Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the state of development of Polish digital libraries. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes the establishment of the first digital library in Poland, the creation of the Wielkopolska Digital Library and other regional digital libraries. The organisational and technological solutions used…

There have been substantial changes in the labour market over the past few years and survey results indicate 60% of staff will leave public library service over the next decade. While this creates opportunities for library staff, limited training budgets and a focus on compliance and specific library skills training have led to a gap in the formal…

This paper presents a summary of the first survey of public library authorities in the UK to explore Sunday opening, undertaken in 2007 as part of the Clore Leadership Programme. It provides a snapshot of Sunday opening practice, set against a context of societal, economic, and policy developments, and examines whether Sunday opening furthers the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the current state of information literacy (IL) training and to identify the strategies and methods used by Canadian public libraries in improving IL skills for their staff and patrons. Also, the study sought to identify problems associated with the development of IL training. This study employed document…

The aim of this research was to investigate current issues faced by public library staff in rural South Australia and to examine some of the reasons why people choose to work in rural libraries. The study took a mixed methods approach, combining interviews and questionnaires to gain a fuller understanding of the issues and experiences of rural…

The President of ALIA writes about expectations for the Public Libraries Summit, and provides an account of what took place on the day of the meeting, and what has taken place since. In funding terms, the most likely areas of productive engagement with the federal government are considered to be: children, early learning and a literate Australia;…

Purpose: The paper seeks to describe the provision of access to the Safari Tech Books collection of e-books at Hillingdon Libraries. Design/methodology/approach: Details are given of how the e-books collection is part of a broader range of e-information services provided by Hillingdon. Methods of searching for e-books are described, with…

Examines implications of the introduction of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) to Victoria (Australia) public libraries and the revision or abandonment of previously dominant ideals of public administration. Topics include the role of government; public services as a competitive market environment; economic rationalism; and the threat to the…

The paper describes the introduction of Web 2.0 techniques and tools at the Yarra Plenty public library in Victoria, beginning with library staff. The author argues that as libraries move from Web 1.0 type delivery systems to the social networking world of Library 2.0 librarians need to deploy and make accessible these radically different systems,…

This article uses Wellington City Libraries as the basis for a case study of a future-focused, reorganized staffing structure in a public library network. It covers the change from why, how, departure from a building-based hierarchical structure, new staff and line responsibilities, union involvement, implications for staff training to culture and…

This paper discusses personnel management issues that arose when the East Berlin (Germany) Municipal Library and the West Berlin America Memorial Library united in 1995 to form the Central and State Library. The first section provides historical background on the two libraries and their merger. The second section summarizes the East-West conflict…

Specific aspects of public library administration that were investigated by this study were: economics of librarianship (improving services and reducing costs); promoting the use of public libraries; coordination of library branches having varied sizes, services and distances from one another; library cooperation; student use of libraries; methods…

The Sydney Public Library began as the Australian Subscription Library and Reading Room which opened in Sydney on December 1, 1827, with 1,000 volumes. The Municipal Council of Sydney took possession of the library in 1909. The library evolved from a closed access, fixed shelf position library to an open access system in 1910. A complete…

Narration of author's visit to the libraries of Florence, Italy, focuses on city, provincial, and national libraries, including the Laurentian Library, Biblioteca Communale Centrale (city), Biblioteca Marucelliana (regional), and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (national). Conversations with the directors of each library are highlighted. (EJS)

This fact book, compiled to fill the need of practicing librarians and researchers for recent data on public libraries, contains statistics concerning or relevant to the U.S. public library system. Data on all aspects of American public libraries are summarized from such sources as annual reports, journal articles, surveys, books, doctoral theses,…