Public Library Community Research Articles

Caring for the community: An academically based community service course in LIS

The field of Library and Information Science (LIS) has historically struggled to connect theory and practice in its graduate education, specifically when it comes to building partnerships with diverse stakeholders in public library communities. One possible technique for bridging the gap of stakeholder experiences is academically based community service (ABCS) courses. ABCS courses attempt to directly focus on research-practitioner partnerships to solve real-world problems by involving the community to democratically co-design the curriculum. In this paper, we present a reflective case study of an ABCS course on integrating participatory design methods to co-design new digital learning activities for youth in an urban public library. By conducting 10 co-design sessions and 26 semi-structured interviews, we examined a partnership between a university and a library, and how this ABCS course impacted different stakeholder participation. Our findings highlight how ABCS courses require systematic structural endeavors from higher education and care between all stakeholders within a library setting. This work contributes to a growing body of work that calls for more courses in LIS education with greater civic and democratic engagement between graduate students, university partners, and library stakeholders.

Bibliotherapy: Present-day marvel in Malaysia

This study explores the current trends of bibliotherapy within the public library community in Malaysia. A qualitative data collection approach using a structured interview was employed to elicit the opinions of five public librarians, two practitioners specializing in mental health, and a bibliotherapy writer. Eight (8) interview transcripts have been analyzed using theme-based analysis. This study shows that bibliotherapy in Malaysia is a new trend and concept. The public librarians were unnoticed that they had already practiced the technique due to the lack of bibliotherapy awareness among public librarians. There is a need to establish bibliotherapy education for future librarians. Keywords: Public library; Bibliotherapy; Library education; Malaysia eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by E-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behavior Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioral Researchers on Asians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behavior Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.

Data Reuse Practices and Expectations for Data Resources and Services among Public Library Users

ABSTRACT Public library users’ expectations of library resources and services related to open data as well as their own estimation of their data literacy skills are examined. Library users were surveyed from nine different Indiana public library communities. Findings suggest that public libraries are viewed as resources for finding data and educational programming for data skills, particularly as it relates to the community context. Additionally, study participants assessed their data skills to be average or slightly above, indicating a foundational knowledge from which to design library resources and sources to meet a community’s data needs. Keywords: open government data, public libraries, data literacy skills, communities, information behaviors

Political discourse: Do public libraries serve as a fertile ground?

Libraries in general, and public libraries specifically, are social institutions. It is their role and function to educate, inculcate values and provide recreational opportunities to the community. The success of a democratic political system depends on community involvement in decision making. The role of public libraries in political discourse was assessed with three approaches. Firstly, the geographical characteristics of public library communities were explored using Geographical Information System (GIS) methods. Secondly, the resources, services and activities of public libraries were identified. Thirdly, community perspectives were explored using the five aspects of the “Spectrum of Public Participation” of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). The results from all three approaches indicate that the public libraries of Islamabad do not facilitate opportunities for the community to be consulted, empowered or involved in political discourse. Analysis of GIS characteristics, library services and community perspectives suggests that improvements in planning and commitment (especially infrastructure, budget and human resources) would enable public libraries to increase opportunities for Islamabad communities to engage in political discourse.

Public Library and Community in Brazil: Perspectives, Policies, and Opinions of Intellectuals and Researchers

This article focuses on public library–community relationships in Brazil. Initially, we take into account the international information science literature highlighting the contemporary relevance of public library–community relations. We also consider aspects of the Brazilian historical and political experience and previous research indicating that public libraries in the country have not been valued by public policies and that, although present in more than 5,000 municipalities, these institutions tend to remain invisible to their communities. The main empirical contribution of our article lies in the analysis of interviews collected from Brazilian intellectuals and researchers who hold or have held prominent positions in institutions that define policies or carry out research on Brazilian public libraries. These interviews reveal a strong consciousness of the need to strengthen library–community relations, suggesting several actions, both from the library to the community and from the community to the library.

What a Renewed Federalism Means for Libraries

AbstractIn a time when funding for the sole federal library program is under threat and state and local library funding are under intense revenue pressure, it is important to understand the role that the governmental philosophy of political actors will play in public and tax policy decisions. From the Trump administration to Congress, a coherent and cohesive set of federalist and libertarian approaches will frame the policy and funding debates about the role, scope, and funding of government. This article examines emerging federal policy and budget priorities through the lens of modern political philosophies to discuss how public, school, and academic library communities should anticipate and react to developments.

Transforming the CIP Data Block: Assessing User Needs to Re-envision a Venerable Library Icon

ABSTRACTBetween 2013 and 2015, the Library of Congress and experts from school, public, and academic library communities revised the 42-year-old Cataloging in Publication (CIP) data block (back-of-title-page cataloging data). This article describes the assessments, including development and analysis of two surveys, used in this data-driven process. The revised data block replaces the catalog card layout with a labeled layout that identifies components within the block, merges print and electronic information, and provides additional descriptive and subject access points. A 2017 follow-up assessment confirmed the project's success in meeting the needs of its principal users, those in school and public libraries.

Overcoming Social Exclusion in Public Library Services to LGBTQ and Gender Variant Youth

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the vital need to meet LGBTQ information needs in public library efforts. It outlines the lack of LIS research presented on the subject, the effects of excluding this involuntary, often invisible, patron minority, and the service realms in which exclusion currently persists. After articulating the library service issues, some suggestions for improved practices are summarized, in an effort to move toward more inclusive public library communities.

The Best Things Change

Column Editor's NoteIt is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues forward from the point of view of public libraries, large and small, wealthy and struggling, used and neglected, and those facing the future, as well as those struggling to preserve practices that deserve respect, if not preservation.Although the Journal of Library Administration has peer-reviewed articles, this “In the Public Interest” column is intended to represent all of the perspectives of the public concerning public libraries, and those of persons who are delivering service to the public through public libraries. This column will appear on a rotation, in several issues each year. Submissions are not peer-reviewed, but are reviewed and selected by the column editor. Public library administrators, managers, anyone on the staff of a public library, and those serving in elected and appointed positions in local governments are invited to contribute to the column by contacting Josie Parker at josie@aadl.org email address. Manuscript guidelines and submission timelines will be sent with further instruction for authors.In 2012 the Ann Arbor District Library proposed a bond millage to fund the building of a new main library. The millage failed, and this failure led to a major restructuring of the library's communications practices. This article discusses the immediate reaction of the local library profession to the bond question and afterward. The column attempts to draw a parallel between the global questioning of the relevance of the public library as an institution in the “age of Amazon” and the profession's general reaction to the internet in the early 1990's.

Awards, Announcements, and News

Awards, Announcements, and News

What makes innovation work? Innovation practice in the National Library of the Netherlands

The National Library of the Netherlands, (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, hereafter KB), has been innovating its services and organization for the past 20 years and expects to continue to do so in the future. The central question in this article is: what makes innovation work in the organization of the KB? We will focus on two use cases: the development of the recently opened Delpher portal, giving access to 30 million pages of digitized Dutch heritage, and the current development of the KB ResearchLab that gives internal and external researchers a platform for experiments. A review of innovation theory and practice (Balk 2013) provides us with a checklist of factors that determine the innovation capacity of a library, grouped in four themes: Leadership and culture, Knowledge and organizational learning, Collaboration capacity and Organizational design. By applying this innovation checklist to the use cases discussed, we hope to contribute to the body of best practice in innovation in national libraries. Finally, we will look ahead at the development of the National Digital Library of the Netherlands, integrating services for the public library community into the KB in the near future and share some potential scenarios for the future of the library landscape in the Netherlands with the audience.

It Is What You Make of It

Column Editor's Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues fo...

Who Uses the Public Library, and Who Cares?

Column Editor's Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues fo...

Small Libraries, Big Support

Column Editor's Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues fo...

In the Public Interest

Column Editor’s Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues forward from the point of view of public libraries, large and small, wealthy and struggling, used and neglected, and those facing the future, as well as those struggling to preserve practices that deserve respect, if not preservation. Although the Journal of Library Administration has peer-reviewed articles, this “In the Public Interest” column is intended to represent all of the perspectives of the public concerning public libraries, and those of persons who are delivering service to the public through public libraries. This column will appear on a rotation, in several issues each year. Submissions are not peer-reviewed, but are reviewed and selected by the column editor. Public library administrators, managers, anyone on the staff of a public library, and those serving in elected and appointed positions in local governments are invited to contribute to the column by contacting Josie Parker at josie@aadl.org email address. Manuscript guidelines and submission timelines will be sent with further instruction for authors.

Baby boomers, their elders and the public library

PurposeCanada's aging population is expected to have an impact on all public institutions; for public libraries, the emergence of a large, multi‐generational user group of older adults challenges the current paradigm of services to seniors. The purpose of this paper is to report on the reflections of a small sample of baby boomers and how the public library‐as place contributes to their caring relationships with their elders.Design/methodology/approachThis study examined a subset of baby boomer library patrons who are in caring relationships with elders. The study is theoretically framed by the ethic of care and emerging theories of library‐as‐place grounded in human geography and sociology. An instrumental case study of seven carers in an urban Canadian city was conducted, using long form interviews.FindingsFindings suggest that while these baby boomer respondents value their libraries deeply, there is potential to create services and practices more attuned to the needs of older adults who are in relationships with elders.Research limitations/implicationsAs a single case of a small sample of baby boomers, this study is limited by its size, scope and geography. The direct voices of the elders could not practically be incorporated into this study and should be considered in future research.Originality/valueThis study offers an alternate framework to library‐as‐place studies based on a specific profile of “older adult” library users. It examines the library needs and uses of a small but rapidly growing sector of many public library communities. Older adults can be seen by libraries as two distinct demographic groups – the very old (elders) and their younger peers (baby boomers).

The World of Tomorrow: Geographic Coverages of the Main Street Public Library, ALA Catalogs, and H. W. Wilson Company’s Standard Catalog for Public Libraries

This article details what one high school senior from each of the five Main Street public library communities (Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Osage, Iowa; Rhinelander, Wisconsin; Morris, Illinois; and Lexington, Michigan) would find in collections in 1945 related to particular geographies. The global milieu of the New York World’s Fair 1939–40 frames the historical events that stimulated each of the student’s topics. To determine what each public library’s collection held about the world, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) section of geography and travel (classification number 910) was used. Cross-referencing each library’s accession records for books added prior to 1945 against books recommended for all public libraries in the geography and travel (910) sections of standard professional guides like the ALA catalogs , the H. W. Wilson Company’s Standard Catalog for Public Libraries , and other ALA publications like the Guide to Reference Books shows what students using these five libraries would have found. The recommended titles from the professional guides and those accessioned in the libraries indicate a distinct bias toward books concerning North America and Western Europe.

New labour in libraries: the post‐Fordist public library

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of French School Regulation theory for questions of relevance to researchers and practitioners working in the field of information policy in general and public librarianship in particular.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is divided into two parts. Part one outlines Regulation theory's twin analytic tools of Fordism and post‐Fordism and its value for questions about the evolution of the public library. Part two provides an example of the approach's explanatory potential when applied to a series of public library planning documents produced by the Government of Ontario, Canada from the 1950s.FindingsAn interpretation of the evolution of the identity of the library user from patron to customer to information producer‐consumer is proposed at the intersection of the neoliberal state's austerity in social spending, the ubiquity of the new information and communication technologies, and fundamental changes in libraries as sites of waged‐work.Research limitations/implicationsThe research facilitates the development of a political economy of the contemporary public library of potential value to the international public library community. Also, conceiving of the public library as first and foremost a site of productive work forces one to re‐engage with the meaning of shifting relations between the library user and the institution on working conditions.Originality/valueThe applicability of a relatively under‐utilized theoretical framework is modelled that enables one to ask new questions of relevance to the field of library and information science.

The Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library: A Brief History

The Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library has been a vital part of the Kinston, North Carolina community for over 110 years. Starting out as an Up-To-Date Club in 1896, the library has flourished into the headquarters library of an eight-branch regional system spanning three counties: Lenoir, Greene, and Jones. Within this time span, the library experienced numerous relocations and renovations as a way to accommodate the rise in population and its growing collection. Its history is evidence that the Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library's community values the services, materials, and mission of the library.

“The Easier-To-Use Version”: Public Librarian Awareness of Consumer Health Resources from the National Library of Medicine

The public library needs to be understood as a source of consumer health information. Although medical librarians have extended outreach to their public counterparts for years, few detailed evaluations of the effectiveness of this outreach have been published, and the skill sets and knowledge gaps in the public library community are undocumented. This paper reports the results of a large interview study in which 102 library workers, professional and paraprofessional, were asked about their awareness of consumer health information resources.