This timely special report from ALA Editions provides a succinct but comprehensive overview of the "privatization" of public libraries. It provides a history of the trend of local and state governments privatizing public services and assets, and then examines the history of public library privatization right up to the California…

The Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) formed an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Assembly in 1992, and one of its first projects was to prepare this publication by collecting samples of library-produced ADA-related documents. Its aim is to help libraries increase levels of compliance and public awareness. The…

Customer service is a vital part of library service. The reference interview remains a key element in assisting library patrons with information needs. This book shows librarians how to combine creativity with professional expertise in reference interviews, to provide quality customer service and satisfy patrons. The book is divided into 11…

Total Quality Management (TQM) brings together the best aspects of organizational excellence by driving out fear, offering customer-driven products and services, doing it right the first time by eliminating error, and maintaining inventory control without waste. Libraries are service organizations which are constantly trying to improve service.…

Eight studies by experts in the field of information retrieval examine aspects of public use of such automated systems as online catalogs in libraries. Ward Shaw discusses "Design Principles for Public Access," outlining desirable characteristics of an information retrieval system. Allen Avner and H. George Friedman, Jr. treat problems…

Information services managers have a responsibility to provide the best information delivery possible. The basic principles of total quality management can be used by information professionals to help justify library funding through the creation of an environment where customer-patron satisfaction is paramount. This book reveals how to apply the…

An investigation was conducted to probe faculty attitudes toward library effectiveness, to measure the effect on these attitudes of the dispersion of relevant resources in a system of departmental libraries around the campus, and to determine if a document delivery system produced changes in user attitudes toward the library. Studies were…

It is estimated that one in every five people in the United States has problems performing daily activities without help, perhaps due to the aging of the population and to more and more children surviving severe birth defects. The importance of library services to the disabled cannot be overestimated; they have the same information needs as any…

The emphasis of this text is that the problems of information retrieval are the intellectual ones of subject analysis and description. These problems are not easily solved by technology alone, although certain inroads are being made by knowledge-based expert systems and other computer aids to indexing. Linguistic approaches are also showing…