Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: New Library World, Volume 113, Issue 7/8

The Jisc Elevator is a crowd sourcing web site, which has been launched to help to find and develop ideas that can be used to improve education and research in higher and further education. It has been designed to provide a way of securing funding for technology, and the aim is to find innovative ideas that are both achievable and popular. Jisc has laid down a number of criteria and all proposals will be vetted before they make it to the web site to be judged. In this issue, use of technology by both faculty and students is the topic of the paper from Ruleman. She reports on research into use of social media, the results of which confirm that both faculty and students are avid users of some,but not all, social media. The results also raise some questions regarding differences related to gender and age groups. These results can aid the library in determining potential social media to use to provide service to the campus.

Slough Borough Council in the UK (managed by Essex County Council) has opened three new self-service satellite libraries. This is a move designed to improve library services after some library staff were made redundant last year. These libraries are targeted to reach areas that had no library provision and are backed by library service staff through a telephone hotline and weekly sessions for children. Sure-Start and community services staff, who have received basic library training, staff each branch on a daily basis. The topic of the article from Johannsen is staff-less libraries in Denmark. He reports on results of research into about 100 staff-less public libraries in Denmark. Empirical insights into the nature and use of these libraries result in the conclusion that the concept has been successful in terms of use and local support and that it has strengthened the position of the local public library in the local communities.

A cross-border coalition of 15 publishers, including Elsevier, Cambridge University Press and Pearson Education, has helped to shut down two illegal e-book sharing sites. Two web sites were being used to distribute pirated copies of books. The group took legal action against the operator and issued a cease and desist order on the operation, which had an estimated turnover of £7m. The paper from Song provides another, and global perspective, on the changes in the publishing industry. This is a viewpoint that is derived from a summary of the studies, market research and surveys which the Frankfurt Book Fair has conducted into the situation of the book market. Song comments on how digital rights and multi-media formats are taking place alongside the international trade in translation rights, which highlight how the content business is opening up new areas of great potential.

Annie Mauger, CILIP Chief Executive, has given evidence to Members of Parliament on the Culture, Media and Sport select committee into library closures. She told the inquiry that there is a clear correlation between the number of people using libraries and falls in library funding, and there are generally increases in usage where local authorities support library services. She called for the secretary of state to draw up a framework setting out what a public library service should deliver, and how the needs of a local community should be assessed. The latest official plans and strategies for Norwegian public libraries are discussed by Sveum and Tveter in their paper. They consider the visions and realities in recent Norwegian governmental reports on libraries and find that the reports do not address the serious challenges facing the libraries and the discrepancy between economic realities and visions.

The OCLC Worldshare License Manager is a new service that has been designed to make it easier for librarians and information professionals to manage electronic resources. It brings together knowledge about licenses that govern purchase and use with linking technology to connect users to the content they needs in a single place. This service seems on a different level from the provision by rural libraries in northern districts of Bangladesh as reported by Islam and Ahmed in their article. They report on the results of their study designed to measure the performance and impact of the activities of these libraries. Their results indicate that rural libraries can play a significant role in improving the quality of life of rural dwellers in this area. They identify the factors that have led to the success of these libraries, but they also point out that many community dwellers are unable to take advantage of local library services, due to high illiteracy rates within the communities.

Macmillan Education is the latest publisher to join the Public Library Online. This new online collection has been carefully graded from starter to upper intermediate. Instant access will be provided to some of the company’s abridged classics, contemporary fiction and biographies. Akers, in her article,considers both classic and contemporary books in terms of challenged books. She takes the years 2000 to 2010, and compares the most frequently challenged books that appear on the American Library Association’s Banned and Challenged Classics list versus those on the American Library Association’s Banned Book Resource Guide. Reasons for challenges were broken down into categories so as to identify similarities and differences between contemporary and classic books. This study found that contemporary books were challenged more than classic books, but that there has not been a rise in the number of challenges.

Linda AshcroftEditor, New Library World