Centering Essential Immigrant Help on the Library Web site: The American Place (TAP) at Hartford Public Library

If public libraries are going to provide essential information to immigrants, they must center their efforts to help on streamlining government Web sites. The necessity for this library approach comes because of the way government agencies have chosen to communicate with immigrants and others in need of government services. This article details how Hartford Public Library developed The American Place, an electronic information center, on its Web site. In the process, staff members had to become expert in finding, analyzing, organizing and communicating information on many different kinds of immigration and refugee institutions. Other public libraries about to organize or improve the electronic information for immigrants on their Web sites will find much here to help them in their work.     

Information Needs and Information Seeking Behavior of Agricultural Scientists in Malaysia

Knowledge about the information needs and seeking behavior of scientists could play a vital role in meeting their information needs effectively. Libraries can use this knowledge for re-orienting their collections and facilities to attune them to the needs of the scientific community. This study explores information needs and seeking behavior of Malaysian agricultural scientists. It was found that research scientists spent 16% of their office time on reading and literature searching, whereas academicians spent 9.3% of their time for this purpose. The study also revealed that scientists preferred using primary sources of information, particularly journal and review articles. Informal communication with professional colleagues was also considered important for exchanging current research information. A large number of the participants felt that they had not been keeping in touch with scientific literature due to deficient library collections and services. This article recommends that science and technology libraries should periodically survey the information needs of their users, assess their collections and facilities, and strengthen their promotional activities.     

The application of archival concepts to a data-intensive environment: working with scientists to understand data management and preservation needs

The collection, organization, and long-term preservation of resources are the raison d??être of archives and archivists. The archival community, however, has largely neglected science data, assuming they were outside the bounds of their professional concerns. Scientists, on the other hand, increasingly recognize that they lack the skills and expertise needed to meet the demands being placed on them with regard to data curation and are seeking the help of ??data archivists?? and ??data curators.?? This represents a significant opportunity for archivists and archival scholars but one that can only be realized if they better understand the scientific context.     

高校图书馆在展览服务中的馆际合作研究——以上海高校图书馆展览资源共建共享联盟为例

[目的/意义]针对当前我国高校图书馆展览服务需求与资源之间的矛盾,调研上海高校图书馆展览资源共建共享联盟成员之间进行合作的动因、方式及可持续发展策略,对其实践进行总结和展望,为其他馆提供借鉴。[方法/过程]对该联盟10所成员馆展览业务负责人进行问卷调查,对调查所获资料进行分析总结,辅以文献调研加以梳理。[结果/结论]高校图书馆在展览服务中有着展览资源短缺、拥有共同目标、展览特色互补等合作动因,存在分享展览信息、互换展览资源、抱团对外谈判、共同制作展览等合作和利益共享策略;认为还可从扩宽展览主题和深度、利用和学习其他外部机构资源和经验、联合培训工作人员、运用科学方法进行效果跟踪和评价等方式开展进一步合作。     

Can the government really help? Online information for women experiencing violence

Domestic violence against women is a significant social and public health problem that requires a varied social service response for abused women and their children. Increasingly, this service response includes online sources and resources. Using content analysis methods, we examined the Canadian provincial E-Government response to providing information to women exposed to domestic violence. Our overarching question was “if an abused woman went to her province’s government website for information and help and used common search strategies, what would she find?”     

美国公共图书馆的服务理念与工作特色——“2012美国最佳小图书馆”评析

在"2012美国最佳小图书馆"的评选中,堪萨斯独立城公共图书馆获得冠军,德克萨斯迪凯特公共图书馆、马萨诸塞多弗镇图书馆也入围最后的决赛。这些图书馆以社区服务为核心,非常重视自身宣传,努力提高图书馆形象,为适应时代需求改革管理与服务模式,大力开展丰富多样的活动,特别重视为少年儿童读者提供特色服务,注重与各机构及企业的合作,对我国图书馆服务有很好的启示作用。     

Integrating Digital Literacies into Outreach Services for Underserved Youth Populations

New competencies are required for communication in the digital environment. However, technology and training disparities prevent many young people from obtaining these competencies. Outreach services can help bridge technology and training gaps. This article describes outreach services for students who are underserved in information and digital literacy skills training. Services are provided by an academic library in an effort to provide students with a portable skills toolkit that, once developed, can travel with them in whatever space or place they may be—the home, library, school, or community center.     

Applying Fourth Generation Management to Access Services: Reinventing Customer Service and Process Management

ABSTRACT

Are librarians doing all they can to ensure that customer services are delivered with the customer in mind? Librarians are great at helping, but we sometimes need help with identifying customers, defining their needs, developing services, and reviewing the processes behind the services. Fourth Generation Management provides new insight for librarians as we compete with customers, our patrons, to offer new services at an ever-increasing rate. Libraries need to improve customer services in order to remain a vital part of their community.     

A model to explain information seeking behaviour by individuals in the response phase of a disaster

This Australian study establishes a model that provides a foundation for communication channels and tools selection by agencies in the post-warning response phase of a disaster. The model, developed from disaster and information seeking literature, attempts to predict information source and channel selection by people after their community has received a warning for a disaster. It provides the coding framework for analysis of 51 semi-structured interviews with disaster-affected Australians. The interviews tested the model for accommodation of channels and sources that people chose, found most useful, and used most in bushfire, slow flood, flash flood, and cyclone situations. The order of initial sources was investigated and preliminary information seeking pathways established across disaster types. The disaster information seeking model supports this investigation of information seeking behaviour, though improvements are suggested. The resulting model could guide agency response communication for different disaster types.     

Reference Services and the International Adult Learner

Summary

International adult learners are a growing patron constituency. They share a number of common characteristics, notably their unfamiliarity with many library services. In addition, barriers such as language and communication differences as well as functional issues present challenges to effective service. Libraries can better meet the needs of International Adult Learners by determining what their needs are. In so doing they will be able to provide better programming and improve library instruction. In addition, libraries can partner with other community agencies and institutions to improve service for International Adult Learners. Staff training should also be undertaken to improve the ability of library personnel to interact with this particular user group.     

A Literacy Center Where? A Public Library Finds Space to Promote and Provide Family Learning Activities

SUMMARY

In the past, mid-sized public libraries left the literacy needs of their patrons to other agencies in the community, preferring to focus on the traditional library roles of being a center in the community for popular materials, community information, reference assistance, life-long learning, etc. As the literacy levels in the community weakened and began to affect both the status of a community and children's ability to learn, traditional services and literacy can be combined into a successful program that benefits all who participate.     

Libraries as Civic Agents

Libraries connect people with information, are vital to democracy and transform communities. Led and staffed by entrepreneurial thinkers, many libraries have reaffirmed their civic mission and even redefined their role in their community. They are not only relevant to their community; they are central players in engaging the public in civic discourse, weaving organizations and resources together, bridging divisions, and developing the capacity for their communities to solve problems. These libraries are places where people learn about complex public issues and practice deliberative democracy. By listening deeply to the concerns of people in their community library, staff are actively developing strategies to help the community work together. They are creating collaborative relationships between agencies and individuals, even convening stakeholders from opposite camps. They are civic agents creating civic agency.     

Female farmers and the social construction of access to agricultural information

This article examines the ways in which the transfer of information about farming practice is gendered, and how the gendering of access to agricultural information affects the social realities of farming women. The research focuses on a sample of Ontario female farmers who were interviewed extensively about their farming practices, including the ways in which they sought and found information to help them further their farming knowledge. It was found that female farmers utilized both formal and informal channels of information, but that these channels were not readily nor easily accessible to female farmers. Attempts to extract needed information resulted in the manifestation of issues regarding social and professional legitimacy. Female farmers must, therefore, devise alternate strategies and networks for information gathering. The study demonstrates that information acquisition in farming is a socially mediated process which reflects the socially constructed gender relations of agriculture itself.     

Narrative Sensemaking and Time Lapse: Interviews with Low-income Women about Sex Education

Secondary-school students in the United States score notoriously low on tests of their reproductive and sexual knowledge despite attempts by educators and legislators to provide them with informative sex-education courses. In this paper, we build from narrative theory to explore how low-income women perceived their formal sex-education experiences and how they connected those experiences to their sexual-health knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Drawing from interviews with 30 low-income women, we identify and develop a typology of sex-education narratives: narratives of regret, narratives of satisfaction, and narratives of uncertainty. We also investigate existing theoretical claims that lapses in time between lived events and the narration of those events connect to sensemaking efforts. We find that younger women in the sample were more likely to tell narratives of uncertainty than were older women. These results have implications for the study of narrative theory, sexual-health communication, and the discourse of public sex education.     

Understanding government social media users: an analysis of interactions on Immigration,Refugees and Citizenship Canada Twitter and Facebook

Social media is being adopted at a rapid pace by governments around world and across different levels of government. In Canada, federal, provincial and municipal governments created social media accounts in 2000s and are now using them to interact with the public. Studies to date, however, focus primarily on social media strategies and practices of government agencies while government social media users' behaviors and perspectives remain understudied. This study analyzes experiences of government social media users and how they interact on Twitter and Facebook accounts maintained by a Canadian federal government agency – Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It also explores why users chose to interact on social media as well as their perspectives. The findings suggest that Canadian immigration agencies are using social media as a customer services tool, and migrant social media users are turning to government social media to hear directly from the government agencies and are expecting personalized answers.     

Serving the Patron Through Referral Lists: The Brooklyn Experience

ABSTRACT

The Education, Job and Computer Center is a unique resource center which is located in the Central Library of the Brooklyn Public Library. The mission of this division is to provide the people of Brooklyn with the print and electronic resources that they can use to further their education or to seek employment. In the past year, the Education, Job and Computer Center served over ninety-five thousand individuals.

The Education, Job and Computer Center (EJCC) receives an average of 300 queries a week from patrons seeking information on employment, job training or educational opportunities. As a way to respond to many identical requests, the EJCC staff has created a series of twenty referral lists. Subjects covered by these lists include GED or ESL classes; services to immigrants, services for older adults, youth, women and ex-offenders; job placement or job training centers; and small business assistance programs.

The referral lists are updated annually. They can be picked up in the EJCC, or mailed to patrons upon request. The EJCC also supplies copies of the lists to the Brooklyn Public Library branches and to many community based organizations in the New York City area. Last year a total of 125,000 copies of the referral lists were produced.     

U.S. Depository librarians in reality and myth: A framework for a future government information program

How do the librarians in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) plan to perform a role in the electronic environment? Depository librarians must meet the challenge of changing how they think about government information libraries and their mission in order to provide citizen access services in an electronic environment. The new mission is to connect the user with information at the time of need, to instruct citizens in gaining access to government information, and to develop networking applications and programs that will help to put valuable content in the information infrastructure. If the FDLP and depository libraries are to prepare to perform that role, librarians need to take stock of their technological environment, deal with the political realities, and be critical of FDLP ideals that have taken on mythological proportions. A framework for the future of the FDLP can be built if depository librarians take advantage of the new communication technology. Depository librarians can use this technology to develop partnerships and networks of depository libraries, government agencies, commercial publishers, organizations of information professionals, and citizens. In turn, depository librarians could form the virtual associations needed to develop new dissemination programs; create user interface software; consolidate lobbying efforts to develop a nationwide electronic information policy; and provide community information networks with national links. Finally, communications technology could enable depository librarians to form a consortium of depository libraries to manage a government information dissemination library program.     

A study of the information seeking behaviour of hospital pharmacists: empirical evidence from Greece

Background: Hospital pharmacists need access to high‐quality information in order to constantly update their knowledge and improve their skills. In their modern role, they are expected to address three types of challenges: scientific, organizational and administrative, thus having an increased need for adequate information and library services. Objectives: This study investigates the information‐seeking behaviour of public hospital pharmacists providing evidence from Greece that could be used to encourage the development of effective information hospital services and study the links between the information seeking behaviour of hospital pharmacists and their modern scientific and professional role. Method: An empirical research was conducted between January and February 2010 with the development and distribution of a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was filled in and returned by 88 public hospital pharmacists from a total of 286 working in all Greek public hospitals, providing a response rate of 31%. Results: The hospital pharmacists in Greece are in search of scientific information and, more particularly, pharmaceutical information (e.g., drug indications, storage, dosage and prices). The Internet and the National Organization of Medicines are their main information sources, while the lack of time and organized information are the main obstacles they have to face when seeking information. Conclusions: The modern professional role of hospital pharmacists as invaluable contributors to efficient and safer healthcare services may be further supported through the development of specialized libraries and information services within Greek public hospitals.     

The “blur” of federal information and services: Implications for university libraries

Information product content is becoming increasingly interrelated with associated services. This concept is called “blurring” by current management authors Davis and Meyer. In the realm of federal information, there is great potential for “blurred” offerings. Citizens could have access to customized and filtered information from federal websites and could perform transactions with government agencies over the Internet. While some technical, infrastructure, and policy issues will take time to sort out, many innovative products and services will be offered over the Internet. Whether the federal agencies themselves will provide these customized services or whether institutions in the public and/or private sector will provide them remains to be seen. Universities need to re-think how they offer services related to federal information in the networked environment. Such activities as reference service, instruction, access to data archives, and staff training need to be re-examined in light of the changes enabled by the Internet and the development of new types of content and services.