Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: New Library World, Volume 111, Issue 11/12
At the Libraries Change Lives conference in July 2010, there were many examples of libraries serving the specific needs of their communities and“place” and of ways of dealing with funding cuts. A theme that emerged was streamlining to give customers exactly what they want, adapting to the locality and exploiting the role of safe place. In a time of high public spending reduction libraries are used more than ever. In their article,Christine Rooney-Browne and David McMenemy take a critical look at public libraries in the twenty-first century and their place in an increasingly commercialised 24/7 information society. They consider examples of public libraries exploiting new revenue streams and attempting to establish spaces in virtual communities. They question whether public libraries are finding it progressively more difficult to provide access to trusted, impartial public spaces free from commercial influence.
According to influential technology blog Mashable, a “GoogleMe”social network could emerge to rival Facebook (bit.ly/d5SPHi). There are rumours about a possible Google social network, which would provide more choice in the marketplace. College students are heavy users of social networking, and the paper from Andrea Dickson and Robert P. Holley examines the use of the major social networking tools in academic libraries in the USA. They cover the use of social networking in academic libraries and examine the libraries’ presence on the most popular social networking sites, commenting that social networking can be an effective method of student outreach in academic libraries if libraries take care to respect student privacy and provide equal coverage for all subject areas.
The Academic Libraries of the Future project focuses on possible future scenarios for academic libraries, particularly in light of challenging economic circumstances ahead. The project has now held two phases of workshops and aims to “provide strategic guidance to help library and information services achieve their longer-term visions”. (www.rin.ac.uk/library-future). In their article, Jill Beard and Penny Dale consider the design of library buildings in the context of making the join between the real and virtual environments in which students study as invisible as possible and to take learning in new directions in an increasingly digital world. They draw on the experience at Bournemouth University. Here a new library building, The Sir Michael Cobham Library, enabled the creation of learning spaces that are flexible and responsive to the changing needs of users.
According to a report from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA),Reference Online is a great success (www.mla.gov.uk/what/support/online). Both libraries and suppliers call it “one of the most important innovations to have been provided by MLA for public libraries”. For the first time remote use exceeded on-site use by almost 30 per cent. It is clear that e-services are developing naturally as 42 per cent of subscribing library services offer membership irrespective of user’s address. The article from Florence Tang takes a different angle to reference by providing an in-depth discussion of reference tools in the virtual world of Second Life. While, in the Community Virtual Library, most of the reference tools used by volunteers do not exist in real life they might have implications for libraries of the future.
A recently published book Teaching Information Literacy for Inquiry Based Learning (Hepworth and Walton, 2009) considers how learning and teaching theories can help instructors and facilitators with responsibility for information literacy. While Part One of the book sets out to present learning from four different perspectives, it is Part Two that focuses on describing how learning theories can be applied to information literacy teaching. Five teaching interventions are described and examples of activities for different groups of learners are also provided. Two articles in this issue focus on information literacy, but from quite different perspectives. The article from Anne Kakkonen and Antti Virrankoski discusses the construction of a pilot information literacy course involving co-operation between a university librarian and teaching staff at the University of Helsinki. They document how the pilot information literacy course was constructed and conducted and report on the results of a feedback questionnaire. Their paper offers guidance for libraries in similar situations. The article from Jane Magee and Elisabeth Thomas reviews current research in incorporating information literacy concepts into an online tool. They discuss the customization of an open-source program, the Assignment Calculator, into a tool designed specifically to serve the needs of students at California State University, Fresno and at San José State University. They conclude that customizing any tool to meet the specific needs of a particular campus is time consuming, but less so than designing something original. They conclude also that when librarians and staff work together to incorporate information literacy concepts into an online tool to serve specific student needs, the result is worth the time spent.
Linda Ashcroft
