Editorial

Citation

Ashcroft, L. (2006), "Editorial", New Library World, Vol. 107 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2006.072107eaa.001

Editorial

Last year, when its Council adopted a research policy and strategy, CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) embraced the ethos of an evidence-led and research-led profession. Included amongst many other points in the policy are those that CILIP should identify and promote appropriate R&D, maintain a dialogue with relevant stakeholders (whether initiators, supporters or users of R&D), ensure an adequate skills base for undertaking and applying R&D, and nurture a professional culture that embraces R&D and encourage reflective practice generally.

The article by the late Anne Clyde brings together the findings of her project on research quality and provides an international research perspective on evidence-based practice, focusing in particular on how the quality of research evidence can be assessed as a basis for evidence-based practice.

Leicestershire library service is refurbishing more than half of its service points. Contained within the council’s medium-term strategy is “improve access to and quality of libraries” and “we will improve the standard of our libraries by refurbishing sub-standard library buildings and developing different ways of accessing library and public information services as part of our Better Access to Better Services Initiative”. The success of the implementation of the People’s Network and ICT centres and the Better Value report (both inspection and its recommendations proved positive for the library service) provided a change of perception of the library service and a basis for regeneration. The County Council is committed to upgrade 30 out of the 54 buildings by 2008 with a capital injection of £5m plus money from other sources. Every library will be different to reflect the needs of the community, and some of the planned replacement libraries will be part of larger corporate or partnership projects.

In their article, Preiser and Wang report on the methodological approach taken in a project to create a Facilities Master Plan for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, which combined geographic information system and building performance evaluation methods. Specific recommendations for each branch focused on needed improvements, closure and/or consolidation with other branch libraries and the creation of new full service “hub” libraries.

Recent statistics from LISU (Creaser et al., 2005) provide some interesting reading regarding the employment of librarians. They show a decline in the employment of chartered librarians. In public libraries, the LISU statistics show that conventional professional posts fell 18 per cent in ten years when measured against user population, but rose from 38 per cent to 41 per cent as a proportion of total staff. However, total staff continues to fall. Academic library staff have risen 27 per cent in ten years (but less than the rise in students). The article by Stephens and Hamblin considers employability skills in terms of whether the UK LIM curriculum is meeting employment needs. They report on the LIMES (Library and Information Management Employability Skills) project, which aims to enhance the provision of skills-based teaching materials in the discipline and to help students document these key skills with the intention of improving the future employability of information professionals and librarians in the UK.

The LISU statistics also indicate the increasing provision of information in electronic form, which means fewer visits to academic libraries by students – more students are choosing to access information from remote workstations. In public libraries, visits are up, but this is attributed to internet use (book loans are down). Accart’s article comments that libraries and librarians must adapt their services and products to the evolution of the information society and to user needs. He discusses new online services in terms of virtual reference desks, and provides a case study of SwissInfoDesk, the virtual reference desk of the Swiss National Library.

North City Library in Harpurhey is a new library in Manchester, UK. It is the first purpose-built new library in the city for more than a decade. It replaces two branches and houses a sixth form college, and so can offer academic and reference services to both the general public and to students. The new library could be the greenest in Britain. Apart from the community garden, rainwater will be caught and re-used, its blue panels of photovoltaic cells will generate around 10 per cent of the electricity used, and an innovative temperature control system means less electricity is used for heating.

In her article, Lam discusses the expansion and renovation of the Li Ping Medical Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Pointing out that renovating a busy, fully occupied medical library sited in a hospital provides real challenges, Lam outlines and analyses those challenges and details how they were overcome.

Those library professionals seeking job-share partners may find opportunities via the LIS Job-Share Network, which has been launched by CILIP’s recruitment agency, INFOmatch. A secure bulleting board is accessible from the CILIP website (see www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/jobshare.html), which is not only of help to those seeking job-share partners, but is also available for employers to offer posts which have the potential for job-share opportunities. However, in their article, Bount and Hayden discuss another aspect of the library employment market in terms of employing library students as shelvers. Their case study is Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland, where the use of student shelving assistants is proving to be a successful undertaking and a useful resource by freeing up staff time to concentrate on other projects.

Linda Ashcroft