Digital chat reference in health science libraries: challenges in initiating a new service

Digital reference service adds a valuable new dimension to health science reference services, but the road to implementation can present questions that require carefully considered decisions. This article incorporates suggestions from the published literature, provides tips from interviews with practicing academic health science librarians, and reports on data from students' exploration of academic health science library Web sites' digital reference services. The goal of this study is to provide guidelines to plan new services, assess user needs, and select software, and to showcase potential benefits of collaboration and proactive and user-friendly marketing. In addition, tips for successful operation and evaluation of services are discussed.     

Standards for vision science libraries: 2014 revision

Objective:

This Association of Vision Science Librarians revision of the “Standards for Vision Science Libraries” aspires to provide benchmarks to address the needs for the services and resources of modern vision science libraries (academic, medical or hospital, pharmaceutical, and so on), which share a core mission, are varied by type, and are located throughout the world.

Methods:

Through multiple meeting discussions, member surveys, and a collaborative revision process, the standards have been updated for the first time in over a decade.

Results:

While the range of types of libraries supporting vision science services, education, and research is wide, all libraries, regardless of type, share core attributes, which the standards address.

Conclusions:

The current standards can and should be used to help develop new vision science libraries or to expand the growth of existing libraries, as well as to support vision science librarians in their work to better provide services and resources to their respective users.The Association of Vision Science Librarians (AVSL)—whose more than 150 members represent ophthalmology, optometry, and industry libraries throughout the world—has defined standards for its libraries since 1976 1–3. AVSL recommends that vision science libraries (VSLs) have at least one active member in AVSL. Standards for this very specialized area of library service have evolved owing to the work of librarians who, since 1937, have been developing and refining standards for their libraries 4. The standards reported here reflect the changes that have taken place during the decade and a half since the last edition of these standards were published. Changes include recommended staffing and technology, and the addition of a section addressing online access to information.AVSL convened a task force to first evaluate whether a standards revision was needed. Once it was agreed to do so, the task force guided the process of the revision, which included member surveys and discussions at meetings over the span of two years.The standards are intended to provide qualitative information such as appropriate staffing levels and collection scope, which can be used to evaluate existing vision science libraries or to develop new vision science libraries. In addition, these libraries should reflect the purpose and mission of the institution to which each belongs, and each library should have policies in place that outline the various areas to support the education, research, and patient care information needs of their institutions.     

Planning and designing hospital health science libraries

The people who plan and design hospital libraries must be aware of the environment in which the library functions. The hospital health science library operates under a different set of values and priorities from an academic library. Three methodologic studies are reported to determine hospital health science functions with comments on the significance of the data for designing: (i) the extent and possible use of books and journal collections makes it evident a hospital must act as an access point to the scholarly record; (ii) a survey of 41 hospitals shows a wide variety and combination of 33 user services; obviously what services are to be given should be decided before design; (iii) observing how different areas are used by a library's clientele shows that groups use the library differently and within certain time patterns; the arrangement of the functional areas can be better designed if quantitative data on the use of space are available.     

Circulation policies in health science libraries

There is general agreement that library policies have considerable influence on the use of libraries. Medical school (health science) libraries of this country were surveyed as to their policies in respect to whether faculty and student use were regulated by a single policy, circulation regulations, hours library was accessible to users, accessibility of reserve material, interlibrary loan, policy on overdue material, and exit control.THE LIBRARIES WERE THEN DIVIDED INTO THREE GROUPS, HIGH, MIDDLE, AND LOW ACCORDING TO THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS: size of student body, size of faculty, size of holdings, size of library staff, annual budget, and annual circulation.Our findings would indicate that schools falling in a high category based upon these criteria tend to be more restrictive in their policies and to have different regulations for faculty and students than do schools in the low category.These findings warrant further study.     

Aggregating broadband demand: Surveying the benefits and challenges for public libraries

Public libraries in the United States play an important role in their communities by providing free internet access to all residents. Research exists that discusses public library connectivity by investigating funding, technical aspects, and library mission, and that also promotes membership in regional or state consortia as a means of making broadband internet connections more affordable. The research discussed here builds upon these works by asking the question: Do the benefits of aggregation, or pooling demand, justify the investment of state library resources in establishing and maintaining a library cooperative to support internet access? It reports on a survey of Indiana public library directors on questions related to connectivity, E-rate funding, and participation in the Public Library Internet Consortium, a statewide cooperative established by the Indiana State Library. The survey was conducted by Dr. Mary Alice Ball, who was affiliated with Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, Indianapolis while conducting the relevant research. Dr. Ball chairs the Telecommunications Subcommittee of the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy.     

Digital reference service: trends in academic health science libraries

Two years after the initial 2002 study, a greater number of academic health science libraries are offering digital reference chat services, and this number appears poised to grow in the coming years. This 2004 follow-up study found that 36 (27%) of the academic health science libraries examined provide digital chat reference services; this was an approximately 6% increase over the 25 libraries (21%) located in 2002. Trends in digital reference services in academic health science libraries were derived from the exploration of academic health science library Web sites and from digital correspondence with academic health science library personnel using e-mail and chat. This article presents an overview of the current state of digital reference service in academic health science libraries.     

略论公共图书馆建设的当务之急

本文针对当前公共图书馆建设所面临的问题,提出了应采取的相关对策.     

21世纪高校图书馆信息服务:挑战与对策

21世纪高校图书馆的信息服务面临新的挑战.针对用户信息需求的新特点,高校图书馆信息服务应主动求变,表现为超前化、现代化、个性化、层次化、社会化和国际化,图书馆员的职能也随之转变.     

"积极老龄化"与公共图书馆

针对席卷全球的人口老龄化浪潮，就公共图书馆如何开展老年读者服务工作。以配合联合国第二届世界老龄大会提出的“积极老龄化”战略的实施，提出对策。     

Introduction to statistical surveys of health science libraries

The series of studies by the Committee on Surveys and Statistics of MLA presents the first comprehensive statistical picture of American health science libraries. These studies fill a serious information gap, and constitute a solid base for both present planning and historical record.     

The e-book management framework: The management of e-books in academic libraries and its challenges

E-book management in academic libraries is examined, and a framework of the stages in the e-book management process is generated; the framework summarizes the key activities and associated issues and challenges for each stage. Academic libraries are one of the main markets for textbooks and other e-books. As such, the relationships that they forge with e-book vendors (publishers and aggregators), and the resolution of some of the challenges that they currently face in managing their collections of e-books, will have significant consequences for the adoption of e-books in learning. An interview-based study with a purposive sample of interviewees working as managers, subject librarians, metadata officers, and e-resources coordinators from seven academic libraries in the UK was conducted to investigate the libraries' experiences and perceptions of e-book management. The resultant e-book management framework identifies the processes associated with the management of e-books, and also offers insights into the challenges and issues associated with each stage. The stages in the framework are: collection development policy, budget, discovery, evaluation and selection, license negotiations, cataloging and delivery, marketing/promotion, user education, monitoring and reviewing, and renewals and cancellation.     

Public libraries and the Internet 2007: Issues,implications, and expectations

This article presents an overview of the methods, findings, and the general implications of the 2007 Public Libraries and the Internet study. This annual study has chronicled public libraries' provision of Internet access to patrons and a range of related issues since the early 1990s. The 2007 study focused on the provision and maintenance of Internet access and services, infrastructure issues, community impacts of the technology, training, library technology funding, and e-government roles of public libraries. This article details these findings, exploring how the 2007 data compare to previous studies. It also considers the implications of these comparisons in terms of the levels of service that libraries are able to provide, the challenges that libraries face in providing these services, and the ways in which communities and governments rely on public libraries to guarantee public Internet access.     

Public and private value in citizen participation in E-governance: Evidence from a government-sponsored green commuting platform

Citizen participation in E-governance is, essentially, a social exchange between individuals and their government through which the citizen creates public value as well as acquires private value. The direct effects of participation antecedents on participation outcomes have been fully examined, but few researchers have investigated the internal mechanism of citizen participation at the level of psychological value perception. The roles of perceived public and private value between the participation antecedents and outcomes remain unclear. Private value merits careful research in particular as the E-governance environment is being shaped by increasing privatization and continuous IT innovation. Based on the cognitive integration theory and the civic voluntarism model, this paper proposes a theoretical framework to examine the mediating roles of two values. We built a complete research model encompassing ten hypotheses centered on citizen e-participation in the context of green commuting governance. By analyzing survey data on a green commuting platform, we demonstrate the significant mediating effects of these two values and greater effect of private value acquisition on continuous e-participation intentions than public value creation. Our results have important research implications in regards to the roles of perceived values in participation, especially perceived private value.     

Public libraries as reserves of cultural and digital capital: Addressing inequality through digitalization

Public libraries are among key sites for the acquisition of cultural capital, and possibly one of the most potent means through which the state can address inequality. While digitalization of public libraries already attracted significant scholarly attention, the evidence of its contribution to the acquisition of cultural skills and knowledge and social mobility remains limited, as does the conceptual understanding of links between digitalization, cultural capital, and social stratification. This article draws on two disconnected bodies of research, the sociological analysis of cultural capital and stratification and research on digital divides. To bridge these two bodies of research, the interplay of cultural and digital capital in public libraries was investigated. The extensive dataset from the UK Taking Part Survey (2016–17) was analyzed using two-step cluster analysis and multinomial regression models to explore the contrasting profiles of contemporary library users. Results identify four distinct user groups: Traditional, Active, Family, and Tech Access, which possess different degrees of cultural and digital capital, have different demographic profiles, and benefit from digitalized libraries in different ways. If libraries are to fulfil their role in reducing social inequalities, it is important that they tailor their digital services to the specific characteristics of each user group. This approach also provides a useful template for exploring the interplay of digitalization and (in)equality in other cultural institutions.     

图书馆应加强科普文献信息的开发与服务

科普献对于普及科学知识,弘扬科学精神,宣传科学思想,传播科学方法、提高公众科学素养等具有十分重要的作用。在现阶段我国国民科学素养不高的情况下,图书馆应利用自己得天独厚的条件．积极进行科普献的开发和服务工作．为“科教兴国”和两个明建设做出积极的贡献。     

生命科学信息的公共获取

从范围、成本、渠道、机制、法律等方面分析了阻碍生命科学信息公共获取的影响因素,提出了实现生命科学信息零障碍获取的建议。