Best Practices in Library Services – serie

In this book, nine librarians from across the country describe their libraries’ best practices in this key area. Their contributions range from all-encompassing customer service policies and models any library can both adapt and be proud of to micro-approaches that emphasize offering excellent user-focused technology planning, picture book arrangement with patrons in mind, Web 2.0 tools to connect users with the library, establishing good service delivery chains, and making your library fantastic for homeschoolers.As past Public Library Association President Audra Caplan writes in her introduction to this book, “There is nothing magical about providing excellent customer service; it just takes the right people, the right philosophy and the passion to make it a reality.” If you’ve got all that, here are the best practices to make stellar customer service a reality for your library’s users.

If libraries are to remain centers for lifelong learning, then that learning must increasingly be e-learning. But, where can librarians turn for the best ideas and inspiration on how to implement e-learning programs? This book features nine exemplary programs set in all types of libraries. You’ll find proven, successful ways of introducing online credit-based information literacy instruction, innovative methods for teaching critical thinking skills online, ways of using open source software in interactive learning, step-by-step guidance for instructional screencasting, ways to work with faculty on e-learning solutions through streaming video, and how a school library used e-learning to teach about the Holocaust.These stellar models offer solutions and feature the aspects you and your staff need because they recognize the problems you face. There’s plenty here for all libraries to grab on to and implement to move learning from inside the library to where your users live and work.

Just as Andrew Carnegie’s support changed the landscape of public libraries in America, Apple’s launch of the iPhone on June 29, 2007 forever altered how people expected to interact with services. Libraries, like every other kind of organization, must now make their services—not just their catalogs—available on an array of mobile devices.Mobile Library Servicesprovides 11 proven ways to reach out to mobile users and increase your library’s relevance to their day-to-day lives. Librarians detail how they created mobile apps to how they went mobile on a shoestring budget. Written by public, academic, and special librarians, these 11 best practices offer models for libraries of every type and size.

Since there’s no point in Twittering if no one acts on your tweets and there’s no point in having a Facebook page with a million “likes” if library use doesn’t increase, you’ll welcome the eight best practices presented here because they will help your library both actually do social media in a way that matters and do it well.The successful strategies presented here range from the Vancouver Public Library’s innovative use of Twitter to the United Nations Library’s adoption of a social media policy to the Farmington, Connecticut Public Library’s fantastic work using social media to reach teens who weren’t using the library. Other libraries highlight their ventures into media including blogs, Pinterest, and social catalogs.

Obtaining the funding to maintain and grow library services and resources has always been a challenge. Successful Library Fundraising: Best Practices brings together a wealth of information from public, academic, special, and school libraries who share their successful approaches to raising funds through a variety of traditional and “outside-the-box” methods:Library development (cultivating donors)EndowmentsCorporate financingSpecial eventsFriends’ groups and volunteersGrants, and moreFundraising is critical in today’s economic climate. Tips and ideas from this volume will help library professionals gain confidence to begin a fundraising program or improve their current fundraising activities.

Obtaining the funding to maintain and grow library services and resources has always been a challenge. Successful Library Fundraising: Best Practices brings together a wealth of information from public, academic, special, and school libraries who share their successful approaches to raising funds through a variety of traditional and “outside-the-box” methods:Library development (cultivating donors)EndowmentsCorporate financingSpecial eventsFriends’ groups and volunteersGrants, and moreFundraising is critical in today’s economic climate. Tips and ideas from this volume will help library professionals gain confidence to begin a fundraising program or improve their current fundraising activities.

Creative Library Marketing and Publicity: Best Practices shares the success of libraries of various sizes and types—small to large public, academic, and school libraries, systems, and organizations. Each best-practice scenario describes a library’s successful experience with marketing, branding, and promoting a library service or program, providing information about planning, actual promotion techniques, and evaluating the success of the plan or promotion methods. Most importantly, each include tips and best practices for readers. Many of these ideas and techniques are applicable across the board, so they will help you implement similar methods to promote your library services and programs and spark different and unique uses for these techniques. Strategies covered include: Using constituents’ voices in outreach effortsBuilding a social media presenceCrafting step-by-step marketing plansPlanning and implementing branding campaignsCreating buzz with promotional videosUsing e-mail marketing in outreachMarketing a new library spaceMarketing on a shoestring budgetDrawing on the best practices, experience, and expertise of library personnel from public, academic, and school libraries, this volume brings together a variety of marketing plans and creative methods for promoting libraries and their programs and services to a twenty-first-century audience. All library employees should be able to take away something from these creative, successful efforts and apply tips, techniques, and best practice suggestions to their own library marketing efforts.

Creative Library Marketing and Publicity: Best Practices shares the success of libraries of various sizes and types—small to large public, academic, and school libraries, systems, and organizations. Each best-practice scenario describes a library’s successful experience with marketing, branding, and promoting a library service or program, providing information about planning, actual promotion techniques, and evaluating the success of the plan or promotion methods. Most importantly, each include tips and best practices for readers. Many of these ideas and techniques are applicable across the board, so they will help you implement similar methods to promote your library services and programs and spark different and unique uses for these techniques. Strategies covered include: Using constituents’ voices in outreach effortsBuilding a social media presenceCrafting step-by-step marketing plansPlanning and implementing branding campaignsCreating buzz with promotional videosUsing e-mail marketing in outreachMarketing a new library spaceMarketing on a shoestring budgetDrawing on the best practices, experience, and expertise of library personnel from public, academic, and school libraries, this volume brings together a variety of marketing plans and creative methods for promoting libraries and their programs and services to a twenty-first-century audience. All library employees should be able to take away something from these creative, successful efforts and apply tips, techniques, and best practice suggestions to their own library marketing efforts.

The new ACRL information literacy concepts brings renewed interest in information literacy instruction and skills for librarians. The New Information Literacy Instruction: Best Practices offers guidance in planning for and implementing information literacy instruction programs in a wide range of instructional situations, including:Course-related instructionFreshman composition coursesProfessional medical educationNew course development and deliveryOne-shot sessionsFormal, credit coursesDistance educationVisual literacyand moreAs librarians take a new look at information literacy instruction, this essential book will help guide you in creating and maintaining a quality instruction program.

The new ACRL information literacy concepts brings renewed interest in information literacy instruction and skills for librarians. The New Information Literacy Instruction: Best Practices offers guidance in planning for and implementing information literacy instruction programs in a wide range of instructional situations, including:Course-related instructionFreshman composition coursesProfessional medical educationNew course development and deliveryOne-shot sessionsFormal, credit coursesDistance educationVisual literacyand moreAs librarians take a new look at information literacy instruction, this essential book will help guide you in creating and maintaining a quality instruction program.

Consumer Health Information Programs and Services: Best Practices presents examples of successful and long-standing library programs and services that provide health information to consumers—the general public, patients, and families or patients – who seek information about health and diseases. This best practices volume brings together library programs and services currently offered in hospital libraries, public libraries, academic health sciences libraries, and standalone consumer health libraries, covering a range of topics and special programs.Advice and best practices provided by these experienced CHI librarians will help readers who are planning a new consumer health information service, or who are looking to upgrade and expand their current program or service.This best practices book will highlight successful library consumer health information programs and services, offering advice and tips about all aspects of providing health information to the general public and patients, from planning and establishing a CHI program, to offering specialized services to special populations. Readers will find both solid, tried-and-true methods for providing these services, as well as guidance on using newer, updated techniques to reach persons needing health information.