The Library World Volume 16 Issue 12

Column Editor’s Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues forward from the point of view of public libraries, large and small, wealthy and struggling, used and neglected, and those facing the future, as well as those struggling to preserve practices that deserve respect, if not preservation. Although the Journal of Library Administration has peer-reviewed articles, this “In the Public Interest” column is intended to represent all of the perspectives of the public concerning public libraries, and those of persons who are delivering service to the public through public libraries. This column will appear on a rotation, in several issues each year. Submissions are not peer-reviewed, but are reviewed and selected by the column editor. Public library administrators, managers, anyone on the staff of a public library, and those serving in elected and appointed positions in local governments are invited to contribute to the column by contacting Josie Parker at josie@aadl.org email address. Manuscript guidelines and submission timelines will be sent with further instruction for authors.

Introduction: library management and the global economic crisis This chapter attempts to take a global, or at least a European, look at the effects of the economic crisis on the dominant, market-driven approaches to library management and at the underlying socio-economic aspects of that crisis. Throughout history, library administrators and managers have certainly demonstrated an active interest in socioeconomic and technological change and crisis. The risks and threats posed to libraries and library collections are typically related to natural causes (earthquakes, floods, etc.) and to human-related disasters (epidemics and wars, terrorism, etc.) resulting from political and social instability. Economic crises, however, have deep philosophical roots, are difficult to predict and even harder to understand (Greene and McMenemy, 2012). This is so in the case of the global economic crisis of 2008, which hit not only libraries but also their dominant underlying library management principles with full force. Indeed, although a number of studies are available (see Kostagiolas et al., 2013, for a review) on the effects of economic crisis on library services and their operations, very few, if any, actually deal with the impact of economic crisis on the library management paradigm itself. Lessons can be learned from the current economic crisis in terms of the role and the socioeconomic positioning of libraries, and obviously the ‘proper’ after-crisis library management still needs to be detailed, elaborated and analysed. This chapter offers a contribution to discussions on the reassessment of the underlying values of library and information services management in the face of economic crisis. This management notion should aim to guide and actually prepare libraries to respond in financially straitened times. For the present analysis, it is not considered necessary to provide detailed definitions of economic (or fiscal) crises or even to detail the literature on the causes of the different types of crises. However, everyone dealing with library management will agree that a deep economic recession can bring about catastrophic socio-economic events that may cause shock to libraries. For example, public library administration will be in a distressed condition when state funding is reduced by 80% in three fiscal years and staffing levels are dramatically reduced.

Many public library administrators are being forced to look toward outsourcing as a way of securing critical support services. Begins with a description of the Charleston County Library’s use of cataloging outsourcing services, followed by an explanation of the various methods employed by vendors to transmit cataloging data to customers. There are practical suggestions for those considering an outsourcing arrangement, with solutions for offsetting the cataloging quality shortcomings inherent in some outsourcing practices. Concludes that with proper planning and vigilance, outsourcing can produce a quality product, one that will allow the technical‐services staff the time needed to construct a unified index for the library’s multifarious materials and information sources.

This article responds to the concern of small libraries that their size puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to advocating for public funds. By means of interviews with public library administrators and local government agents, it is shown that small libraries can be successful in local public funding when they use some of the same techniques of making themselves fundable that large libraries use. These are: emphasizing the dollar value of their activities to local government; taking into account local government agendas; involving the business community as spokespersons; and astutely managing library opposition. Research for the article is based in two states where local public funding has been notoriously weak, California and Pennsylvania. Libraries discussed (selected by convenient sampling) are in library service areas ranging in population from 9,278 (Borough of Carnegie, Pennsylvania) to 54,400 (San Rafael, California).

Jimmy Buffet didn't have public library administrators in mind when he sang of Changes in attitudes, changes in latitudes. His words do, however, describe the current state of reference/informati...

<i>Public Library Law and Administration in California: A Review of Selected Problems</i>. F. Patrick Henry

WE have received a number of communications for the most part cordially welcoming The Library World and promising support. Among these are several appeals in favour of maintaining, in a crisp, brief manner, the practical side of the magazine to the exclusion of long papers on professional subjects written by cranks or conceited persons. We value this advice the more that it jumps with our own intentions, and also because experience has proved the folly of making a general journal of this kind a vehicle for the propagation of the tenets of any one school of librarianship. At the same time our columns will be open for the fair discussion of any Library problem, provided it has the ordinary qualities of interest and practicalness. It is only by the frank, frequent, and impersonal discussion of important questions that perfection can ever be attained. We do not agree with the opinion, so often heard, that every point, in Library administration has been discussed ad nauseam. If certain subjects crop up with much frequency, it will generally be found that a new aspect is presented at each repetition. Many experienced Librarians and other observers are of opinion that librarianship is at present in its infancy, and that great developments are looming in the near future. The air has been so greatly cleared in recent years that additional means may be looked for at any time as an act of governmental policy. With increased means will come enormous advances in Library policy and administration, and it shall be our endeavour to help towards this result by gathering and spreading information of a practical nature which will make for improvement. We shall neither ignore cranks nor the strictly orthodox Librarian, but give equal justice to both. So many useful and valuable ideas have come from the so‐called “cranks,” since history first commenced to chronicle their doings, that we shall be chary of rejecting any novelty because it may seem a “cranky” departure from established practice.

THE pages of the Library World have at all times been open to receive the opinions of every side, on all questions of library policy, and we believe that it can be fairly claimed that no other English professional journal can show a greater record of catholicity and freedom from prejudice. Just recently we have published three articles in succession, which plead for, or advocate, some method of mitigating what the writers term the “Fiction Nuisance,” and one result of our complaisance may be witnessed in the stir which has been caused in journalistic quarters, over the alleged shortcomings of Public Libraries, and their scandalous distribution of nothing but fiction! It is argued, with some justice, that, if librarians are so quick to admit the existence of a fiction nuisance, then the case must be very serious indeed; and that it is regarded in this light may be gathered from the article on “Free Libraries,” by Mr. J. Churton Collins, in the June Nineteenth Century. For some reason or another, best known, no doubt, to themselves, certain librarians are always ready to join in the hue and cry against Public Libraries, and to lend the sanction of their authority to the general execration of fiction reading, thus giving a weapon to the enemy which is promptly used to thrash municipal libraries into a pulp. For months past this outcry against libraries has been going on, and there cannot be a single doubt that it has been stimulated by, if it did not originate in, the injudicious apologies for high fiction percentages in some library reports, and the publication of articles by librarians who admit too much, without giving substantial grounds for their conclusions. We are unable to say whether such apologies and articles are dictated by the weak, but human, desire to side with the majority, but there can be no doubt as to their harmful tendency and the evil they are causing all over the country. It is time, therefore, that the other, and, we believe, true side of the question should be put forward, and we propose to devote a series of articles to show that the charges made against Public Libraries of being nothing but huge engines for the distribution of fiction, mostly bad in tone and quality, are either gross misrepresentations, or exaggerations capable of explanation, and justification. As an introduction to this series, we have obtained permission from Mr. Thomas Greenwood, to use the greater part of the paper entitled, “The Great Fiction Question,” which is printed in Greenwoods Library Year Book, 1897, and is now becoming scarce and difficult to procure, owing to the book being out‐of‐print; like the later Year Book of 1900–1901. This paper is a vigorous, fair, and able statement of the case for fiction, which has not received the amount of attention it deserves, and we think it will be performing a service to librarians if we reprint it as a preliminary to our own proposed examination of the question of Fiction Reading in Public Libraries:

We open this second issue of the year in what has become a traditional way, with an extensive article on libraries in the host country for this year’s World Library and Information Congress (WLIC), to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 10–15 August. In her paper, ‘Swedish libraries: An overview’, Barbro Thomas – now retired, but with a distinguished professional career which included serving as a member of numerous professional boards and committees in Sweden and in IFLA – gives us a very readable overview of the Swedish library landscape. Her paper describes the background to public library development, the development of university and university college libraries and library legislation, and provides an overview of the national policy on literature and the remuneration system for Swedish writers, translators and illustrators. The paper concludes with a description of the new national structure with the National Library as the supervising authority for both academic and public libraries and suggests that cooperation between public and research libraries will deepen in future. The second paper in this issue is a revised translation of a paper presented at the 2009 WLIC in Milan, by Margarita Perez Pulido, a professor in the Faculty of Library and Information Science and a Director of the Documentation Service at the University of Extremadura in Spain, where she teaches planning and evaluation of information systems and professional ethics. Her paper, ‘Programs promoting reading in Spanish prisons’, focuses on a series of studies and findings that document the effectiveness of reading and writing as a tool for the rehabilitation of disadvantaged population groups, including prisoners. The paper provides an analysis of the current situation in Spain which identifies examples of best practices, analyzes methodologies, and examines the extent of innovation demonstrated by these programs within the unique prison environment, as well as in the context of the Spanish cultural and legal framework. Innovative services of a different kind are the subject of the next paper, ‘Innovative services for libraries through the Virtual Reading Rooms of the Digital Dissertation Library, Russian State Library’, by Nina Avdeeva, Head of the Department of Support of Access to Digital Resources of the Russian State Library, Head Manager of the Digital Dissertation Library (DDL) project of the Russian State Library and Chief Developer of the DDL website. The paper describes how the Russian State Library started the DDL in 2003 to ensure that its valuable collection of dissertations was safely kept and widely accessible. Virtual Reading Rooms, where readers can access the resources of the DDL, have been set up in various libraries in Russia and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Within the framework of the DDL, the Open Digital Dissertation Library (ODDL) allows authors to place their dissertations or abstracts on open access at the DDL website. The Russian State Library continues to work on the development of the DDL in order to form a common information zone for researchers. Another aspect of ‘virtuality’ is the subject of a revised version of another Milan WLIC paper, ‘Virtual reunification as the future of ‘codices dispersi’: Practices and standards developed by e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland’, by Anne Marie Austenfeld, a research associate with the Library which is a joint project of the University of Fribourg Medieval Institute and the Abbey Library of St. Gall. Her paper describes how the advent of the online digital library has made possible the virtual reunification of valuable medieval and early modern manuscripts – known as ‘codices dispersi’ – which are physically dispersed in various library collections. The e-codices website of the Virtual Manuscript Library aims to make complete digital images of dispersed materials accessible to scholars as an identifiable collection or unit, provide a context for serious study, and offer participating owner libraries the I F L A

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.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate various strategies of Malaysian public academic libraries that have been implemented to support library financial resources and to describe the challenges faced by the public university libraries in implementing income generation activities.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative data collection approach using a structured interview has been employed to elicit the opinions of librarians working in public university libraries in Klang Valley, Malaysia. In total, five (5) interview transcripts have been analyzed using theme-based analysis.FindingsThis study shows that the Malaysian public academic libraries showed positive reactions toward income generation. Various activities of revenue generation are carried out to support library financial resources on a small scale. However, management support for this concept is poor resulted due to many problems in carrying out the activities.Practical implicationsThis study provides insights into the importance of revenue generation activities as a source of library financial resources at public academic libraries. The strategies include the investment of academic libraries in implementing the activities related to the income generation. It is required for the library to add this activity in its library budget, the proper strategic planning and the introduction of various revenue generation activities.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the field of library and information management as it highlights the strategies of outside revenue generation activities in Malaysian public academic libraries. Library administrators could use the results to develop their strategic plans to ensure the success of the initiatives.

come by a variety of pathways to be families in the media, and each provides the setting or opportunity for the public scrutiny of private behaviors. This address discerns underlying connections between the disparate experiences of families who have come to be in the public eye and reasons toward some deeper truths about the interweave of our public life and private selves. The address is organized around three themes: the family as the proper domain of private behavior, the social functions of public scrutiny of private behaviors, and the structural dimensions of public scrutiny. I conclude that morality is the bridge that brings public sensibilities into our private lives and private sensitivities into the public domain, and as such it needs to be taken up as a topic for empirical exploration, demystified, and explained. Key Words: family privacy, media, morality, public scrutiny, social sanction. The theme for the annual NCFR conference in 1998 was Families in Global Context: Media, Environment, and Peace. When this theme was announced at the board of directors meeting in November, 1997, 1 began to shape ideas for a presidential address that could support the theme and at the same time allow me to pull together and synthesize my reflections on the experiences of families who happen to find themselves in the public eye, that is, families in the media. I did not know then that the revelations of President William Clinton's sexual affair with a young White House intern would dominate both politics and the media during the summer and fall of 1998 and conspire to make this topic far more timely than I anticipated. Nor when I began to write this address could I have predicted the intensity of the media frenzy and the bitterly partisan political skirmishes that would accompany the unfolding sexual scandal. So, I start with a disclaimer: My objective in this address was not to add to the litany of others who have opined about the President's values and sexual behavior or the subsequent impeachment hearings that opened that behavior for all the world to share, although I confess that I have drawn on the imbroglio to illustrate certain points. Rather, my motivation for considering the public scrutiny of private behaviors as a sociological phenomenon grew out of several seemingly unrelated personal experiences and observations. My hope in addressing this topic is that together we might discern some underlying connections in meaning across these disparate experiences and reason toward some deeper truths about the interweave of our public life and private selves. Let me recount a few of these experiences and observations for you. First, those who know me well may recall that my father was murdered almost 14 years ago. That experience thrust my family into a public situation marked by nightly news casts carrying visual images of my father's body on a cloth-draped gurney and being moved into an ambulance by uniformed officers. These were followed by several days' worth of stories in the local newspapers about my father's career, his second marriage, and intimate details of his last minutes of life. The barrage of intrusive publicity was repeated 5 years later when the murderer was brought to trial. Now, fast forward to last summer when I was disturbed by the sounds of a raucous argument coming from my living room. I was puzzled because the shouting and loud bickering were in voices completely unfamiliar to me. Upon checking, I found both of my daughters completely absorbed in the Rikki Lake Show, one of the ubiquitous programs of the shock-TV genre. I sat with them as we watched three mother-daughter pairs duke it out in verbal fisticuffs on national television. The daughters were accusing their mothers of trying to steal the daughters' boyfriends and were appealing to the studio and television audiences for support. Another set of observations comes from the field trips I take with my family violence students to the Fourth Circuit Court in Knoxville, which bears petitions for orders of protection and divorce petitions. …

This study examines the programs and policies of two Ontario library systems to determine in what ways their strategies support the social inclusion of newcomers. Through interviews with library administrators and librarians in the Toronto and Windsor Public Libraries, issues surrounding the development and delivery of programs to newcomers to Canada are explored. Interview findings are used to highlight best practices, and to make recommendations designed to address current barriers to and gaps in service provision. Theories of social inclusion and acculturation, outlining stages of immigrant integration, are used to analyze the newcomer services of public libraries and their importance in the process of settlement. This study highlights the challenges faced by Canadian public institutions in responding to the needs of newcomers.

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.

&lt;p&gt;This research is an attempt to clarify the extraordinary and new concept in public libraries - trust as a form of governance. Public libraries world wide are faced with the dilemma of having to find funding to keep the services they provide for their communities as good, or preferably better, than it has been. Trust as a form of governance is just one possibility facing public libraries in New Zealand today. At the onset of this research it became clear that no literature has been produced or research undertaken on the topic of trusts in public libraries in New Zealand or on the governance of public library trusts. As trust as a form of governance could become an important issue in the restructuring and funding of public libraries in New Zealand as well as in the management changes facing public libraries in New Zealand today, it is important that research be done on the topic and made available to the public library community. As a supporting theoretical framework for planning the research, Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory and more specifically, the theory of the innovation process in organisations has been used.&lt;/p&gt;