Regional Library Service Research Articles

Challenges of Collection Management: Analysis, Staffing, and Space

ABSTRACT Academic libraries face limitations of space, staffing, budget, and other factors, but still must maintain their collections responsibly. Collection maintenance with the goal of reclaiming space requires both solid data analysis and sufficient staff to execute projects. Presenters with perspectives from Siena College, Rockhurst University, and Sam Houston State University discuss their experiences in facing the challenges of analyzing data and managing workflows for current and potential removal projects. An OCLC Regional Library Services Manager describes their product Green Glass and its involvement with the project at Sam Houston State University.

ANALISIS KEPUASAN PENGUNJUNG PADA DINAS PERPUSTAKAAN DAN ARSIP DAERAH PROVINSI PAPUA

This paper presents the results of a study of the effect of library service satisfaction provided by the Provincial Government of Papua. Destruction services are provided through the Regional Library and Archives Service work unit. The independent variable is the service of human resources, the availability of facilities and infrastructure, and information systems. This study uses survey results and documents. The findings explain, that the three independent variables have a positive and significant effect, but the human resource variable has the most dominant influence compared to the other two variables.

A Destination of Choice for All

Making a difference where it counts is important to the Campaspe Regional Library service in Echuca, Australia. Creating strong community connections to work together to make our library space a destination of choice for all. The library team have worked specifically over a number of years to improve the environment and to provide inclusive and welcoming services and programs, particularly for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This article provides an overview of the Being Connected: Libraries and Autism project that was conducted during 2014–2016, plus the additional programs and the strong community partnerships that have been developed since the completion of the project.

PENGARUH FASILITAS KANTOR, KUALITAS PELAYANAN DAN STANDAR OPERASIONAL PROSEDUR TERHADAP TINGKAT KEPUASAN PENGUNJUNG PADA DINAS PERPUSTAKAAN DAN KEARSIPAN DAERAH KABUPATEN BATANGHARI

This study uses primary data obtained by distributing question naires to visitors Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Daerah Kabupaten Batang Hari. The population of this study amounted to 1,029 people with a total sample of 92 respondents. The analytical tool used is the Likert scale and scale range. From the research shows the condition of Office Facilities in the Regional Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Daerah Kabupaten Batang Hari is known as an average index value of 3.63 or categorized as Good, because the Regional Library and Archives Service has training facilities for visitors. From the research shows that Service Quality in the Regional Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Daerah Kabupaten Batang Hari is known as the average index value of 3.62 is in the Good category, because the Regional Library and Archives Service Provides polite and attentive service to visitors. From the study shows the Standard Operating Procedure at the Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Daerah Kabupaten Batang Hari District, it is known that the average index value of 3.61 is in the Good category, because the Regional Library and Archives Service has procedures that are in accordance with the applicable legal basis. From the research shows that the visitors' satisfaction at the Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Daerah Kabupaten Batang Hari is known as the average index value of 3.68 is in the Good category, because the visitors of the Regional Library and Archives Service are satisfied with the real, trusted, responsive, polite and confident services give it

Analysis of Public Satisfaction Index on the Regional Library Service at the Autonomous Regency

This study aims at finding out the community satisfaction index on the service of the Regional Library of Ogan KomeringIlir (OKI) regency. Through a quantitative descriptive method with questionnaire distribution to 150 respondents, the result showed that the public service has run well. As all components of the community satisfaction index were in "good" category with an average score of 77.61. The component of service that received the highest score was "courtesy and friendliness" of the serving personnel with a score of 3.22. Meanwhile, "terms of service" component got the lowest score 3.02. In other words, things related to various requirements in obtaining the service should be of particular concern because this component obtained the lowest score. There should be a solution to this problem so the community would be able to access the service easily without any complaints or dissatisfaction.

Our Future, Our Skills: Using Evidence to Drive Practice in Public Libraries

Abstract
 
 Objective – The public library sector’s future prosperity is contingent upon a well-trained, experienced, and valued workforce. In a collaborative initiative, State Library Victoria (SLV) and the Public Libraries Victoria Network (PLVN) commissioned an in-depth research study to examine the skills requirements of staff across the State. The Our Future, Our Skills project sought to identify the range of skills used by public library staff today, to anticipate the range of skills that would be needed in five years’ time, and to present a skills gap analysis to inform future training and development strategies.
 
 Methods – The project encompassed qualitative and quantitative research activities: literature review and environmental scan, stakeholder interviews, focus groups and a workforce skills audit. The research populations were staff (Individual survey) and managers (Management survey) employed in 47 library services, including metropolitan, outer metropolitan and regional library services in Victoria.
 
 Results – The high response rate (45%) reflected the relevance of the study, with 1,334 individual and 77 management respondents. The data captured their views related to the value of their skillsets, both now and in five years’ time, and the perceived levels of confidence using their skills. The sector now has a bank of baseline evidence which has contributed to a meaningful analysis of the anticipated skills gaps.
 
 Conclusions – This paper focuses on the critical importance of implementing evidence-based practice in public libraries. In an interactive workshop, managers determined the skills priorities at both the local and sectoral levels to inform staff development programs and recruitment activities. A collaborative SLV/PLVN project workgroup will implement the report’s recommendations with a state-wide workforce development plan rolled out during 2015-17. This plan will include a training matrix designed to bridge the skills gap, with a focus on evaluation strategies to monitor progress towards objectives. The paper provides insights into the different ways in which the project workgroup is using research evidence to drive practice.

A Case Study in Folklore Archives Management: The Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore at the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon (UO) Folklore Program collaborated with the UO Libraries to improve access to 3,500 student folklore fieldwork collections in the Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore. This case study describes how the project team used archives management tools and practices to present folklore collections in library databases and digital collections with mixed results for research use and public access. The case study presents an example of the hybrid practice of folklore archives management that draws from the principles, practices, and tools of both folkloristics and archives management and also comments on the impacts of that practice on the management of folklore collections in the context of an academic folklore archives and in relation to regional library services and national archives projects.

Managing a National Health Repository

Institutional repositories are becoming part of mainstream scholarship in many academic libraries. Subject based repositories are well suited to disciplines such as the health sciences, where repositories are evolving rapidly. In Ireland, as in other countries, the healthcare sector produces a vast quantity of research and grey literature. This article examines how a national subject repository for Ireland's health services was established and managed by a Regional Library Service. It explores the rationale for the repository, established amid massive organizational change with a declared aim of preserving and promulgating Ireland's health literature in all its forms. Key to the success of the repository was involvement of health professionals from the outset and a continued dialogue with researchers within the healthcare system.

Providing Library Collections the SMART Way

The SMART collaboration among local authority and tertiary libraries in the lower North Island of New Zealand is providing a model for the provision of regional library services while retaining organizational autonomy. This article discusses the main customer-facing service offering to date and some of the lessons learned.

Reading places: literacy, democracy, and the public library in Cold War America

book recounts the history of an experimental regional library service in the early 1950s, a story that has implications far beyond the two Wisconsin counties where it took place. Using interviews and library records, Christine Pawley reveals the choices of ordinary individual readers, showing how local cultures of reading interacted with formal institutions to implement an official literacy policy. Central to the experiment were well-stocked bookmobiles that brought books to rural districts and the one-room schools that dotted the region. Three years after the project began, state officials and local librarians judged it an overwhelming success. Library circulation figures soared to two-and-a-half times their previous level. Over 90 percent of grade-school children in the rural schools used the bookmobile service, and their reading scores improved beyond expectation. Despite these successes, however, local communities displayed deeply divided reactions. Some welcomed the book-mobiles and new library services wholeheartedly, valuing print and reading as essential to the exercise of democracy, and keen to widen educational opportunities for children growing up on hardscrabble farms where books and magazines were rare. Others feared the intrusion of government into their homes and communities, resented the tax increases that library services entailed, and complained about the subversive or immoral nature of some books. Analyzing the history of tensions between various community groups, Pawley delineates the long-standing antagonisms arising from class, gender, and ethnic differences which contributed to a suspicion of official projects to expand education. Relating a seemingly small story of library policy, she teases out the complex interaction of reading, locality, and cultural difference. In so doing, she illuminates broader questions regarding libraries, literacy, and citizenship, reaching back to the nineteenth century and forward to the present day. This book is alive with the voices of oral interviews and a density of wonderful details relating to rural Wisconsin's encounter with modern print culture...Though the book is a case study, its recourse to multiple layers of analysis and its comprehensive attention to the lived experience of individual readers and workers will be of wide significance, helping scholars and students of the book to think more fully about their objects of study and the questions they bring to them. Thomas Augst, co-editor of Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States

A Partnership Approach to Multi-Campus Library Services

With more than 50,000 students taking courses at twelve campus locations as well as online, the University of Central Florida (UCF) is one of the ten largest universities in the United States, based on enrollment. This multi-campus university system uses strategic integration of physical and virtual assets to deliver regional library services. Partnership agreements govern operations and service issues across all library functions, including collection development, cataloging, and interlibrary loan. In this environment, an organizational culture that fosters team building, flex-ibility, training, and all varieties of communication, and one that includes a strategic integration of new technology to improve channels of communication and collaboration opportunities is vital.

지역대표도서관의 기능과 지역공공도서관과의 협력역할에 관한 연구

This study is to recognize the function of the regional central library`s role and to address its support to the community public libraries ; such is one of the focuses of the revised library law. Through the mixed layer model, the regional central library can contribute to a better cooperation between the national central library and community public library in each region. Regional libraries. under the supervision of regional library service committee, can execute many local enterprises efficiently such as library informatization projects. the associative storage, the regional librarian education and the establishment of information commons through integrating the regional information.

Libraries as bridges to fellowship and belonging in the Barents Region

The location and nature of the Barents Region are indicated and the provision of trans‐national regional library services described. Collaborative ventures include a series of conferences, the Berenice Project and the Barents Library School. Efforts to preserve Saami culture are described. A mobile library service is described and other co‐operative projects indicated.

Regional library and information services in the NHS--why, where, what and whither?

A general introduction showing the need for a regional structure, how the regional networks were set up, what they do and how they facilitate better library and information services (LIS) for their users, is followed by descriptions of the setting up, work and development of four different regions; South West England, Midland, Wales and Scotland. A list with contacts is given for all the regional networks, the NHS Regional Librarians Group (RLG) and the LINC Health Panel.

Non-users of the Upper Goulburn Library Service

The Upper Goulburn Regional Library Service covers a large area, but has the lowest population density of any library service in Victoria. Library management wished to gain information to maximise use of the service and decided to achieve this by a survey of non-users. This article describes the project brief, design and administration of the survey, and detailed findings. Evidence from the survey suggests that between 55% and 78% of current non-users are potential users of the Upper Goulburn Library Service. Indicators for future planning were to promote the service more generally within the community, and to introduce more technology-based services.

The Rare Vision of Mary Utopia Rothrock: Organizing Regional Library Services in the Tennessee Valley

Mary Utopia Rothrock was employed as the Supervisor of Library Services at the Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, Tennessee, from 1933 to 1948. From this strategic position, she succeeded in organizing public library service in many areas of the valley, facilitating the establishment of a number of regional libraries to insure permanent services to rural communities, and effecting library growth throughout the Southeast. Rothrock accomplished this during the Depression and wartime by relying upon her own skills as a tactician, by making the library's services and programs an essential part of both work and play, and by building and maintaining broad-based, and growing, support for public libraries. An innovator, she believed that public library objectives should be examined in light of current conditions.

Selecting Heritage/BookshelF‐PC for the District Library, Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton

The District Library at Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton provides a comprehensive service to all staff employed by the National Health Service within the boundaries of Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton Health Authority. In 1987 the library moved into a new building which is shared with the postgraduate medical centre. The stock consists of approximately 3000 books and 180 current journal titles. There is one full‐time librarian and at the time of buying BookshelF‐PC only one assistant for 18 hours a week. There is an annual issue of books of about 3000 and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the stock. Being so short staffed meant that activities other than stock control, such as inter‐library loans and literature searching took precedence. Overdues were issued very infrequently, and since the readers filled in their own issue slips it was often impossible to match the slip to a book or a reader. There was also no way of keeping a check on readers who were leaving the hospital (and with junior doctors staying only six months, and medical students only six weeks this was important), nor readers who had not completed membership forms before borrowing books. The District Library is part of a cooperative network of libraries within the South West Thames (SWT) Region and already contributed to the union catalogue of books held on the regional database. This database is administered from the SWT Regional Library Service at Guildford using the INMAGIC software; individual library records are sent to Guildford where they are added to the database. Participating libraries receive back a disc to update their own local database of stock and a microfiche copy of the whole database.

Management by agreement: contracting for library services in South West Thames.

On 1 April 1991, the financial base of the NHS underwent its most dramatic change since its inception in 1948. All NHS services are now based on contracts and this has major implications for library services. This change was perceived by the South West Thames Regional Library Service as presenting a unique opportunity and the paper outlines the background to the thinking and the strategy adopted to meet the challenges. Sources of library funding and precise spending details were identified by means of a survey and contracts agreed covering all NHS staff in each of the 13 districts. The contracts are operating as 'shadow contracts' for 1991-92 allowing a valuable period of evaluation and monitoring before any money actually changes hands. The survey form for collecting library budgetary information and the service agreement are included as Appendices to the article.

FUNDING LIBRARY SYSTEM SERVICES: A National Survey

Not much information is broadly shared about how current system and resource library funding formulas operate. Do the formulas encourage or discourage certain programs or services? How are systems and resource libraries funded across the country? These questions are vital to systems looking for fiscal models that work. Having examined the costs of basic services provided by the seven Colorado regional library service systems and the Colorado Resource Center (CRC) previously in the Bottom Line (Fall 1990, pp. 18–24), this second article reviews the current funding formulas for the systems and the CRC.

Project 2000 and multidisciplinary education centres in hospitals. North West Thames Regional Library and Information Service, 22 January 1990, British Postgraduate Medical Federation

Project 2000 and multidisciplinary education centres in hospitals. North West Thames Regional Library and Information Service, 22 January 1990, British Postgraduate Medical Federation