanatory theory—RLCr, or "Releaser," theory—accounts for why the infrastructure developed as it did. Consideration of competing theories reveals that public sphere communication remains the best explanation for infrastructural development. This book’s meticulous historical narrative of the greater Pittsburgh case, supplemented by its groundbreaking theory and innovative mixed methods design, is of interest to practitioners, academics, and general readers alike.

This book is unique in concisely addressing the impact of new and enhanced approaches to library service, encompassing topics such as Information Literacy skills acquisition, inclusive of non-Western environments, artificial intelligence in academic libraries, research data management, and confronting the concept of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) as mentioned by the Research Planning and Review Committee of ACRL (2020).

Cloud computing is a model where computing resources (processors, storage, software) are offered as a utility from an indistinct location and boundaries to the user. Adoption of Cloud computing in recent years has gained momentum within various avenues round the globe due to its characteristics like elasticity, virtualization and pay-as-you-go pricing. In tune with the trend various companies have evolved which are offering web applications. These companies provide the system required to host the application to users on lease which saves them from purchasing.

The book combines both theoretical and practical perspectives of cloud computing with a slant towards library and information centres. The book describes in detail about various companies which are providing cloud computing solutions and infrastructure for library and information centres. Intiatives of OCLC and best practices adopted in other libraries around the world has been discussed at length. Many avenues of the implementation of cloud computing has been identified in the present study. Various initiatives of the library professionals to move their internet sites, their integrated library system for cataloguing and acquisition, Cloud based library apps, Cloud based Stack Map and their repository systems and inter library loan systems to the cloud has been mentioned. The book further proposes a model which may serve as a blueprint for implementation of cloud computing technologies in libraries. With the timely publication of book, library and information service practitioners after going through the book can outsource the task of maintaining the computer infrastructure and focus on their mission to serve people with right information at right point of time.

Libraries, archives and museums have traditionally been a part of the public sphere's infrastructure. They have been so by providing public access to culture and knowledge, by being agents for enlightenment and by being public meeting places in their communities. Digitization and globalization poses new challenges in relation to upholding a sustainable public sphere. Can libraries, archives and museums contribute in meeting these challenges?

Conservation research in libraries is a rapidly growing field. This book places analysis within its context in conservation and provides examples of how this expensive resource can be used. Through a series of case studies, it describes major analytical procedures, including visualization, molecular, elemental and separation techniques as well as chemical tests. It is thus a suitable reference work for library conservators and curators.

Please note: Despite careful production of our books, sometimes mistakes happen. Unfortunately, the authorship for some chapters wasn’t correct in the original publication. Chapter 5 was written by Andrew Beeby and David Howell as co-author, chapter 6 by Kelly Domoney and David Howell as co-author, and chapter 9 is authored by Anita Quye. This will be corrected. We apologize for the mistake.

The health of scientific enterprise has become a critical political and social issue as nation states tackle austerity, diversity, global challenges, whilst simultaneously supporting a competitive and innovative national economy. A key asset in achieving such ambitions is for a scholarly information system which enables the fruits of the research effort to be disseminated efficiently. As the information support system struggles with adapting from a print-based to a digital process, the dysfunctionality current within STEM publishing in particular becomes evident. New ways of supporting research are emerging which require a new approach to publishing, an approach which takes on board the many demographic, social, technical and administrative changes taking place in both science itself and society. A radical strategic assessment is required and this book tracks key aspects required for any new future strategy.

This book provides a catalogue of issues to which a future STEM information industry will need to adapt. They range from the effects of technology on the neurological processes of research to the growing use of technology to speed up the exchange of information among groups and collaboratories; from considerations about quality control yet maintaining intellectual ownership; from changing from an elitist STEM system favouring academics to a more democratic process with wider appeal. There is the neglected non-academic market and its need to share in the results of the research effort, often through partnership and being part of a ‘hive mind’. This is the large world of the unaffiliated knowledge workers, of which academia is numerically but a small part.

The many changes taking place in scholarly information dictate that the future is unlikely to be a smooth and gradual evolution from the past. Radical new approaches are required, a revolution which takes on board the perfect storm of changes listed in this book. Just as such changes have changed the face of industries such as music and retail in recent years, so similar dramatic changes are likely to result in a restructuring of STEM into a more technologically-focused industry within the next decade. The implications for the current STEM stakeholders are profound.

Cataloging standards practiced within the traditional library, archive and museum environments are not interoperable for the retrieval of objects within the shared online environment. Within today’s information environments, library, archive and museum professionals are becoming aware that all information objects can be linked together. In this way, information professionals have the opportunity to collaborate and share data together with the shard online cataloging environment, the end result being improved retrieval effectiveness. But the adaptation has been slow: Libraries, archives and museums are still operating within their own community-specific cataloging practices.

This book provides a historical perspective of the evolution of linking devices within the library, archive, and museums environments, and captures current cataloging practices in these fields. It offers suggestions for moving beyond community-specific cataloging principles and thus has the potential of becoming a springboard for further conversation and the sharing of ideas.

Repositories for low use books have long existed for the larger cultural institutions across the globe. Libraries have long been strong developers of off-site storage. This need has evolved for libraries because of their continuous collection of print materials as a record of the intellectual and cultural output of different cultures. Libraries have had this role described neatly and executed as a clear professional role. This new book will primarily examine two aspects of this role: Firstly, the organisational and technological responses to this evolving role will be explored and secondly, the wide breadth of strategic responses to challenges of ‘digital’ will be detailed.

In this authors to this edited volume will describe their work for libraries but increasingly for Galleries, Archives and Museums. The papers are drawn from Europe, United Kingdom, the United States and Australasia.

The organisational models discussed in the book provide clear illustration of imaginative responses to the plight of the individual institutional library. New organisational models are shaping the way in which business can be done in times of change. The pressures today on all cultural institutions are similar and so there is a new convergence of similar need and similar solutions.

This book is an acknowledgment that there are a wide variety of strategic, organisational and technological responses to the retention of cultural objects whether they be books, art, records or other cultural objects. It is illustrative of the power of good lateral thinking and planning by professionals, of the power of international networks and of convergence in response to need.

The book will be an edited with a future perspective by Pentti Vattulainen and Steve O’Connor who have had significant experience in this area internationally.

Based on case studies this book offers an insight in various European activities and practices in data management and their interaction with policies and programs. The latter form the background for the following case studies, provide the conceptual framework, at the same time giving an exhaustive understanding of the specific subjects. The case studies share common themes and give a concrete insight into vital issues such as web archiving, digitization of analog archives, researchers’ motivations for sharing data, and how libraries, archives and researchers can collaborate in creating research tools and services.

Knowledge services converges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning into a single enterprise-wide discipline for the benefit of the business or organization in which it is practiced. As the acknowledged framework for strategic knowledge management, knowledge services—the responsibility of the knowledge strategist—leads to excellence in knowledge sharing and ultimately to shaping the organization as a knowledge culture. Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21^st Century Organization provides guidance for the knowledge strategist and is designed specifically to serve as a reference for that management employee, and for those seeking to become knowledge strategists.

How do library professionals talk about and refer to library users, and how is this significant? In recent decades, the library profession has conceived of users in at least five different ways, viewing them alternatively as citizens, clients, customers, guests, or partners. This book argues that these user metaphors crucially inform librarians' interactions with the public, and, by extension, determine the quality and content of the services received.
The ultimate aim of this book is to provide library professionals with insights and tools for avoiding common pitfalls associated with false or professionally inadequate conceptions of library users.

The transformation of the Bodleian Libraries provides an example of how major libraries can meet twenty-first century challenges: in 2008 it was facing a failed system installation, a failed plan to cope with its storage needs and the threat of losing status as a repository suitable to house important manuscripts. Three years later it had a new state-of-the-art repository already holding 7 million items under full automated control, a new advanced library system, transformed reader spaces and the reconstruction of its major building well under way; This was achieved in record-breaking time without significant interruptions in service.

This book provides a single-volume introduction to the principles, strategies and practices currently applied by librarians and recordkeeping professionals to the critical issue of preservation of digital information. It incorporates practice from both the recordkeeping and the library communities, taking stock of current knowledge about digital preservation and describing recent and current research, to provide a framework for reflecting on the issues that digital preservation raises in professional practice.

About 40 percent of the books academic libraries purchase in traditional ways never circulate and another 40 percent circulate fewer than three times. By contrast, patron-driven acquisition allows a library to borrow or buy books only when a patron needs them. In a typical workflow, the library imports bibliographic records into its catalogue at no cost. When a patron finds a patron-driven record in the course of research, a short-term loan can allow him to borrow the book, and the transaction charge to the library will be a small percentage of the list price. Typically, a library will automatically buy a book on a third or fourth use. The contributions in this volume, written by experts, describe the genesis and brief history of patron-driven acquisitions, its current status, and its promise.