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Lean Library Management
Eleven Strategies for Reducing Costs and Improving Services
John J. Huber
American Library Association, 2011

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LGBTQAI+ Books for Children and Teens
Providing a Window for All
Christina Dorr
American Library Association, 2018

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Librarians as Community Partners
An Outreach Handbook
Carol Smallwood
American Library Association, 2010

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The Librarian's Atlas
The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain
Seth Kimmel
University of Chicago Press, 2024
A history of early modern libraries and the imperial desire for total knowledge.
 
Medieval scholars imagined the library as a microcosm of the world, but as novel early modern ways of managing information facilitated empire in both the New and Old Worlds, the world became a projection of the library. In The Librarian’s Atlas, Seth Kimmel offers a sweeping material history of how the desire to catalog books coincided in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aspiration to control territory. Through a careful study of library culture in Spain and Morocco—close readings of catalogs, marginalia, indexes, commentaries, and maps—Kimmel reveals how the booklover’s dream of a comprehensive and well-organized library shaped an expanded sense of the world itself.
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The Librarian's Book of Lists
A Librarian's Guide to Helping Job Seekers
George M. Eberhart
American Library Association, 2010

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The Librarian's Book of Quotes
Tatyana Eckstrand
American Library Association, 2009

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The Librarian’s Guide to Book Programs and Author Events
Brad Hooper
American Library Association, 2016

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The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels for Adults
American Library Association
American Library Association, 2010

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The Librarian's Nitty-Gritty Guide to Content Marketing
Laura Solomon
American Library Association, 2016

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Libraries amid Protest
Books, Organizing, and Global Activism
Sherrin Frances
University of Massachusetts Press, 2020
In September 2011, Occupy Wall Street activists took over New York's Zuccotti Park. Within a matter of weeks, the encampment had become a tiny model of a robust city, with its own kitchen, first aid station, childcare services—and a library of several thousand physical books. Since that time, social movements around the world, from Nuit Debout in Paris to Gezi Park in Istanbul, have built temporary libraries alongside their protests. While these libraries typically last only a few weeks at a time and all have ultimately been dismantled or destroyed, each has managed to collect, catalog, and circulate books, serving a need not being met elsewhere.

Libraries amid Protest unpacks how these protest libraries—labor-intensive, temporary installations in parks and city squares, poorly protected from the weather, at odds with security forces—continue to arise. In telling the stories of these surprising and inspiring spaces through interviews and other research, Sherrin Frances confronts the complex history of American public libraries. She argues that protest libraries function as the spaces of opportunity and resistance promised, but not delivered, by American public libraries.
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Libraries and Sustainability
Programs and Practices for Community Impact
René Tanner, Adrian K. Ho, Monika Antonelli, and Rebekkah Smith Aldrich
American Library Association, 2021
Library workers at all types of organizations, as well as LIS students learning about this newest Core Value of Librarianship, will find this book an easy-to-digest introduction to what staff at a range of libraries have accomplished in incorporating sustainability into their decision making and professional practices. In addition, a discussion about the role of economics and sustainability will challenge readers to stretch in new ways to positively impact their communities.

As a core value of librarianship, sustainability is not an end point but a mindset, a lens through which operational and outreach decisions can be made. And it extends beyond an awareness of the roles that libraries can play in educating and advocating for a sustainable future. As the programs and practices in this resource demonstrate, sustainability can also encompass engaging with communities in discussions about resilience, regeneration, and social justice. Inspiring yet assuredly pragmatic, the many topics explored in this book edited by members of ALA's Sustainability Round Table and ALA’s Special Task Force on Sustainability include
  • a discussion of why sustainability matters to libraries and their user communities;
  • real-life examples of sustainability programming, transformative community partnerships, collective responses for climate resilience, and green building practices;
  • lessons learned and recommendations from library workers who have been active in putting sustainability into practice;
  • the intersection of sustainability with the work of equity, diversity, and inclusion;
  • suggestions regarding the revision of library and information science curriculum in light of the practical need to build community resilience;
  • an examination of how libraries’ efforts to support Doughnut Economics can bolster the United Nations' work on the Sustainable Development Goals, which seek to address the global impacts of climate change; and
  • potential collaborators for future sustainability-related initiatives.
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Libraries and the Affordable Care Act
Helping the Community Understand Health-Care Options
Francisca American Library Association
American Library Association, 2015

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Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America
Edited by Christine Pawley and Louise S. Robbins
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
For well over one hundred years, libraries open to the public have played a crucial part in fostering in Americans the skills and habits of reading and writing, by routinely providing access to standard forms of print: informational genres such as newspapers, pamphlets, textbooks, and other reference books, and literary genres including poetry, plays, and novels. Public libraries continue to have an extraordinary impact; in the early twenty-first century, the American Library Association reports that there are more public library branches than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Much has been written about libraries from professional and managerial points of view, but less so from the perspectives of those most intimately involved—patrons and librarians.
            Drawing on circulation records, patron reviews, and other archived materials, Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay in this collection examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century.
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Libraries and the Substance Abuse Crisis
Supporting Your Community
Cindy Grove
American Library Association, 2020

The opioid epidemic, and other behavioral health issues such as alcohol and drug abuse, directly impact every community across the nation; and, by extension, public libraries’ daily work. Because libraries are not only trusted guardians of information but also vital community centers, people struggling with addictive behaviors as well as their family members and friends often turn to the library for help. But many library workers feel overwhelmed, finding themselves unprepared for serving these patrons in an effective and empathetic way. This book encourages readers to turn their fears and uncertainty into strengths and empowerment, offering to-the-point guidance on welcoming people with substance use disorders and their loved ones through policy, materials, outreach, collaboration, programs, and services. Written by a frontline librarian whose personal experiences inform the book, this resource

  • explores the library’s role in the fight against addiction and how to become part of the solution by combating stigma;
  • provides background on understanding how substance abuse and related behaviors affect different age groups and populations;
  • explains how to be proactive regarding library safety and security by carefully crafting library policies and effectively communicating them to staff;
  • offers real world guidance on training library staff, including pointers on recognizing observable signs of drug abuse and responding appropriately and safely to uncomfortable or potentially dangerous situations;   
  • discusses safeguards such as a needle disposal unit, defibrillator, and Naloxone;
  • gives tips on marketing, outreach, and programming, from putting together displays of materials and resources to partnering with local organizations; and
  • recommends useful websites, documentaries, and additional resources for further learning.
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Libraries and Universities
Addresses and Reports
Paul Buck
Harvard University Press

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Harvard University Library today is that in this largest university library in the world primary emphasis is placed upon a regard for the individual which extends alike to staff, faculty, students, and general users. As director of the Library, Paul Buck was responsible for this attitude. This book reflects his view that as the center of university education and research a library owes a responsibility both to the people who use libraries and to those who operate them. Personal consideration must be united with the mechanization and automation that is essential in developing a modern library's collections, circulation, and special services.

Here are addresses, articles, and reports in which Mr. Buck interprets the Harvard Library to its own staff, to the academic community, and to the general public. For the general reader who wants to know something of the nature and significance of university libraries, the author presents a historical view as well as an interesting picture of what the largest library of its kind is doing today.

The collection begins with a talk given at Monticello in 1954 in which Mr. Buck announced his university library credo, emphasizing the importance of the university library, its personnel, and its services to the community. This credo he restates at the end of this volume. Throughout the book are speeches bearing on the author's conception of libraries for teaching and research as well as a description of the administrative program at Harvard that he based on this conception.

He analyzes problems involved in recruiting, training, and retaining a quality staff of professional librarians. In one article he deals with the new personnel program adopted by the Harvard Library in 1958. In another he is concerned with the remarkably successful plan for recruiting "library interns" that is now in operation at Harvard. Still another paper discusses a landmark of his administration, the installation of a mechanized circulation system.

Included here also are addresses reflecting Mr. Buck's broad historical perspective. He deals with the long-range future of libraries generally and with the prospects of American universities. He is concerned with relations between historians, librarians, and businessmen. In a short paper he touches on another landmark of his administration--the first steps taken in planning the John F. Kennedy library.

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Libraries As Agencies Of Culture
(Volume 42, No. 3 Of American Studies)
Thomas Augst
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002
Libraries—public, school, and academic libraries—are ubiquitous cultural agencies. Yet how much do we know about the multiple ways that they serve and enrich our culture? These essays explore the role of the library in the life of the reader and the library as a place in the life of its users.  Contributors are Thomas Augst, Ari Kelman, Elizabeth Jane Aikin, Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Christine Pawley, Juris Dilevko and Lisa Gottlieb, Jean L. Preer, Jacalyn Eddy, Benjamin Hufbauer, and Emily B. Todd.
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Libraries Designed for Kids
Nolan Lushington
American Library Association, 2008

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Libraries Got Game
Aligned Learning through Modern Board Games
Brian Mayer
American Library Association, 2009

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Libraries, Leadership, and Scholarly Communication
Essays by Rick Anderson
Rick Anderson
American Library Association, 2016

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Libraries, Mission, and Marketing
Linda Wallace
American Library Association, 2004

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Libraries, Mission, and Marketing
Linda Wallace
American Library Association

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Libraries that Learn
Keys to Managing Organizational Knowledge
Jennifer A. Bartlett
American Library Association, 2019

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The Library Assessment Cookbook
Aaron W. Dobbs
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2017

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The Library Beyond the Book
Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Battles
Harvard University Press

With textbook readers and digital downloads proliferating, it is easy to imagine a time when printed books will vanish. Such forecasts miss the mark, argue Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles. Future bookshelves will not be wholly virtual, and libraries will thrive—although in a variety of new social, cultural, and architectural forms. Schnapp and Battles combine deep study of the library’s history with a record of institutional and technical innovation at metaLAB, a research group at the forefront of the digital humanities. They gather these currents in The Library Beyond the Book, exploring what libraries have been in the past to speculate on what they will become: hybrid places that intermingle books and ebooks, analog and digital formats, paper and pixels.

Libraries have always been mix-and-match spaces, and remix is their most plausible future scenario. Speculative and provocative, The Library Beyond the Book explains book culture for a world where the physical and the virtual blend with ever increasing intimacy.

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Library Collections for Teens
Manga and Graphic Novels
American Library Association
American Library Association, 2010

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A Library for the Americas
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection
Edited by Julianne Gilland and José Montelongo
University of Texas Press, 2018

Founded in 1921, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin has become one of the world’s great libraries for the study of Latin America, as well as the largest university library collection of Latin American materials in the United States. Encompassing all areas of the Western Hemisphere that were ever part of the Spanish or Portuguese empires, the Benson Collection documents Latin American history and culture from the first European contacts to the current activities of Latinas/os in the United States. Scholars, students, and members of the public from around the world regularly use the multifaceted, multimedia resources of the Benson.

Showcasing the incredible depth, diversity, and history of the Benson Collection, A Library for the Americas presents rare books and manuscripts, maps, photographs, music, oral histories, art and objects dating from the early 1500s to the present. Images of and captions for these materials are paired with a series of essays and reflections by distinguished scholars of Latin American and Latina/o studies, who describe the role that the Benson Collection has played in the research and intellectual contributions that have defined their careers. As a whole, the book celebrates the remarkable place for learning that is the Benson Collection, while not shying away from larger questions about what it means to have a monumental library and archive devoted to Latin America in the United States.

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Library Improvement through Data Analytics
Lesley S. J. Farmer
American Library Association, 2016

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The Library Innovation Toolkit
Ideas, Strategies, and Programs
Anthony Molaro
American Library Association, 2015

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Library Marketing and Communications
Strategies to Increase Relevance and Results
Cordelia Anderson
American Library Association, 2020

Effectively marketing libraries by persuasively communicating their relevance is key to ensuring their future. Speaking directly to those in senior leadership positions, Anderson lays out the structural and organizational changes needed to help libraries answer the relevance question and maximize their marketing and communications efforts. Focusing on big-picture strategies, she shares lessons learned from her 20+ year career in library marketing and communications. No matter what type or size of library you help to lead, by reading this book you will

  • gain insight into why libraries need to tell their stories more effectively than they are today;
  • be able to craft a strategic roadmap for marketing your library and communicating its value in a variety of ways that resonate with key audiences;
  • see why improvements to the structure of your marketing and communications team can lead to better results;
  • learn practical methods for incorporating audience research into your planning;
  • know how to remove customer barriers and discontinue practices that are thwarting your marketing efforts;
  • receive guidance on preparing for potential crises;
  • understand how to be more community-focused by forming and sustaining partnerships; and
  • feel confident in engaging with stakeholders so that they become your library’s best ambassadors.
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The Library Security and Safety Guide to Prevention, Planning, and Response
Miriam B. Kahn
American Library Association, 2008

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Library Security
Better Communication, Safer Facilities
Steve Albrecht
American Library Association, 2015

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Library Technology Buying Strategies
Marshall Breeding
American Library Association, 2016

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Library’s Crisis Communications Planner
A PR Guide for Handling Every Emergency
Jan Thenell
American Library Association, 2004

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The Library's Guide to Graphic Novels
John Ballestro
American Library Association, 2020

The circ stats say it all: graphic novels’ popularity among library users keeps growing, with more being published (and acquired by libraries) each year. The unique challenges of developing and managing a graphics novels collection have led the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) to craft this guide, presented under the expert supervision of editor Ballestro, who has worked with comics for more than 35 years. Examining the ever-changing ways that graphic novels are created, packaged, marketed, and released, this resource gathers a range of voices from the field to explore such topics as

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Listening to Learn
Sharon Grover
American Library Association, 2012

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Literacy & Libraries
Learning from Case Studies
American Library Association
American Library Association, 2001

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Local History Reference Collections for Public Libraries
Kathy Marquis
American Library Association, 2015

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The Lost Library
The Legacy of Vilna's Strashun Library in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Dan Rabinowitz
Brandeis University Press, 2018
The Strashun Library was among the most important Jewish public institutions in Vilna, and indeed in Eastern Europe, prior to its destruction during World War II. Mattityahu Strashun, descended from a long and distinguished line of rabbis, bequeathed his extensive personal library of 5,753 volumes to the Vilna Jewish community on his death in 1885, with instructions that it remain open to all. In the summer of 1941, the Nazis came to Vilna, plundered the library, and shipped many of its books to Germany for deposition at a future Institute for Research into the Jewish Question. When the war ended, the recovery effort began. Against all odds, a number of the greatest treasures of the library could be traced. However, owing to its diverse holdings and its many prewar patrons, a custody battle erupted over the remaining holdings. Who should be heir to the Strashun Library? This book tells the story of the Strashun Library from its creation through the contentious battle for ownership following the war until present day. Pursuant to a settlement in 1958, the remnants of the greatest prewar library in Europe were split between two major institutions: the secular YIVO in the United States and the rabbinic library of Hechal Shlomo in Israel, a compromise that struck at the heart of the library’s original unifying mission.
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