Customer Reviews

Our New Public, A Changing Clientele: Bewildering Issues or New Challenges for Managing Libraries? (Libraries Unlimited Library Management Collection)

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MP3 players. Downloadable audio books. Screencasts and YouTube. Technology continually shapes and reshapes library services and instructional programs. Even the "net generation" users (the millennial generation, our new generation of library users) have an impact. How can library managers, directors and architects create and design programs, services and buildings to accommodate this rapid change rate?

Kennedy, Vardaman and McCabe, wanting to hear directly from librarians how they are responding to these changes, solicited feedback via the Internet. The responses they received resulted in this book. Please note: While the majority of the 18 chapters in this book are geared toward academic libraries, several chapters do focus on public libraries and their patrons. Some ideas suggested for academic libraries may also be suitable for the public sector, too.

The book features a preface, forward, introduction, table of contents, index, and information on the editors and contributors. Each of the eighteen articles has a concluding paragraph (a nice feature for readers who want to skim the information) and bibliography.

Gerard B. McCabe has written several books dealing with academic library management, automation projects, student learning in the college library environment, and the design of public library buildings. In addition to writing several titles on library resource guides, James R. Kennedy has collaborated with Mr. McCabe on Planning the modern public library building (2003). Lisa Vardaman joined with McCabe and Kennedy to co-edit Our new public, a changing clientele.

[Reviewed May 2008]