How Libraries Make Tough Choices in Difficult Times

Contemporary library managers face the need to make difficult choices regarding resource allocation in the modern business environment. How Libraries Make Tough Choices in Difficult Times is a practical guide for library managers, offering techniques to analyze existing and potential services, implement best practices for maximizing existing resources, and utilize pressing financial scenarios in order to justify making difficult reallocation decisions. The book begins by asking the fundamental questions of why, what, and how, moving on to look at how to manage expectations and report to both administration and faculty. The book then considers the four ‘D’s of Do, Delegate, Delay and Drop, before covering project management, and how to understand the mission and objectives of your organisation. The book then focuses on: service quality improvement analyses; identifying underlying issues; reviewing resources; identifying best practice; managing feedback and expectations; and looking at decision making skills and implications. Introduces both philosophies and techniques for decision-making that will help inexperienced library managers Provides resources for a practical orientation to new Service Quality Improvement and Project Management approaches as library managers address a wide range of resource allocation considerations Written by a highly experienced practitioner in the field

Public libraries are keystone public institutions for any thriving community, and as such can be leaders in making cities better places to work, play, and live. Here, Dudley shows how public libraries can contribute to 'placemaking', or the creation and nurturing of vital and unique communities for their residents.

Should you take a much-needed vacation or save money for the kids' education? Protect the endangered owl or maintain jobs for loggers? Have a heart-to-heart with a lying employee or fire him on the spot? All of us face ethical choices. Sometimes they're easy: One side is wrong and the other is right. But how do we handle the really tough "right vs. right" dilemmas, where each side has strong moral arguments and we can't do both? This book helps us build Ethical Fitness®—a values-based decision-making process so definitive that it's now a registered trade mark. Rushworth M. Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, teaches us how to think for ourselves in order to resolve ethical dilemmas ranging from the intimately personal to the broadly philosophical. Unique in its approach and rich with illustrative anecdotes—updated with examples of real-world conflicts from today's political realm and from Dr. Kidder's own observations—How Good People Make Tough Choices is an indispensable resource for spotting, understanding, and resolving our toughest decisions.

This updated edition enables readers to understand how academic libraries deliver information, offer services, and provide learning spaces in new ways to better meet the needs of today's students, faculty, and other communities of academic library users.

This series will be of use to teens who are seeking sound personal advice in their lives.

Strategic planning, collaboration, continual stewardship, best practices, and re-engineering can provide librarians with a toolkit of innovative strategies that meets the worst of economic times with bold, persistent experimentation. This book covers the implications for libraries of a broad range of technological and economic challenges. These challenges include the fallout from the global economic crisis, the positioning of usage statistics, the advent of open access scholarship, database management, responding to budgetary constrictions and general access to serials. Taken as a whole, this collection provides practitioners in the library sector and in higher education with a wide variety of insights on the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities involved with serials collection management in recessionary times, written by academic librarians, vendors, publishers, fundraisers, and higher education professionals. This book was published as a special issue of The Serials Librarian.

"Tough Choices or Tough Times" calls for the first redesign of the American education system in a century. This work provides a well-researched analysis of the issues as well as a compelling set of proposals for changing the existing system of education.

The New York Times bestseller by the most talked about woman in American business. For five and a half years, Carly Fiorina led Hewlett-Packard through major internal changes, the worst technology slump in decades, and the most controversial merger in high-tech history. Yet just as things were about to turn around, she was abruptly fired, making front-page news around the world. Fiorina has been the subject of endless debate and speculation. But she has never spoken publicly about crucial details of her time at HP, about the mysterious circumstances of her firing, or about many other aspects of her landmark career. Until now. In this extraordinarily candid memoir, she reveals the private person behind the public persona. She shares her triumphs and failures, her deepest fears and most painful confrontations. She shows us what it was like to be an ambitious young woman at stodgy old AT&T and then a fast- track executive during the spin-off of Lucent Technologies. Above all, she describes how she drove the transformation of legendary but deeply troubled HP, in the face of fierce opposition. One of Fiorina's big themes is that in the end business isn't just about numbers; it's about people.This book goes beyond the caricature of the powerful woman executive to show who she really is and what the rest of us male or female, in business or not can learn from the tough choices she made along the way. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The "International Yearbook of Library and Information Management" (IYLIM) is a thematic annual publication covering the field of library science and information management worldwide. This volume focuses on information services in a rapidly changing electronic environment.

This volume by the co-ordinator of the Electronic Teaching Centre for the Harvard College Libraries, begins with the premise that the impact of computers since the mid-1960s has been more profound than much of the library community has acknowledged. LaGuardia calls for a new way of looking at libraries that involves rethinking the most basic library structures and icons, reinventing an instruction vocabulary, and trying to anticipate the change and development of the role of libraries in the future.

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.

There's no shortage of library management books out there--but how many of them actually tackle the little details of day-to-day management, the hard-to-categorize things that slip through the cracks of a larger handbook? "Library Management Tips that Work" does exactly that, addressing dozens of such issues facing library managers, including: (1) How to create a job manual, and keep staff accountable; (2) Keeping your library board in the loop; (3) Using numbers to make your case; (4) Dealing with unreturned library materials; (5) Methods for managing multiple libraries with one fte librarian; (6) Retaining services despite budget cuts and staff shortages; and (7) Public relations on a shoestring. This book is divided into five parts. Part I, The Manager Role, contains the following: (1) Beating the Clock: Adaptive Time Management in a Fluid Environment (Geoffrey P. Timms); (2) Creating Manuals for Job Duties (Holly Flynn); (3) How to Manage Serving Students of Generational Poverty (Kris Baughman and Rebecca Marcum Parker); (4) How to Protect Your Library from Employment Discrimination Claims (Michael A. Germano); (5) Managing Emergencies: What to Do When Basic or Big Disasters Strike (Sian Brannon and Kimberly Wells); (6) Creating a Staff Accountability System (Terry Ann Lawler); (7) Planning Ahead: Time Management in Defining Goals (Geoffrey P. Timms); (8) Transforming an Off-Campus Library from Empty Space to Award Winner in One Year (Seamus Scanlon); (9) When You're Not (Exactly) the Boss: How to Manage Effectively in a "Coordinator" Role (Kim Becnel); and (10) Communication and Staff Awareness in the Branch Library (Jason Kuhl). Part ii, Running a Library, contains the following: (11) ASSURE-ing Your Collection (Roxanne Myers Spencer and Barbara Fiehn); (12) Billy Club: a Model for Dealing with Unreturned Library Materials (Suzann Holland); (13) Collaboration for Library Collection Acquisition (Lorette S.J. Weldon); (14) Community Partnerships: The Key to Providing Programs in a Recession (Ashanti White); (15) cvl Leads: Mentorship and Leadership (Robin Shader); (16) How to Manage a Student-Centric Library Service for Nontraditional Users (Seamus Scanlon); (17) Managing Overnight (Ken Johnson and Susan Jennings); (18) Managing More Than One School Library with One fte Librarian (Kris Baughman and Rebecca Marcum Parker); (19) Management Tips for Merging Multiple Service Points (Colleen S. Harris); (20) SuperStarz: An Experience in Grant Project Management (Vera Gubnitskaia); (21) Utilizing Retired Individuals as Volunteers (Ashanti White); and (22) Weeding as Affective Response, or "I Just Can't Throw This Out!" (Barbara Fiehn and Roxanne Myers Spencer). Part iii, Information Technology, contains the following: (23) Facebook for Student Assistants (Susan Jennings and Ken Johnson); (24) Improving Communication with Blogs (Alice B. Ruleman); (25) Improving Productivity with Google Apps (Suzann Holland); (26) Partnering with Information Technology at the Reference Desk: a Model for Success (Jeffrey A. Franks); (27) Putting Missing Pieces from the Collection Together with SharePoint (Lorette S.J. Weldon); (28) Real-Life Management Using Virtual Tools (Vera Gubnitskaia); (29) Session Control Software for Community Users in an Academic Library (Jeffrey A. Franks); (30) To Friend or Not to Friend: The Facebook Question (Kim Becnel); and (31) Why a Wiki? How Wikis Help Get Work Done (Alice B. Ruleman). Part iv, Staff, contains the following: (32) Millennials, Gen-X, Gen-Y, and Boomers, Oh My! Managing Multiple Generations in the Library (Colleen S. Harris); (33) Hiring and Training Graduate Assistants for the Academic Library (Erin O'Toole); (34) Managing for Emergencies: What to Do before, during, and after Disaster (Sian Brannon and Kimberly Wells); (35) Managing Librarians and Staff with Young Children (Holly Flynn); (36) Mentoring Graduate Assistants in the Academic Library (Erin O'Toole); (37) New Employee Orientation (Bradley Tolppanen and Janice Derr); (38) Discrimination in Employment: An Overview for Library Managers (Michael A. Germano); (39) Obtaining Compliance from Underperforming Employees: Talking It Through (Terry Ann Lawler); (40) Planning for Change: Ensuring Staff Commitment (Jason Kuhl); (41) Shadow and Learn: Knowing Your Staff (Robin Shader); and (42) Staff Shortages (Bradley Tolppanen and Janice Derr). Part v, Public Relations, contains the following: (43) No Surprises: Keeping Your Board in the Loop (Lynn Hawkins); (44) Board Meetings That Work (James B. Casey); (45) Library Partners: Cooperating with Other Nonprofits (John Helling); (46) Portraits in a Small Town: Balancing Access and Privacy with a Local History Photography Collection (John Helling); (47) Using Numbers to Make Your Case (James B. Casey); and (48) Staying in the Game: Public Relations on a Shoestring (Lynn Hawkins). An index is included.