Grassroots Sharing:

The popularity of Bravo channel's Project Runway has translated into increased interest in fashion and design among the general public and prompted a rise in students applying to apparel design and textile science programs. Parson's The New School for Design (where Project Runway is filmed) has seen a 22 percent increase in enrollment applications. (1) The trade publication Women's Wear Daily notes that Otis College, Savannah College of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology, and Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising have also felt the effects of an increase in public awareness. The continued success of Project Runway and other shows that stress the role of fashion in our lives, has given rise to new demands on the fashion and textile collections in both public and academic libraries. To address the need to evaluate these collections, Monique Delatte and Lore A. Guilmartin have compiled a collection guide designed for large public libraries with populations interested in fashion in general and for academic libraries that serve programs in textile-related studies including fashion design, costume history, textile science, fashion merchandising, the social psychology of dress, and clothing and textile economics. Delatte and Guilmartin are well qualified to suggest materials for such a core collection. Delatte is a reference librarian in the County of Los Angeles Public Library system. She holds a B.S. in Apparel and Textile Design from Louisiana State University, and an M.S.I.S. in Library and Information Science from The University of Texas at Austin. Guilmartin is a reference and instruction librarian at the University of Houston-Downtown. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Textiles and Clothing from Iowa State University. She earned an M.S.I.S. in Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin. This guide grew out of survey work the authors conducted in 2007. Delatte and Guilmartin contacted administrators, educators, and subject librarians at forty-four public and private colleges and universities, asking questions about core resources in the field. They used the results of the survey, an exhaustive literature review, and their own expertise to create this list of key titles and resources.--Editor BOOKS AND REFERENCE TITLES Though some of the monographs listed below are out of print, each is a valuable component to a well-balanced textiles and clothing collection. Libraries currently owning these titles should retain them, as they provide depth and breadth to the collection and are classic resources. Abling, Bina. Model Drawing. New York: Fairchild Books & Visuals, 2003 (ISBN: 978-1563672750). An excellent addition to the academic library working collection for design students, chapters include Close-up Studies, Fashion Anatomy for Children, Men's Posing Dynamics, and Styling, iLayout, and Composition for Women. The CD-ROM included in this text is especially useful for fashion illustration students as it allows users to shift the poses of models and then rotate the models. American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. AATCC Technical Manual. New York: Published for the Association by Howes Publishing, 1963--(ISSN: 0734-8894). Published annually, the AATCC Technical Manual lists and describes the standardized textile testing methods that are integral to assessing textile characteristics and quality. This manual is an indispensable tool for all textile scientists. Boucher, Francois, and Yvonne Deslandres. 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1987 (ISBN: 978-0-8109-1693-7). Based primarily on artwork, Boucher's costume history depicts the fashions of the European elite from prehistory to the mid-twentieth century. The text summarizes the evolution of costume within the western world and offers useful background to students of costume history. …

In the Fall 1967 issue, Volume 25, Number 4, editor Alva W. Stewart briefly described the evolution of the North Carolina Libraries journal during its first quarter century. One way Stewart highlighted this was to include articles about the growth and development of various kinds of libraries within our state, including public, academic, school, special, and community college libraries. This present issue hearkens back to the spirit of this introspection by including articles about contemporary issues facing academic libraries, the evolution of special libraries, an in-depth look at a special public library, and a crucial opportunity for collaboration that community college libraries are taking advantage of. With all our editors along the way, it is also my hope that our journal will “serve the cause of books and libraries throughout our state.”

ABSTRACTThe author presents the results of a review and analysis of thirty-five colleges and universities in the United States that currently offer an Associate's degree and/or vocational certificate(s) in Library and Information Science. These programs, which are geared primarily to existing library support staff who seek additional training, have been created independently of each other and without a national standard to guide the curriculum. Although the American Library Association-Allied Professional Association's Library Support Staff Certification offers guidelines for the educational content of Associate's level LIS programs, a comparison reveals significant gaps. Furthermore, the ALA-APA program currently approves courses at only three institutions in the nation, and certifies graduates from only fourteen. The author identifies areas of misalignment between the Library Support Staff Certification and existing LIS programs and suggests directions for future improvement.Column Editor’s Note Community college libraries are deeply underrepresented in the professional literature and organizations of academic librarianship. As a result, the challenges and successes that take place in the community college world are largely invisible to others. This JLA column lifts the curtain to reveal the uniqueness of community college libraries as described by their most passionate advocates: the librarians who work there. Articles in this column pay tribute to the commitment and creativity of community college librarians by providing a platform where they can share their professional perspectives and stories. Want to write for this column? Interested authors are invited to submit articles to the editor at kimreed@cwidaho.cc.

Reviewed by: Eugène Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France Julie Biando Edwards Eugène Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France. By Gaëtan Benoît. Duluth, Minn.: Litwin Books, 2008. 260 pp. $32.00. ISBN 978-0-9778617-8-1. According to author Gaëtan Benoît's widow, Marie, this biography of the great champion of free public libraries in France began its life as the author's thesis for the Fellowship in the Library Association (U.K.) in 1977. This latest iteration, published by Litwin Books more than two decades after Benoît's death in 1987, examines in detail the efforts of Eugène Morel to establish free public library services in France in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The book follows Morel from his upbringing, through his early success as a literary figure and first career as a lawyer, on to his role as the advocate and initiator of free public libraries. Each of the seven chapters deals with a specific aspect of Morel's advocacy, such as children's libraries, public libraries, library education, and legal deposit, making the book as a whole largely thematic and more loosely chronological. Benoît's opening chapters explore Morel's early childhood, then delve into his subject's success as an author of French novels, including Petits Français, a roughly accurate account of his upbringing in the French educational system. It was only after his short-lived career as a literary author and critic and even shorter career as a lawyer that Morel entered the field of librarianship, beginning as a part-time employee at the Bibliothèque nationale and remaining there, moving through the ranks, for the rest of his career. His great passion was for establishing a free public library system in France. Using the libraries of the United States and Great Britain as his models, he systematically went about reforming the organization of French libraries, which at that time consisted of collections of materials seized from the aristocracy and the Catholic Church during the French Revolution. While these collections were both fascinating and valuable, they were not suited to the general readership of France at the dawn of the twentieth century. Morel's vision was to re-create a system of libraries open to all citizens and full of books and newspapers that would serve the average, not only the erudite, reader. Additionally, he became a pioneer of library education in France, establishing a program through which French women studied librarianship in the United States and brought back to France new skills and philosophical approaches to library service. The remaining chapters of the book examine in detail the efforts expended by Morel and several like-minded individuals in bringing what can be recognized as a true public library system, modern library education practices, and an updated legal deposit system to France. The details in these chapters help establish the tremendous amount of work Morel put into his advocacy. Benoît has exhaustively researched, translated, analyzed, and incorporated the text of letters, articles, lectures, books, and reports—even legislative bills. Large sections of the text are made up of translations of supporting documents, some of which provide brilliant insight into the mind of Morel. His writings excerpted in the chapter on children's libraries are [End Page 493] particularly fascinating and modern in their vision. His position, progressive at the time, will be familiar to modern librarians: "Libraries are required to teach two things: firstly, to go deeply into the study of a subject, to follow quietly, progressively, and completely a chosen path, and secondly, to choose for oneself" (88). He takes his philosophy even further, and the newness of this approach in France—where stacks were closed and libraries were intended for the intellectual elite alone, not schoolchildren—is remarkable when one considers that Morel's position is fundamental to the ideas of freedom of inquiry and critical exploration. "Does it [the library] inform? Not at all," he writes. "One must go to it, one must make an effort. It gives one the means to inform oneself" (89), and, later, "It is not important to know everything, but you...

A review of:
 
 Bradford, Jane T., Barbara Costello, and Robert Lenholt. “Reference Service in the Digital Age: An Analysis of Sources Used to Answer Reference Questions.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 31.3 (May 2005): 263-72.
 
 Objective – To test the hypothesis that electronic sources are used by librarians more often than print sources to answer questions at the reference desk.
 
 Design – Use study.
 
 Setting – Small, private university in the United States.
 
 Subjects – Five full-time and two part-time librarians working at the reference desk for four months (two months in the fall of 2002, and two months in the spring of 2003).
 
 Methods – The study recorded every question asked by library patrons during the two study periods, with the exception of non-library related directional questions and hardware problems. For each question recorded, librarians, while working solo at the reference desk, paraphrased the question and recorded the source(s) used to answer each question. Although questions were recorded regardless of source – in person, via email, or by telephone – the medium in which each question was asked and answered was not recorded. For the first half of the study period (fall 2002 semester), librarians kept manual records that were subsequently transcribed into a spreadsheet by a student assistant. In the second half of the study period (spring 2003 semester), the librarians entered data directly into a spreadsheet. The study’s data monitor (who was also a study participant) was responsible for ensuring the integrity of the data and for assigning a category to each source. The source category ‘librarian’ was problematic in that it was unclear whether or not the actual source of the answer was the librarian or a source located by the librarian. After the first half of the study, the procedure was changed to require that a reference librarian was to label a source used to answer a question as ‘librarian’ only if the answer came from a librarian’s own knowledge, and if it did not require consultation of an outside source. Categories were generated on the fly, as the data monitor reviewed the recorded questions and sources. By the end of the study, 23 categories had emerged. While all sources for answers were categorized, questions themselves were not. During the second part of the study, the gender of the patron asking the question at the reference desk was also recorded.
 
 Main results –The results for the fall 2002 and spring 2003 semesters were similar. For the entire study period, librarians used a total of 3,487 sources to answer 2,491 questions. Sources fell into 23 different categories. The top 5 categories used to answer reference questions were databases (23.92%), librarians (23.6%), library catalogue (15.03%), internal Web page (12.27%), and reference books (9.38%). The top five categories accounted for 84.2% of all sources used. For 75% of the questions, librarians referred to a single source for an answer. Almost 60% of the sources used to answer questions were electronic. Of the internal Web pages used to answer questions, the library’s online journal title listings accounted for 76%. Reference books were used to answer questions in less than 10% of cases. Less than 2% of the library’s print reference collection (173 of 9,587 titles) was consulted to answer reference questions during the study period. The approximate 60:40 ratio of questions asked by female to male patrons corresponded to the university’s student body ratio.
 
 Conclusion – The results of this study confirm the researchers’ hypothesis that librarians use electronic sources with greater frequency than they use print sources to answer patrons’ reference questions. The surprising finding in this study is the proportion (approximately one quarter) of reference questions answered by the librarians themselves, without the need to consult an outside source, either print or electronic. The study suggests that a large proportion of the reference collection goes unused in answering patrons’ questions and that librarians often answer a question using only a single a source of information. A reshelving study analyzing use of the reference collection is underway to supplement the results of the current study.

PLoS Chairman of the Board Harold Varmus applauds the newly enacted NIH public access policy as a positive step toward ensuring greater access to and better use of the scientific literature.

The application of social media tools is a new strategy for marketing public library resources and services in the present digital environment. Several social media tools are available in the digital world to promote public library resources and services. The present study aims to examine users’ perceptions of the application of social media or new tools for marketing public library resources, services, and the Karnataka Digital Public Library platform in Mysore City. The main objectives of the study are to identify the use of public library collections, the awareness of services among public library users, methods or modes to learn about the Karnataka Digital Public Library, library-user relationships, the role of social media or new media tools in marketing library products and services, and the social media platforms used to receive and reciprocate information. The study findings reveal that the majority of respondents belong to the age group below 25 years, representing 482 (58.07%). Most respondents spend more than 6 hours in the public library, accounting for 272 (32.8%). ‘Works or materials (general knowledge, competitive exams, or career guidance)’ and ‘local, regional, and national newspapers’ are the most preferred types of library collections, with a mean score of 3.42 each. The majority of respondents (mean = 3.90) are aware of the ‘Reference Service’ available in the public library. It was found that the majority of respondents (96.6%) learned about the “Karnataka Digital Public Library” platform through ‘notice boards/bulletin boards.’ Additionally, respondents indicated that ‘WhatsApp groups’ and ‘Telegram groups’ are important social media tools that help public libraries market their products and services, representing 96.1% and 90.1%, respectively. The majority of respondents use both ‘WhatsApp groups’ and ‘Telegram groups’ social media platforms to receive and reciprocate information, with a mean value of 3.94 each. The study concluded that social media tools play a significant role in helping public libraries market their products and services.

A Review of: Johnson, A.M. (2020). Reference and liaison librarians: Endangered species or “vital partners?” Views of academic library administrators. Journal of Library Administration, 60(7), 784-799. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2020.1786979 Abstract Objectives – To investigate the current state and prospects of reference and liaison librarianship. Design – Structured interviews consisted of 10 questions that lasted between 30 and 75 minutes. Setting – Fourteen medium-sized, urban universities geographically spread across the United States of America. Subjects – Fifteen library administrators with at least 10 years of experience. Methods – The author contacted academic library leaders from 17 benchmark institutions and head librarians from other R1 institutions whose libraries were members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) or whose campus size and characteristics mirrored the author’s institution in that they were medium-sized urban universities. The study examined five primary questions and included an appendix with the 16-item survey instrument. The structured interviews included 10 questions about the current state and prospects of reference and liaison librarianship, along with questions related to demographics. The author transcribed the interviews and removed all identifying information. Since the interviews were structured and thus thematically similar, coding software was not used. The author compiled and analyzed the responses to the questions. Main Results – The concepts of connecting, discovering, listening, and partnering were inherent in the definition of being a liaison librarian. In general, the library administrators, all of whom had been in the profession for 10 years or more, felt that liaison librarians should be active in furthering scholarly activities in such areas as grant-writing, generating scholarship, or data curation. There was an emphasis on outreach, being proactive, and engaging with faculty, which raised an important question for administrators: Is this skill set too broad for any one person, and if so, how can the library profession collaborate to draw upon each other’s strengths? There was a consensus that while the work of reference and liaison librarians is vital to the academic enterprise, this work need not be situated at a central reference desk. Rather, librarians would be physically embedded or electronically linked to students and faculty, helping them to formulate answerable questions, locate high-quality, evidence-based information in specialized databases, or provide support in such areas as open educational resource development, augmented reality, or scholarly communications. Conclusion – In the view of current library administrators, being a reference and liaison librarian means partnering proactively with students and faculty to ensure a deep understanding of their teaching, learning, and research needs while also maintaining a thorough knowledge of the libraries’ collections and resources. To accomplish this, the librarian must be visible to their constituencies, tell memorable, authentic stories of what they have to offer, and build lasting relationships. Reference and liaison librarians require traditional knowledge of library functions and systems and teaching skills and possess qualities such as collaboration, communication, and flexibility. Overall, library leaders believe that liaison librarians will continue to be vital partners and that without a central reference desk, there will be a deeper integration within the academic enterprise.

This research on the use of reference collection as reconciliation material at Library Library of Gadjah Mada University aims to know how far the use of reference collection level Main Library Gadjah Mada University, by focusing on visiting intensity, knowledge of the benefit, and the benefit value of reference book. The research uses a qualitative descriptive method. With the non random samplings that chooses respondents by accident. The number of sample is 75 respondent. The techniques used in collecting data are observation, questionnaire, interview, and documentation. 
 
 Data analysis use in this research is a qualitative descriptive analysis with across tabulation technique method, which is presented in the from of frequency distribution and percentage table. The research show that in visiting intensity 45% respondent often come albeit the visiting frequency only 3 up to 5 times in a month with the time duration for more than 2 hours in one visit so it can be said that the visiting intensity is still high, 73% respondents read reference books to get information. In the knowledge of reference book collection, the research shows that 92% respondents know that reference books are used as reference materials; a profound book that is not needed to be read thoroughly. 49% respondents use reference book for the first time at the university. Their reason to use the reference books because they want to know, increase their knowledge and search for
 information. 73% respondents get reference book from UGM's library. In the use of reference collection activity, 59% respondents often use it. Although there is still a reason in using reference book rarely because they have not needed it yet 56% responden never find difficulties. Nevertheless there are still respondents who find difficulties in understanding the language. 71% respondents ask help from librarians if they get difficulty in using reference book. The knowledge of the benefit and the benefit value of reference collection as a reference materials in helping to finish study assignment is that 49% respondents use reference book as reference materials in finishing their study assignment. 57% respondents said that the reference collections of Main Library of UGM support their study. As a final conclusion of this research is that in general, the reference collection at Main Library of Gadjah Mada University has been used to search information which can be used as reference material in helping to finish study assignments, including assignment in writing paper and final assignment, etc.
 
 ( Key Words : Reference Collection, Library )

The plan to develop Evergreen, the open-source consortial library software, was announced in June 2004 by Lamar Veatch, state librarian and head of the Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS). Evergreen went live in 2006. That two-year period was filled with activity. It was a major decision by GPLS to develop new software of a scope never before attempted, but it was undertaken only after it had exhausted all other alternatives to run PINES, the resource-sharing public library consortium in Georgia. Evergreen was to be designed from the ground up as a new thing: a consortial library system, that is, an integrated library system for a large, geographically dispersed, resource-sharing consortium. Why did GPLS take this path and how did it go about doing it? The decision came about after a long chain of events made over many years in Georgia as it, like all states, wrestled with how best to provide public library services to its citizens. Policy decisions over many years followed a consistent direction. Local library organizational patterns commonly follow a model of treating each library separately resulting in what today are commonly called information silos, resulting in largely separate collections with weak communications among them. Resource sharing among the libraries in most state systems is through an interlibrary loan (ILL) process. Georgia, on the other hand, has consistently chosen another direction: joining the many small public libraries into larger resource-sharing regional libraries. Other states have worked on the idea, abandoned it, taken it up again and so on. It was an idea that the library community liked in theory, but before recent developments in computer technology, Georgia's path was unusual. The fundamental problem that all states must wrestle with in providing public library service - indeed for all entities providing any library service - is the great disparity of size, wealth and resources of the many libraries that exist. There are a few very rich libraries; however, most have only modest resources. Consider these figures from the latest national-level data we have for U.S. public libraries (FY 2005). Table 1 shows that the top quartile of these libraries by their total expenditures - that is, the 25% of public libraries that spent the most - spent $7.9 billion that year while the bottom three quartiles (the 75% that spent the least) spent $1 billion in total. Indeed, to press the point, the top 10% spent $6.5 billion. Think about that: Ten percent of the public libraries in the United States spent about 6.5 times as much money as the smallest 75% of the libraries. The big libraries are very big, and the small libraries are very small, and the disparities in expenditures that these figures demonstrate are consistent across other variables such as collections, resources and staff. Moreover, they are consistent with the pattern for other types of libraries. However, our story is centered on public libraries in the United States because of decisions made by GPLS. It is useful to note that the two largest open source library systems running in the United States, Evergreen and Koha, were developed for small public library settings. If you look at the expenditure figures above, it is not hard to imagine why - the large proprietary vendors prefer to concentrate their efforts where the money is. Within the open source framework, however, Evergreen and Koha have different approaches, with Evergreen being consortial for reasons that are discussed here. The disparities in resources outlined by the data present a profound information policy question for a consensual democracy: In a system of government that relies on an informed citizenry, are such disparities acceptable? Is it acceptable for the “haves” to have access to so much more information than the “have nots”? If not, how do we ameliorate the results of this disparity? Public library service as it is configured in the United States today developed before Google and other modern software developments that have relentlessly broken down information silos in other fields. Their configuration cannot adequately provide the vast pools of information and materials that are now available to the citizenry. One step in the right direction is consortial resource sharing, and another is to use these consortia to pool money to buy access to enhanced content for all the libraries in the consortium - especially those that could not otherwise have afforded this content - the “everything everywhere” library consortium. In its history (at least by the 1940s), Georgia decided to follow its subsequently consistent policy - with the normal stops and starts involved with politics - to bind the small public libraries in the state into larger, regional entities for resource sharing. That strategy was Georgia's way to get library resources to the “have nots.” The state provided both funding and direction toward that end. Although Georgia's largest libraries are typically independent, the smaller ones today are mostly in regional systems. In 1998, David Singleton, then at GPLS and now at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, suggested a universal borrower card for Georgia's public library users. Such a card would allow all citizens of Georgia to borrow an item from any library. Given both the amount of state funding and state strategic practices to group libraries into regions, such an idea was possible. Of course, the idea was not new to Georgia, but it fell on receptive Georgia soil since the infrastructure and the general acceptance of the idea of sharing resources were in place. Because of years of preparation, state guidance and vision, the idea would work. Y2K - the computer problem that existed because of the way computers handled dates - in the end was what led to the creation of PINES (the Georgia public library resource sharing network - the network of Georgia's regional library systems). Y2K money was allocated by the state, and an RFP for a statewide system was issued. One vendor's product stood out, and PINES was born in 1999 with Phase 1 linking 26 library systems with 90 outlets (central libraries, branches and bookmobiles). PINES was an immediate success. PINES users liked being able to borrow books from a larger set of libraries with a richer set of collections than one local library. They liked access to the longer tail, and PINES added more libraries and more users. Library users altered their behavior, and many bypassed their local libraries to have access to the larger, virtual collection. PINES grew until it started having problems with the underlying software that, famously, resulted in the system's production servers having to be rebooted during the middle of the day in order to be able to handle control of the transactions load. The software had reached a previously unknown limit. Given that the software that ran PINES is running other systems that have higher circulations and larger bibliographic databases than PINES, what limit had been reached? There were several, but the central one was the system could not keep up with the update load. The software was not designed for a consortium spread over a large area with updates such as checkouts, check-ins and cataloging changes to the central database coming from so many different places. In such a system, there are many people logged into the system changing the database at any one time, and the database, to be useful, has to be current. It should reflect what is checked in or out (transactions) and what the system owns (inventory) so that users searching will know if an item is available and librarians will know the state of items in the system. These functions are basic to a modern inventory control system. In PINES, there are thousands of terminals across the state logged into the database making changes, and each change has to be reflected in the database by “reindexing” it. While rebooting in this old system allowed the system to catch up with the changes, it could not be done frequently enough. The limit reached was a hard one, and there was no solution using that software. Meanwhile, more libraries wanted to join PINES. All the while, the circulation load was large and increasing. Any large piece of software has a design architecture: how it organizes its elements, what tools it uses, that is, how it does what it does. The design architecture, in turn, is a function of various factors, the two most important being system architecture and computer costs. Many old versions of old software still litter the ILS ecosystem. The software then running PINES began development in the era when mainframes ruled the earth. This legacy software has been adapted and changed and added to over the years. Elements had been bolted on and kludged, but, it is a fact that updating deployed software has proven to be an almost impossible task almost every time it has been tried. There are a thousand problems, and what most vendors of library software have done is start over using the more modern updated practices of the time. When the original PINES software was developed, computers were immensely expensive and software comparatively primitive. Better practices and more capable small computers existed when Evergreen was envisioned, and the developers used more modern software development processes to run on more capable computers that no longer cost a million dollars each to buy. An examination of alternatives in the market found none that had the capabilities necessary to run PINES then or in the future. What was Georgia to do? Limit PINES? Give up and abandon a policy direction it had followed so consistently and that had produced such benefits? Over software? After much discussion, GPLS embarked on a revolutionary path - an open source, consortial library system to run PINES. Work began on Evergreen mid-2004. The later a software system is developed, the more modern practices can be used in that development. Evergreen, for instance, was web-aware and used Unicode for text storage and representation from the beginning. To implement these capabilities, Evergreen did not require the costly and difficult rewrites to the foundational code necessary for ILSs that had their basic code written before Unicode had been developed. Unicode is important because it allows a system to handle non-Roman scripts, including characters in Chinese and Arabic. Evergreen's development began with practices then in place in the business world. These practices today result in software that is modular, scalable and relatively easy to update - at least compared to legacy software that is even as little as five years old. Evergreen uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with representational state transfer (REST) and “n-tier” architectural design concepts. Let us explore these concepts a bit. The development philosophy behind these elements is that software is based on distributed services that communicate and collaborate through a set of standards, that is, it should be “service oriented.” In Evergreen, the open scalable request framework (OpenSRF, pronounced “open surf”) is such an SOA framework. OpenSRF is, in many ways, the key to Evergreen because it does so many things. OpenSRF provides load balancing and is robust and scalable. It also allows the development of software without requiring a detailed knowledge of Evergreen's structure. In effect, the Evergreen layer consists of a number of applications each of which rides on top of OpenSRF. The result is that the developer need only know the APIs and what information the program elements require and what they will reply to write new capabilities into Evergreen. OpenSRF handles the details of implementing a stateful, decentralized service architecture while the Evergreen code supplies the interface and business logic. OpenSRF is now a separate open source project. Networking follows a design philosophy that is often introduced to students with the OSI Reference Model. The model describes seven layers that pass information among each other to provide network services in a manner similar to what one finds with SOA. “N-tier” application architecture is a related idea where the tiers communicate and collaborate with each other by established standards. We see these operations in our daily lives. If, for example, a new version of Firefox comes out, we can change the old version for the new one without changing the operating system or reformatting our hard drives. We usually do not even have to reboot. Why? Because of the underlying architecture where each program communicates with the other parts of the network software by established rules - application programming interfaces (APIs) - that specify how the various elements involved exchange needed information. So, to change a part or one tier does not require a massive rewrite of the entire code, just what needs to be adjusted. As mentioned, the Evergreen middle layer rides on top of OpenSRF, and the user interfaces (the OPAC and staff client) ride on top of Evergreen. In short, REST is a set of principles that establishes an architectural style for large, scalable applications. Evergreen also uses other open source projects - there are no proprietary pieces in Evergreen - to supply needed functionality. One advantage of open source applications is that a developer working on one project can use what is already tested and proven by other projects. PostgreSQL (“Postgres”) is an enterprise-grade relational database system with over 15 years of development. It was chosen for Evergreen because it was virtually the only open source database system that had the capabilities to support a system with the database structure and the transactions load the size of PINES. Another key application is XUL (pronounced “zool”) which stands for XML user interface language. Developed by the Mozilla project, XUL allows fully featured cross-platform web applications. Perhaps the best known XUL-driven application is the Firefox web browser. There are, as you see, a number of pieces to the Evergreen puzzle. These modules work together, and each can be changed when necessary without affecting the others as long as the changes do not affect the communications among them. Using these practices, coupled with the open source framework, provided a flexible method for very rapid development of Evergreen in the early days and continues to this day. Focus groups were formed to ask library staff and patrons what features they would like to see and how they would like the OPAC to perform. How well they did that job is indicated by the increased usage that followed the introduction of Evergreen. For instance, year-over-year, holds increased by 30% - same libraries, same network, but a new interface that users found easier to use, and they did. The general process for development was “release early, release often,” a process followed to this day. Small, iterative changes were made and released for comment and testing - not rare mega updates. If there were a problem, the software could be fixed relatively quickly. In addition, the software was open source so that it was developed in the open, not secretly by a small group. Many eyes looking at software makes better code. Another aspect of Evergreen's development is “scratching an itch.” That is, development tends to focus on the problems that people want fixed, not necessarily theoretical problems or capabilities dreamt up by product managers in response to real or imagined competitive pressures. Any kind of software development will have its strengths and weaknesses. Scratching an itch will solve problems people really have, but the community does need a mechanism to guide development strategically to make sure that while solving this or that problem the software stays a coherent whole. As a result of what was learned about the first iteration of PINES, there were several key results expected from Evergreen. The original charge was to build something “scalable, robust and fault-tolerant.” And, of course, open source. What do those three new terms mean? Scalable means that the software can be deployed in different-sized libraries and that adding capacity is relatively easy. At the point where the decision was being made to move from the proprietary system that ran PINES, the server upgrade for the old system would have cost $1.5 million for a large server. Evergreen development cost the GPLS much less than that. Learning that lesson, Evergreen can be upgraded by adding “commodity” servers - that is, servers from any manufacturer or any do-it-yourself builder, and they can be added as needed. OpenSRF, clearly, allows Evergreen to scale easily. Because Evergreen is easy to use - remember the focus groups - as a library's users learn the software, they use it more, and growth can be done by adding relatively cheap, redundant servers, not million dollar boxes running proprietary software. Add a server or two, load OpenSRF, and you have upgraded. Evergreen runs on laptops, is currently running on a home library, and runs PINES with 16 million circulation transactions. Robust. Evergreen was designed to be able to keep functioning in dire circumstances. When a backhoe severed the PINES network, the Evergreen staff clients allowed libraries that were disconnected from the central databases to continue checking out books. When the network was restored, the database was updated by an established procedure. There was no need to write down transactions on paper. Consider: PINES has had a number of days recently with 100,000 circulations. If half the network were down for a half a day, that could be 25,000 sheets of paper to be managed. Not with Evergreen. Fault-tolerant. Servers can fail, and the system will keep on functioning. The use of redundant servers allows one to fail and the others to keep on functioning. Evergreen was designed as much as possible to never go down. Reflecting its history, Evergreen does not have acquisitions nor serials modules. Work on these two services is ongoing with releases expected by Spring 2009. It is a development project, but one coming from the library world to solve library problems. As was observed above, it has been quite difficult in the past to update software to reflect new demands on it. It did prove relatively easy to add web awareness to most existing library software but rather more difficult to add Web 2.0 capabilities and Unicode. Consortial capabilities have proved daunting. And as a result of Evergreen such capabilities are now touted by software in the market that may soon have those capabilities, too. How does Evergreen avoid these kinds of pitfalls of obsolescence? Maybe it doesn't but Evergreen's practices reflect the current best guess about how to engineer software so updating it is never as painful as it has been in the past with code bases even a few years old. Welcome to the future, version 1.

The Mission of "Little Star":Juana Manrique de Lara's Contributions to Mexican Librarianship Phillip Jones (bio) In the wake of the Mexican Revolution and after a year studying library science in the United States, Juana Manrique de Lara returned to Mexico City to begin work as library inspector for the Federal District. The story of her life and career in public and children's library service and library education is an historical narrative of both her emerging profession and her nation. This study focuses on Manrique de Lara's formative years (1899–1925) as she acquired an education and began her life's work in the midst of Mexico's prolonged civil war and subsequent reconstruction. Foremost, this study is a tribute, intended to share what too few librarians, even in Mexico, know: Juana Manrique de Lara helped establish librarianship in Mexico and passed her enthusiasm for the profession to a generation of librarians. Every society of the West today needs a certain number of doctors, magistrates, soldiers, and librarians—to cure their citizens when sick, to administer justice to them, to defend them, and to make them read. —José Ortega y Gasset, "Misión del bibliotecario" You have no idea of the enthusiasm I had, the love I felt for my profession. Indeed, it was my life, and they paid me. —Estela Morales Campos, "Entrevista: Juana Manrique de Lara" In the summer of 1924 and in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, twenty-seven-year-old Juana Manrique de Lara returned to Mexico City fresh from a year of study at the Library School of the New York Public Library to begin work as inspectora de bibliotecas (library inspector) for the Federal District. Manrique de Lara's mission, so well articulated over the course of her nearly forty-year career, was to recognize and respond to the needs of Mexicans of all ages for reading and for public libraries. In the midst of civil war she acquired an education, forged a career, and [End Page 469] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Juana Manrique de Lara, first professional librarian of the Departamento de Bibliotecas. In Estela Morales Campos, Educación bibliotecológica en México, 1915–1954 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1988), 97. made lasting contributions to librarianship in her homeland. The depth and reach of Manrique de Lara's work are reflected in her professional passions, which first encompassed children's library service, expanded to public library management, and then found tandem expression in teaching library education and as a government-appointed library consultant. Remarkably, as a young professional she succeeded by both conforming to and defying bureaucratic practice to bring children's library service, public libraries, and library education to the federal government's attention in the midst of and following the Mexican Revolution. There is very little scholarship that mentions Manrique de Lara and even less that examines her life and work in any depth. Accordingly, piecing together Manrique de Lara's early life and career is a challenging task. To do so, one must draw from a limited number of articles or sections of monographs, a single interview, contemporaneous government sources, and Manrique de Lara's own writings, almost all of which are Spanish-language materials published in Mexico and found in few public, university, or research libraries across North America. The foremost scholarship on Manrique de Lara is the work of Mexican library historian Martha Alicia Añorve Guillén, whose master's thesis led to two published articles on Manrique de Lara's contributions to the federal [End Page 470] government's library programs and to children's library services during the 1920s. Her conclusion, based on close comparisons of Manrique de Lara's early articles and Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) documents, is that although no official attribution was ever made, we can infer that the SEP heard and incorporated Manrique de Lara's suggestions into its now-landmark library planning between 1920 and 1924.1 Ample, yet not abundant in number, Manrique de Lara's own writings comprise the most compelling testament to her life, work, and ideas. With the exception of children's stories...

Previous articleNext article FreeReviewsGetting the Word Out: Academic Libraries as Scholarly Publishers. Edited by Maria Bonn and Mike Furlough. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2015. Pp. xi+275. $50.00 (paper). ISBN 978-0-83898-697-4.Jill A. SmithJill A. SmithGeorgetown University Law Center Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn the introductory chapter to Getting the Word Out: Academic Libraries as Scholarly Publishers, the editors pithily note, “Libraries exist in a symbiotic relationship with publishers that is at times a mutually profitable partnership and at others an antagonistic battle of wits, budgets, and negotiating skills.” As a means of amplifying the former and alleviating the latter, the rest of the essays in the book outline the benefits and challenges of libraries as publishers as well as providing case studies in actual library publishing.After the introduction, which provides historical context and establishes a hopeful tone for the future of libraries as publishers, the essays are grouped into three sections: “Why Libraries Publish,” “How Libraries Publish,” and “What Libraries Publish.” An overarching theme of most of the essays is how libraries reframe their role in the information ecosystem, moving from a focus on curation and preservation to one that also encompasses production.The first essay, “Scholarly Publishing as an Economic Public Good,” starts by informing the reader that libraries as publishers is a recurring, not original, idea. “Many of the earliest US academic presses got their start in university libraries,” but the demands and constraints of publishing physical books led most presses to become independent units (17). The advent of digital distribution of scholarship lessens this pressure to be independent. In fact, many of the essays throughout the collection argue that the digital technologies libraries already maintain would reverse that pressure, making the library the most logical partner or production unit for academic publishing as “the missions and methods of the press and library tend to converge in the digital world” (40). The rest of the essays take various approaches as to how this convergence could or does play out in the current academic publishing/library landscape.At this stage in the evolution of libraries and scholarly publishers, the chapter “Toward New-Model Scholarly Publishing: Uniting the Skills of Publishers and Libraries” may be the most valuable to a library director seeking to enter the publishing sphere. It takes a nuanced look at both sides of the publisher/library coin by someone who has actually been in several roles in both types of enterprises. The piece is rife with practical information that sometimes debunks conventional wisdom, for example, “The common assumption that all-digital publishing would save university presses is a canard: up to 80 percent of publishers’ costs come before printing, binding, warehousing, and shipping” (63, emphasis in the original). The hidden costs and structural issues within libraries that can lead to difficulties in starting and continuing a publishing enterprise are discussed. The chapter also addresses review and selection standards and the pitfalls therein and, most important, identifies nonobvious transferable skills that libraries and librarians can bring to the publishing enterprise.A large portion of the collection focuses on case studies of actual libraries as publishers. These essays showcase the fact that there is a wide range of both institutions and definitions of the concept of publishing. A survey of existing university press/library collaborations is outlined in the chapter “From Collaboration to Integration: University Presses and Libraries.” For institutions that are looking at having their existing presses report to the library, this chapter includes a chart of institutions that have (or have had) this structure from 2008 to 2014 (85). Smaller college library/publishers are showcased in an essay titled “Nimble and Oriented towards Teaching and Learning,” which includes an excellent list of practical recommendations for smaller academic libraries considering such a program (164–67). The short essay “The Evolution of Publishing Agreements at the University of Michigan Library” discusses how the contractual relationship between the library/publisher and authors shifted over time due to changing circumstances. This chapter, while an interesting view on the realpolitik of publishing, could have been improved by the inclusion of concrete examples of the changing language in the agreements that are discussed.A bit more editorial oversight and harmonizing of the materials would also have made the book more helpful to readers. For instance, several essays (including the introduction) offer various definitions of library publishing that are unhelpfully repetitive. One valuable chapter on publisher training has the vague name “Library as Publisher: Capacity Building for the Library Publishing Subfield”; a more concise and descriptive title would be more clear for someone scanning the book’s table of contents. In addition, the chapter that follows this one identifies a college minor in publishing and editing, which was not mentioned in the training chapter. Despite these quibbles, the book in general is an exceedingly thorough, valuable resource to anyone planning a library publishing endeavor or looking to expand the scope of a current program. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 87, Number 1January 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/689317 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A book collection in corpore is usually used to describe a historically formed, indivisible collection of books having a historic, scientific and cultural value. Specialized research on this topic in Lithuania has been scanty, if any, with the exception of research conducted on acquiring and storing book collections in libraries as well as similar topics. The article aims at investigating the theoretical aspects of using the term book collection and providing the analysis of existing practices and trends with regard to book collections both in Lithuanian and foreign libraries. To achieve this objective, the following methods of literary analysis and empirical research have been used: analysis of library websites, expert survey, interviews with the library staff taking care of book collections at their disposal. The objects of research are the book collections in corpore, acquired and stored in the National Library of Lithuania, libraries of state-level and county libraries. The libraries which decide to store and preserve book collections in corpore, undertake a museum function, that is, the inherent function pertinent to a memory institution. This function is not characteristic of public libraries. However, it is among the core functions of the libraries having the national and state status. Based on the criterion of the former owner, collections in corpore can be grouped as follows: personal libraries (the libraries of outstanding statesmen, public figures, science and culture mak­ers) and book heritage of various institutions (institutional libraries). It turned out that currently 144 collections in corpore are being stored in the National Library of Lithuania, state-level and coun­ty libraries, with personal libraries identified as the prevailing group among them (137). The seven remaining collections in corpore are institutional libraries. The analysis of the information available in library websites on the collections in corpore revealed that the material presented is rather scarce and the websites do not contain comprehensive infor­mation about the scope of the respective collections. Thus, the user’s access to information is rather restricted. Today, the acquisition of collections in corpore has been reduced in scope, reflecting the current situation in librarianship. The status of some of the libraries which have acquired a great many book collections in corpore (for example, Vilnius University Library) have to be reviewed. Hav­ing established whether we are dealing with a collection in corpore or whether it is merely a donated collection of books, we can integrate the books in question into the library holdings, marking book provenance indicators in a bibliographic description in the online catalogue. Due to their exclusiv­ity, book collections in corpore are becoming book monuments. Such a status puts their custodians under an obligation to treat them as the sets of documents having special value, that is, as book monuments.

abstract: This study examines cooperative collection development (CCD) for area studies and foreign language collections at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) libraries, based on a 2020 survey. Respondents provided details about cooperative collection initiatives (CCIs) at their libraries and their attitudes toward CCD. Most respondents had a favorable opinion of CCD, citing access to a broader collection of materials and cost savings as primary reasons. Challenges include the work and time involved in managing CCIs. This composite picture of how libraries build collaborative collections and the perceived benefits and challenges of CCD will inform librarians and administrators alike as they consider how best to build area studies and foreign language collections.

A review of:
 Hernon, P., & McClure, C. (1986). Unobtrusive reference testing: The 55 percent rule. Library Journal, 111(7), 37-41.
 
 
 Objective – To determine the number of government documents reference questions that are answered correctly by professional library staff.
 
 Design – The authors utilized unobtrusive reference testing: reference queries posed to library personnel who were unaware they were being evaluated. As opposed to other designs that require the researcher’s presence in the setting, unobtrusive testing utilizes proxies to administer test questions to the subjects, reducing the possibility of reporter bias.
 
 Setting – Twenty-six public and academic libraries participating in the U.S. Government Printing Office Depository Program located in the Western, Southern, and Midwestern United States. The Federal Depository Program consisted of 1400 libraries at the time of the study. One public and one academic library were chosen for each city.
 
 Subjects – Reference and government documents librarians. These two staff types were selected in order to compare the accuracy of each group’s responses to the queries.
 
 Methods – A set of 15 predetermined factual and bibliographic questions were developed by the authors and administered to library staff respondents by proxies. Government documents were selected as the foundation for the test questions. In selecting federal depository libraries for their sample the authors could ensure all queries may hypothetically be answered using U.S. Government Printing Office documents, as all of the libraries would hold the resources in question.
 
 Graduate students enrolled in the University of Arizona and University of Oklahoma library science programs were trained by the authors to serve as proxies. The proxies posed as library users and administered the set of queries at each selected library. Reference librarians and government documents librarians were tested separately, receiving seven and eight questions respectively at each library visited. Over a four-month period a total of 390 questions were posed and their answers recorded.
 
 Main Results – The respondents correctly answered 241 of 390 queries (62 percent). Government documents librarians accurately answered 65 percent of questions, while reference librarians successfully responded to 59 percent. Hernon and McClure derived the “55 percent rule” for reference accuracy from these results and previous unobtrusive studies conducted by both the authors and other researchers. This body of research estimates the rate of accurate answers of factual and bibliographic questions to be between 50 and 62 percent.
 Data regarding the “interview and search process” (I&S), defined as the activities between the time a query was posed and when a resolution was provided, also yielded intriguing findings. Regardless of the question asked, the average I&S duration was three to five minutes. Two-thirds of the accurate answers were supplied within three minutes, and 89 percent within five minutes of the initiation of I&S. The duration of I&S did not vary significantly by library type or librarian type.
 
 Reasons for the provision of inaccurate answers included providing the wrong data (64 percent of instances), responding with “don’t know” and ending the interaction (20 percent), or claiming the library did not own a source that would answer the query (15 percent). Other findings included the fact that respondents infrequently offered referrals, which took place in 17 percent of all interactions, and that the three geographic regions studied had an even distribution of correct answers.
 
 Conclusions - Based on their research results as well as those of similar unobtrusive studies, the authors propose two rules regarding reference assistance that apply to public and academic libraries. First, reference librarians correctly answer approximately 55 percent of factual and bibliographic queries received (the 55 percent reference rule). Second, librarians spend no more than five minutes on most factual and bibliographic questions (the five-minute answer rule).
 
 Ultimately, Hernon and McClure recommend reevaluating the centrality of reference services to library operations. If trained professionals are unable to answer more than 60 percent of factual questions correctly, should reference services continue to receive such considerable staffing and funding? Or, alternatively, should libraries increase efforts to improve the accuracy of answers? The authors close by challenging the profession to address the need for strategic assessment of reference effectiveness.