Trudy Fletcher goes to her town's public library during the noon hour and is faced with an angry group of teenagers crowding the entryway. She enters the library and learns that the library staff members are sheltering a student from a rival school who is being threatened with assault by local students over a previous violent incident. Joyce…

Current national and international research indicates the summer break can negatively affect students' reading achievement. To counter this effect, our primary school with a range of students worked in collaboration with our local public library to plan and implement a summer reading programme. The purpose of the programme was to increase…

Amid growing isolationism after World War I, the American Library Association transferred its wartime programs to train librarians in Europe and promote the American model of public libraries. Working in collaboration with American philanthropists and members of the French library community, ALA established a permanent library school in Paris that…

Partnerships and collaborations among libraries are proven to enhance collective resources. The collaboration of multi-type libraries offers a unique opportunity to explore the potential of different libraries working together to provide the best possible service to their community members. This article provides a detailed report of a multi-type…

The decision by public libraries in New Zealand to implement Facebook has been uneven. Using Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations theory, a survey of nine public libraries investigated the process of its adoption or non-adoption. The motivating factors for the adoption of Facebook were identified. The surveyed libraries all met the four prior…

This paper discusses how public library readers in Almeida Garrett, Porto, create a reading atmosphere, focusing on meanings associated with aural conditions. Through a qualitative, single case study, ethnographic and interview techniques were applied. Readers' actual practices and discourses, through a theoretical sample, and those of managers,…

Libraries are critical learning spaces and may play a significant role in intercultural education initiatives, particularly in Sweden where the national curriculum ascribes central functions to libraries for learning activities. Unfortunately, the ways in which teachers and librarians may collaborate to leverage mutual resources is not fully…

Collaboration in the digital domain offers an opportunity to provide enhanced digital services and extended reach to the community. This article adopts a service-oriented perspective through which it considers environmental drivers for digital library collaboration; discusses emergent collaborative partnerships across UK educational institutions,…

Games and other forms of play are used in today's libraries to attract underserved patrons, to introduce patrons to other library resources and services, and to facilitate engagement between library patrons. While many perceive gaming as a new library service, gaming services have been part of librarianship since the nineteenth century through…

This paper considers the role of the public library in ameliorating relations between communities, and the appropriateness of a multicultural or assimilationist approach via which to deliver socially inclusive services. Qualitative findings from two inductive studies, each of which focused on different aspects of the capacity of public library…

Technology makes it possible to redefine libraries and make them relevant to the public once again. But how good are the digital services offered by public libraries today? The digital services department team of the Pode project at Norway's Oslo Public Library has spent the last 2 years investigating the possibilities available in order to…

In 2008 and 2009, the Edmonton Public Library (EPL), where the author works as an information professional, completed a $6 million CDN (about $5.7 million) RFID conversion project with the installation of automated check-in and sorting equipment at six of its 17 service points. The sorters currently handle about 55% of EPL's system's total…

Since their inception, free public libraries have been a source of information, knowledge and culture for all. They are spaces where anyone can go, for as long as they like, without feeling pressure to buy anything, and without feeling judged for whatever it is they want to read. For these reasons, library services are crucial to adults who wish…

Public libraries have traditionally provided key inputs to support lifelong learning. More recently, significant social and technological changes have challenged this sector to redefine their role in this field. For most public libraries in Europe this has meant continuing their role as providers of information and advice while increasing services…

Europeana: Think Culture (http://www.europeana.eu) is a wonderful cultural repository. It includes more than 15 million items (images, text, audio, and video) from 1,500 European institutions. Europeana provides access to an abundance of cultural and heritage information and knowledge. Because Europeana has partnered with and brought together so…