This study investigated the expectations of Millennials in relation to academic library service provision, and compared these with the skills and competencies of subject librarians, to identify gaps in service delivery and present strategies by which these gaps could be addressed. The research took place at a time when the role, and perceived benefit, of libraries and information professionals were under scrutiny during a climate of budget cuts and in view of increased university tuition fees. Four UK universities participated in a study using qualitative and quantitative methods. A web-based survey of Millennials, based on the LibQUAL + measurement instrument, identified generational characteristics and service expectations from 410 respondents. On line focus groups with 13 Millennials were used to explore trends and issues identified from the survey data. Finally, 53 subject librarians at the same four institutions took part in a web-based survey to identify their skills, competencies, roles and responsibilities and these were compared with student expectations. Findings illustrated that the sample of Millennials were 'wired' to the networked world, that technology forms an integral part of their study technique, and that it has shaped their outlook, behaviour and expectations. The role of the subject librarian has evolved and subject librarians are increasingly required to provide learner support - often in virtual or electronic environments. They have acquired the skills to do so primarily through experiential, on-the-job, development. Three models were developed to illustrate a spiral of heightening and widening student expectations driven by technology use; an emergent paradigm of education that has been shaped by technology; and the skillsets required by next-generation blended librarians positioned to provide effective learner support to Millennials.

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Contemporary organisations including university libraries are operating in a climate of continuous change. Preserving their traditional role as gatekeepers to data and information is not enough; they need to take a further step to becoming learning organisations. Due to the limits of knowledge and study in the field, the study aims to investigate and propose a model for developing university libraries into learning organisations. The researcher used six university libraries in Thailand as a case study. Multiple methods of data collection: document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and observation were employed in order to gain an understanding on their transformation efforts. A new model is then proposed for investigating the development of university libraries into learning organisations, comprising the Diamond-shape model and Contextual model. Human resource development and knowledge management practices were found to be the most critical practices in building a learning organisation and then used as the two foci of the Diamond-shape model for investigating the library practices. There are two dimensions employed in the model: the extent to which 1) human resource development and knowledge management are implemented and 2) the two operate measured on a scale ranging from the mechanistic to fully integrated level. Development of the Contextual model is guided by Garvin’s Three Ms framework, comprising the aspects of Meaning, Management, and Measurement, with one more aspect, Critical Success Factors, further added to supplement the three Ms for investigating the libraries’ transformation based on their organisational context. The proposed model provides a new way of investigation by taking into account of the two interrelated concepts in terms of how they can be combined to support building a learning organisation, together with taking into consideration of their context and culture. By this means, the model promotes a holistic understanding by identifying the necessary practices as well as prevailing aspects that might impede transformational change into a learning organisation and the results of the investigation can be used to propose actions to transform the university libraries into fully-fledged learning organisations. The model was applied to the six case libraries to confirm its validity. Limitations of the study were considered and recommendations for further research were proposed, including conducting a study in different research settings to ensure transferability; collecting data from library staff to gain their perspectives; and exploring the aspect of leadership, information technology, and power and politics in detail.

Academic Librarians, working in specialist arts universities, create resources, design services and provide information literacy sessions to enhance arts student learning. They work collaboratively as hybrid professionals and play a valuable role in supporting students to navigate the complexities of the information landscape and develop as independent learners. This research explores librarians' perceptions of arts students as learners in the creative arts. It further considers connections between 'intentions', 'orientations' and 'practice', in terms of librarians' approaches to enabling student learning. A qualitative methodology was used to identify variation in understandings about these students and an interpretative analysis is offered which examines a discourse of 'difference' and 'difficulty' which threads through the narratives and connects the categories of description identified through this research. Contextual factors are explored and the effect the identified beliefs and attitudes might have on librarians' practice and on their provision of art library services is examined. Consideration is given to how arts librarians might transition from some of their currently held assumptions about art students as learners to a more complex and complete understanding of art student learning. This research finds that academic librarians conceptualise arts students in different ways, namely as problematic learners, practitioner learners, particular learners and proficient learners. Above all they find them to be 'different' to other students and other library users and often 'difficult' to support. The framing of arts student learners in these ways may be indicative of librarians' lack of confidence in the effectiveness of student learning strategies and uncertainty as to their own identity, role and purpose. This study has implications for library research and theory and also for policy, practice and professional development. The research outcomes may enable arts librarians to reflect upon and explore new ways of approaching their practice and improve services to meet the specific needs of arts students and arts curricula. This will entail a transition from a discourse of 'difference' and 'difficulty' to one which is more congruent with the exploratory and experimental pedagogy of art and design.

This chapter draws together work developing, synthesizing and applying a model for library performance measurement in academic and research libraries. The work comprises publications based on reviews of published studies and primary data from surveys and other investigations. The provenance of the work and the ways in which the individual studies are connected and informed by each other and by the author’s previous work is explained in the chapter. The work follows the author’s long-term quest to understand the idea of value in relation to libraries. At the outset of this investigation there was little work and less clarity about the meaning of and methods for value measurement in libraries. The work argues for a measurement conception for libraries that goes beyond instrumental internal data collection to achieve evaluation of the transcendent worth and contribution of libraries. An intellectual framework for performance measurement is provided in the form of the Value Scorecard, with examples of practical measurement applications to populate the framework. The eight publications are described and their contributions to the field of library performance measurement are analysed in the chapter. The published work and the conference presentations on which they have been based have also made a contribution to the debates in the field, and may have potential application beyond libraries.

Edited by Paul J. Fasana and Allen Veaner. / Includes papers from the New York Collaborative Library Systems Development Conference, 1970 and a selection of papers from the Stanford Conference on Collaborative Library Systems Development, 1968. / Includes bibliographies.

The development of information and communication technologies, and wide spread of the Internet and its associated technologies have brought about tremendous changes in the reference department of academic libraries, and in the attitudes and expectations of both information professionals and users. Many academic libraries across the globe have embraced Web technologies to fulfil users reference needs in a digital environment. This study aimed to investigate and analyse digital reference services (DRS) in university libraries in Pakistan. It focused on the nature and level of DRS, technologies used for the provision of the service, usage, staffing, marketing, funding, ICT infrastructure available for the service, and looked at the issues faced by academic libraries in implementing and managing the service. A mixed methods research approach combining both quantitative and qualitative methods was employed to achieve the aim and objectives of the study. The quantitative data for the study were collected through an online survey. A total of eighty five university libraries (both in public and private sectors) from all the four provinces, the federal capital and Azad Jammu & Kashmir participated in the survey. The quantitative data were supplemented by the qualitative data which were gathered through semi-structured interviews with the heads of fifteen leading university libraries. Findings suggest that DRS is at an early development stage in university libraries in Pakistan, with a small number of libraries offering the service. Most of the academic libraries which have implemented this cutting-edge service, are large libraries equipped with good human and technological resources. The libraries have mostly developed asynchronous digital reference systems by employing e-mail and web forms. The usage of the service is lower than that of in-person reference in academic libraries due to factors, such as libraries failure to effectively market the service, lack of ICT skills among users, lack of ICT facilities available for users. It was found that the libraries lack skilled and competent LIS professionals to staff the service. Factors contributing to the scarcity of skilled human resources in academic libraries include the lack of in-house training for DRS, shortage of continuing professional development courses in the country, and deficiencies in LIS curricula offered by the country s library schools. A number of issues which affect the implementation and management of DRS in academic libraries have been identified. They include: scarcity of competent human resources; access to appropriate digital resources; unavailability of suitable software for DRS; financial constraints; lack of ICT facilities; absence of a digital reference policy; lack of ICT application; paucity of resources; electricity supply; inadequate physical facilities; lack of local research and literature on DRS.

This thesis uses phenomenography to investigate the perceptions and experiences of academic libraries by faculty members across a variety of disciplines working in international branch campuses (IBCs). The main research question addressed by the study asks how faculty members experience the academic library, with the objective of identifying qualitative variations in experience within this group. The findings of this research address established practical problems related to library value and identity, and have implications for practice in both the development and evaluation of library services for faculty members, as well as communication about those services with faculty members. Furthermore, the findings of this research support practical developments in the support of faculty members engaged in transnational higher education provision. The results of the research find that these participants in this context experienced the academic library in at least six different ways and reported a variety of experiences in terms of using information, in and out of the academic library, to accomplish core faculty member functions of teaching and research. The categories of experience generated through the study are: IBC faculty members experience the academic library as relationships with librarians; as a content provider; as a discovery service; as a facilitator for engaging with the academic community; as a champion of reading books; and as a compliance centre for information ethics. Investigations into the information behaviour, library use and perceptions of faculty members have been conducted in a variety of contexts, but are limited in transnational contexts. This research therefore also represents an original and important contribution to an understanding of academic library practice in transnational or cross-border contexts, as well as contributing to a limited knowledge base about the experiences of faculty members in transnational higher education generally. Phenomenographic investigations into the experiences of library and information science elements such as libraries and information centres are rare, and therefore this research represents an original contribution to understanding this phenomenon in this way. The study employed phenomenography as the methodology for understanding the academic library experiences of the participants. Ten faculty member participants representing a variety of IBC institutions located within major educational hubs in the Arab Gulf and Southeast Asia were interviewed about their academic library experiences moving from a home campus to a branch campus, using the story of this move as a critical incident for starting discussion and relaying real experiences to the researcher. These experiences are theoretically situated in the context of information worlds (Jaeger & Burnett, 2010) in order to increase understanding around the formation of these experiences and to critically analyse practical implications. This research design contributes to the phenomenographic method by detailing its procedures and to its theoretical aspects by linking the methodological with a framework, Jaeger and Burnett’s theory of information worlds, which facilitates phenomenography outside its traditional domain of teaching and learning research.

The university library has been called “the heart of a university”, but in the past has been described as being “virtually unusable”. This exploratory study is an investigation into user experience and usability in university libraries in the UK, and aims to examine the difference between users’ experience and their expectations of using their university library. It will also investigate university library policies to determine how a user experience policy can help to improve users’ experience. A user survey was carried out at three UK university libraries, using a questionnaire which asks participants to give their current opinions on their experience of 12 usability properties, and then to rate their expectations of each of the 12 properties. This means that it is then possible to calculate the gap between how the users rate the usability of the library, and how usable it should be. Additionally, a website survey of 121 UK universities was undertaken to see which types of policies UK university libraries have in place, whether a policy for user experience factors exists at these institutions, and if so what the policy covers. The findings show the areas where the largest gaps between expectations and experience occur. One of the largest gaps at the three institutions concerns the adequacy of the information that users are able to retrieve, and this can be addressed by either improving the library’s performance in this area, or by managing the expectations of library users. The website survey of library policies shows that while there is a core of seven types of library policy, user experience policies are unusual. Library user experience and usability is undoubtedly a field growing in importance in the eyes of librarians and researchers. By taking the “lived experiences” of users into account, and doing this in conjunction with a user experience policy, the university library can become a place of continuous improvement.