Access, Delivery, Performance: The Future of Libraries without Walls

Citation

Žumer, M. (2010), "Access, Delivery, Performance: The Future of Libraries without Walls", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 66 No. 2, pp. 296-297. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2010.66.2.296.2

This is a festschrift in celebration of professor Peter Brophy, who retired in 2008 after a distinguished career as researcher, practitioner, manager and educator. Contributions by professors of library and information science, researchers, academic librarians were invited on different subjects, reflecting broad interests of Professor Brophy. It is an acknowledgement of his original thinking and contribution to library and information science.

Following an introduction and a very interesting memoir by Michael Buckland, describing the Library Research Unit at the University of Lancaster, the contributions are grouped in four themes.

The first theme, “Libraries, learning and distance learning”, consists of two papers. The first, “Alice in www.land” by Gill Needham and Nicky Whistead gives an interesting overview of the development of library services for distance learners at Open University. Following is the paper by David Baker, “Putting the ‘e’ into libraries and learning”, which discusses the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in learning and teaching in UK higher education and highlights the role of Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Several JISC projects are described.

“Widening access to information” is the second theme, represented by three contributions. Jenny Craven writes about library services for visually impaired people. This is followed by a paper by John Dolan, “Public libraries, an enduring freedom: widening access to learning, information and culture”, an excellent description of the changing nature of the public library for the twenty‐first century. The author mentions the importance of technology, but emphasises the requirement for “continued and planned investment in the people who work in libraries”. The final paper in this section is “Sceptic 2.0? Social networking technologies in public libraries” by Juliet Eve. This is a refreshing text, contrasting the prevailing uncritical praise of “everything with 2.0 at the end”. It calls for a reflective and appropriate use of technologies and argues for parallel development of “Library 1.0 services”.

Theme 3 is “Changing directions of information delivery”. The first paper by Rowena Cullen and Brenda Chawner deals with a very current topic of institutional repositories in tertiary institutions. It is a good list of issues and an overview of national and international initiatives. The paper “Folksonomies to ontologies: the changing nature of controlled vocabularies” by Richard J. Hartley contributes to the ongoing discussion of the role (and future) of controlled vocabularies. After a decline of controlled vocabularies in the 1990s the author explains a resurgence of interest, which has produced quite a variety of controlled languages. Yet he remains sceptical: the high cost of producing and maintaining a controlled vocabulary may be too high to justify their existence beyond limited domain‐specific implementations, where considerable financial or other benefits are expected.

Theme four, “Performance, quality and leadership”, focuses on organisational issues. The first paper by Charles R. McClure and John T. Snead is a presentation of EDMS, a web‐based learning and instructional tool that will help public libraries determine the most appropriate evaluation approach to fit their particular situation. Jillian R. Griffiths is the author of “Measuring the quality of academic library electronic services and resources”, focusing on the quality attribute measurement in practice. It is an important discussion in context of competition with Google and others that libraries are facing now. The theme concludes with “Influential leadership for academic libraries” by Jennifer Rowley and Sue Roberts. Academic libraries are facing changes in expectations of their users, which calls for leadership at all levels. The nature of leadership required to shape the future for libraries and information professionals is discussed in detail.

Finally, there is a selected bibliography of professor Brophy, illustrating again the variety of his interests. Five publications in 2008 and six in 2007 prove again the statement in the introduction: Peter Brophy retired at the zenith of his career.

I am sure this book will find a broad audience; those interested in a general overview of current topics will read all chapters, others will focus on individual contributions. It will be used both by practitioners and educators who are interested in challenges facing library and information services of the future.