Advances in Librarianship, Volume 33

Citation

James, S. (2012), "Advances in Librarianship, Volume 33", Library Review, Vol. 61 No. 3, pp. 231-232. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531211259346

Variety is the spice of life: that notion always coloured my outlook when I was editor of Library Review. With the exception of Festschriften – which were in every case outstanding issues with a variety of content anyway – I always shied away from themed issues: what if the subscriber wasn't particularly interested in your theme? Such reflections came to mind in considering the contents of this latest volume of Advances in Librarianship, where subject matter and approach seem to match that normally to be found in the journal where this review is carried.

And variety is certainly on offer here: operational research, intellectual capital, managers, Native American libraries, library education and e‐texts in the humanities. Even I would have been pushed to match that range in a single issue. Not only is variety of the subject matter self‐evident but its consistency is also impressive. Research is reported and evaluated, and its implications for today's – and more particularly tomorrow's – libraries highlighted.

I was always rather suspicious of operational research (OR), concerned that it might impinge on rather than underpin the quality of service. I preferred my colleagues to concentrate on service outcomes rather than the processes: I have seen too many librarians (and even libraries) fixated on processes first and service second. But despite that, Jonathan Warwick makes a solid case for OR having continuing relevance and bases his paper on a useful survey of the history of OR in libraries: there can be no question that OR can have an important role, although my argument that it enabled me to free staff from backroom tasks into direct customer service was not always welcome news to the staff affected, which leads naturally to the third paper in the volume about how the profession grows managers. I once wrote a review article on various general management topics which started from my own experience (echoed by many of my colleagues) of moving from librarian to manager almost unnoticed. It seems that little has changed, but this remains an important issue to address, as much from an individual as from an institutional or professional perspective.

Managing intellectual capital in libraries has always been an issue, but a much more important one now in our severely commercial age, and a more complex one in the electronic age. These are ably surveyed here. Although not in direct sequence, there is a natural progression to the final paper in the volume on the use of e‐texts in humanities research. The nature of the subject is surveyed and the implications for and challenges to academic libraries are outlined.

The two remaining contributions take me right back to my own editorship. Library education around the world was a constant theme, and is addressed here in relation to Australia. The final paper (actually the fourth in this volume) is just the kind of one I loved to publish – an account of library services in a setting very different from the usual, in this case “Emerging trends in North American tribal libraries.” These accounts do not just tell you what is being done in their particular circumstances, but the good ones – and this is one of the best – tell you why and, in this paper, also point out implications for other library services.

So, all in all, there is plenty of interesting and stimulating matter here. We all tend to face very similar, often the same, issues and problems, so it is useful to read how other libraries around the world are tackling them. This is a good selection of topics, claimed by the publishers as “largely unexplored areas”: perhaps a slight exaggeration but that in no way detracts from the quality of the papers. Each topic is well covered with a firm research basis which in some cases is indeed an innovation for that subject. The volume is consistently edited and elegantly produced; each paper has full references and there is an index. It is well worth reading, to provoke reflection on one's own service and its context as much as for specific advice or ideas.