This article puts forward a credo of librarianship, particularly public librarianship. The writer addresses the differences between academic and public librarianship and suggests that there is little actual difference, and that apparent differences are differences in how librarians react to the environment in which they operate. The effects of the…

Demonstrating the value of library and information services has been a theme in library discussions in recent years. The application of many different approaches to evaluation has waxed and waned together with the development of theories of evaluation across the humanities and social sciences. Over the past two decades research and activity on…

Since 2005 the State Library of New South Wales has provided staff with an opportunity to research aspects of the Library's services and collections through the State Librarian's Staff Fellowship Program. In January 2008, Maggie Patton commenced a project to rediscover and document the development of the rare printed collections at the State…

The cultural heritage of library collections and individual items is of importance and interest outside the profession of librarianship. This paper gives an introduction to the concept of "movable heritage" from the heritage professional's perspective and provides suggestions as to how this concept can be applied to libraries.…

Libraries have limited budgets and Collection Development Librarians can be faced with difficult decisions in the spending of their allocated funds. This paper discusses how the Tasmanian Polytechnic Launceston Campus Library discovered a gap in their collection and addressed this situation without funding. The Library wished to purchase fiction…

This paper is a practical and personal perspective on the challenges faced by special collections in an increasingly digital environment, and the strategies employed to promote their unique resources to the academic and wider communities, including the value of promoting heritage through reconstructing collections and the place of expertise in the…

There is a general perception that as librarians, we know what constitutes and defines a rare book, that our heritage book collections are well-documented and their future survival is planned for and secure. This discussion paper asks whether our definitions of heritage material might be too narrow and whether they reflect the reality across all…

In a survey of Business and Government, Law and Information Sciences students carried out at the University of Canberra, results showed that in-curricula information literacy skills training had a greater impact on students' satisfaction with access to high demand material than the purchase of additional copies of books. This paper will discuss…

What does a newcomer to the library industry bring, at nearly fifty? What does she find? Reflecting on her experience and a recent study tour, the author describes the barely-skilled-although-nominally-qualified challenge; and discusses current cross-cultural provision. She muses on the interplay between a new librarian's fresh eyes, experience…

The widespread use of the Internet gave rise to the view that all knowledge is to be found there and that books and libraries are becoming redundant. A few probes aimed at exploring its depths found that while its speed and subject coverage are without equal, the "Net" is not the universal tool it is made out to be. The author then makes a case…

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,…

The Australian Museum, Sydney, is Australia's oldest museum, internationally recognised for its longstanding scientific contributions. Less well-known is the Museum's fine collection of monographs and journals relating to natural history and anthropology, which has been used to support the work of Museum staff and external enquirers since the late…

The University of Western Australia's Rural Clinical School was set up to train a quarter of the medical students for a full year in rural and remote Western Australia. These students need full access to the resources of the medical library so that they are not disadvantaged in comparison to metropolitan students. Setting up library access for…

This paper is a selective review of recent publications, focused on the economic value of public and special libraries which are treated separately, since context and organisational objectives differ widely for different types of libraries. Those who wish to further explore this topic will find many studies into the social value of libraries which…

Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory, when combined with the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, fosters a fresh perspective on the debate about the language of business and its influence in librarianship. It is suggested that narratives about readers hold promise because they capture the active nature of reading. (Author)