Volume 67, Issue 4 -

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how public libraries assist small businesses in rural communities in the state of Tennessee in the United States. Tennessee’s rural residents, especially in its Appalachian counties, face debilitating economic and social challenges such as inadequate financial prospects, information poverty, unemployment and low degrees of information literacy and educational attainment. The article presents findings from interviews and focus groups with 25 public library small business liaison representatives gathering input about their needs, expectations and experiences with rural public libraries. The foci are the existing and proposed ways rural public libraries provide small business assistance and identify components of a Public Library Small Business Toolkit , an ideal resource that Tennessee’s rural public libraries can implement for small businesses in the future, with the end goal to further ways for rural public libraries to contribute towards economic development in Tennessee. Findings reveal existing roles of rural public libraries in providing physical space and resource assistance for categorized information on government, finance, insurance, taxes and rules/requirements while proposed roles extend to development of tailored skill trainings, start-up services and local information coordination. Future research considerations for public library small business liaisons are also discussed so they can extend assistance to small businesses in Tennessee and other parts of the country.

This study examined, qualitatively and quantitatively, how academic faculty members perceive the role of academic library workers (ALWs) and how these workers perceive their own roles in the library. Interviews were conducted with 20 faculty members and with 15 ALWs in three academic institutes in Israel, after which 191 faculty members and 50 ALWs from the same institutes completed a close-ended questionnaire. The interviews indicated that, in both study groups, a clear and unequivocal role definition for ALWs is currently lacking, while in both groups the definition “information scientist” has not yet been established, as some faculty members mentioned role definitions other than “librarian” or “information scientist”. The quantitative findings demonstrated that both study groups believe the role definition is mainly according to the library in which the ALWs work and that the main distinction between “librarian” and “information scientist” is being proficient in the field of information technologies.

This exploratory study describes the characteristics of four independent urban community libraries in Nampula city, located in northern Mozambique, East Africa. In a country where public library services are inadequately equipped to address the educational, informational and cultural needs of its citizens, the emergence of urban community libraries in the city indicates that the population is seeking better alternative sources of information. The study profiles four urban libraries to identify their role in the communities they serve and determine whether they conform to Mostert’s (1998) community library model. A case-study design was used with data collection techniques of structured interviews to collect qualitative data from library directors and librarians, a multiple choice questionnaire to obtain user responses, while further statistical data was obtained from collection, circulation and library user records. Findings indicate these four urban libraries only minimally adhere to Mostert’s model and are instead mimicking existing public and school libraries by catering to predominantly secondary and university level students. As a result, the educational, informational and cultural needs of other key groups in the community, such as the illiterate, neo-literate and disadvantaged, are ignored. This is due to a lack of trained library professionals and restrictive library policies.

The degree to which librarians are actively involved in developing the writing skills of students has primarily been studied in academic libraries (Bronshteyn and Baladad 2006, “Librarians as Writing Instructors: Using Paraphrasing Exercises to Teach Beginning Information Literacy Students.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32 (5):533–536; King 2012, “Essentials of Basic Writing Pedagogy for Librarians.” Community & Junior College Libraries 18:55–66. Accessed March 20, 2016. doi:10.1080/02783915.2012.700211; Smith 2001, “Keeping Track: Librarians, Composition Instructors, and Student Writers Use the Research Journal.” Research Strategies 18:21–28) and has rarely been researched in terms of K-12 settings either in the United States or internationally. This paper examines the ways in which school library programs and school librarians contribute to the writing skills of K-12 students in South Carolina in the United States. A selective analysis of the findings is presented from Phase II of the South Carolina Association of School Librarian’s (SCASL) 2014 School Library Impact Study, conducted by Keith Curry Lance and the RSL Research Group. The extent to which school librarians perceive their role in the teaching of writing in K-12 schools is examined, along with the perceptions of administrators and teachers. The results indicated that school librarians are less likely than other educators to assess their teaching of writing as excellent. Rather, administrators and teachers valued school librarians’ contributions to the teaching of writing standards more than librarians did. In addition, the paper presents a review of the literature pertaining to the school librarian’s contributions to the teaching of writing skills and offers suggestions for applying the findings of this research to practice.

The purpose of this paper is to identify service quality differences among librarians working in the public and private sector university libraries of Pakistan. An adapted instrument based on the SERVQUAL model, comprised of 30 items and divided into four dimensions, (a) responsiveness; (b) reliability; (c) assurance; and (d) empathy, was used to measure the service quality of librarians. A convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from the users of public and private university libraries, with the Mann-Whitney U test used to find the differences between public and private university librarians’ service quality. Additionally, effect size was measured by using formula (r=Z/√N) to find the degrees of differences. Findings of the study show that four dimensions, empathy, responsiveness, assurance and reliability, can influence service quality of librarians. The users of university libraries are overall satisfied with the service quality of librarians. However, a significant difference was found in the satisfaction level of users regarding service quality of librarians working in public and private university libraries. Effect size shows that the librarians of private university libraries are generally more capable of providing prompt services to users. The results of this paper will help the management of public and private sector university libraries improve librarians’ service quality capabilities. Furthermore, the results of this study can be used as a guideline to compare the service quality of librarians in different libraries.