Offering a broad overview of consequential changes in the landscape of reference services, this guide also provides practical guidance on how to meet the new challenges they present. For the past decade, librarians have been lamenting the demise of reference services. Encouraging recent research shows that reference librarians are actually in more demand than ever; however, nearly everything about reference has changed—from technologies, tools, and techniques to models of service. What are these changes, and how can the profession respond to and prepare for shifting priorities and user needs? In this volume, business librarians Diane Zabel and Lauren Reiter bring together a host of experts to answer these timely questions. Topics range from the education and training of professionals to meeting the needs and wants of employers. Covered are trends in chat reference, research consultations, do-it-yourself reference, tracking trends with user populations, assessment, and data-driven decisions about reference services. Grounded in the principle that, regardless of the evolutions in service, the user remains at the center of reference, this guide offers readers an exciting look at the future of this important public service.

Edited by a thought leader with an international reputation, it brings together renowned authors from across the globe who are breaking traditional moulds and boundaries in a way that will have a profound impact on the way libraries and library services are conceptualized in the years to come. They represent the key links in the knowledge chain: authors, publishers, academics, community knowledge creators, librarians and institutions; the student perspective is also provided.

Catch up with the many innovations now affecting sci/tech libraries! The twenty-four chapters in Innovations in Science and Technology Libraries discuss the creation of digital collections, e-repositories, personalized Web environments, and discipline-specific Web sites for students and researchers. The book also explores the use of new technologies to improve document delivery and service provision as well as demonstrations of leadership by science librarians who are willing to take risks, adapt to change, control costs, and collaborate with colleagues. Here is just a fraction of the fascinating cases and important concepts highlighted in Innovations in Science and Technology Libraries: the Drexel University Library’s transition from print to an electronic-only journal collection the benefits of adopting a just-in-time (purchase on demand) rather than a just-in-case acquisitions policy IntelliDoc—how it has raised the standard for document delivery worldwide and increased international recognition of CISTI how California State University, Sacramento, merged its science library into its central reference department—an examination of the two-year merging process the creation of branch libraries focused on electronic information—an engineering library at Kansas State University and an agriculture library at the University of Manitoba the impact of electronic information upon undergraduate science education literacy competencies in the sciences—and their implications for library instruction how the MIT libraries created and developed the Reference Vision system that now guides all of their new reference services the impact of learning communities upon library services recent additions that enhance the usefulness of the IEEE Xplore online delivery system Innovations in Science and Technology Libraries will bring you up-to-date on the latest developments, sharpen your awareness of new concepts and techniques in sci/tech librarianship, and help your library stay abreast of important changes in this ever-evolving field. Make it a part of your professional reference collection today!

The mission of the International Journal of Educational Reform (IJER) is to keep readers up-to-date with worldwide developments in education reform by providing scholarly information and practical analysis from recognized international authorities. As the only peer-reviewed scholarly publication that combines authors’ voices without regard for the political affiliations perspectives, or research methodologies, IJER provides readers with a balanced view of all sides of the political and educational mainstream. To this end, IJER includes, but is not limited to, inquiry based and opinion pieces on developments in such areas as policy, administration, curriculum, instruction, law, and research. IJER should thus be of interest to professional educators with decision-making roles and policymakers at all levels turn since it provides a broad-based conversation between and among policymakers, practitioners, and academicians about reform goals, objectives, and methods for success throughout the world. Readers can call on IJER to learn from an international group of reform implementers by discovering what they can do that has actually worked. IJER can also help readers to understand the pitfalls of current reforms in order to avoid making similar mistakes. Finally, it is the mission of IJER to help readers to learn about key issues in school reform from movers and shakers who help to study and shape the power base directing educational reform in the U.S. and the world.

We live in the worlds that we help to create every day. Every activity either supports an existing system or effects some change, however small. But is it possible to consciously create the worlds in which we want to live? This volume brings together systems theorists and practitioners who have worked on that question for decades. It explores connections between design and systems ideas to explain why some efforts have been more successful than others, and what is needed if we are to move forward. It offers reflections on early and large-scale attempts at impacting societal systems, as well as proposals for taking those ideas into the future. Examples date back to the Club of Rome in the 1960s and look forward to the creation of ecologically sustainable systems in the future. They address the need for collaboration and inclusion in settings from communities to corporations. And while theories are presented as support for the examples, they are explained in practical ways meant to be accessible both to students and to general readers.

As a pastor and leaders, I have seen that most people are walking backwards into their futures! All their reference points about the future are usually drawn from the past. Envision with God turns you around to face what is ahead with God’s guidance. After all, aren’t all God’s promises in the future? The practice of “envisioning with God” will not only turn you to your future in God but give you something many Christians lack: an absolute certainty in recognizing the voice of God. A common practice, even among mature Christians, is seeking confirmation for something their Father God has told them. It is strange, to say the least, that a child would not recognize his or her father’s voice. This will no longer be a problem as one faithfully envisions with Father God. Envisioning with God erases the division between the marketplace and pulpit. You will discover that God doesn’t recognize this division. His desire is for unity. Too many Christians are schizophrenic in terms of their spiritual identities. This has weakened families, churches, businesses, communities, and nations. No such division should exist as the many of the powerful examples in the books testify. Envisioning with God in a simple and systematic way will change your life, causing you to face your future and recognize the voice of God. Envisioning will engage you in a day-to-day dialog with your Father, and unify the roles of your spiritual identity, propelling you to your destiny, facing forward into God’s promises.

Envisioning Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations: Building Communities of Practice in Education and Sport presents a collection of case studies of collaborations between scholars and practitioners dedicated to both the generation of new knowledge and innovative best practices at the nexus of education and sport. This inaugural text in a series sponsored by the Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association seeks to reveal a number of educational spaces in which this critical work takes place. The volume, comprising ten unique collaborations, outlines the important intellectual and social work of scholar-practitioners at the intersection of institutional sport and education at a variety of sites, both in school and in non-school settings. Each of these chapters has a unique set of research questions, programmatic goals and findings. For the purpose of this book, however, contributors have described the nature of their collaborations—for whom and by whom these collaborations are forged—such that the “findings” are presented as lessons learned from the process of collaboration. This book reveals educational spaces where scholars and practitioners are collaborating and generating new understandings of the world we know. We characterize this effort as mutually beneficial and respectful, engendering a vision of hope, exploration and educational transformation.

The papers presented in this collection are intended to demonstrate the need for a landscape approach to resource management and planning, and to introduce the concept of envisioning, through different visualisation techniques. The goal of the collection is to explore possible connections between sustainable resource management, landscape approaches to conservation, and the concept and techniques of envisioning futures. Topics of the papers include landscape planning and management, landscape ecology, landscape impact analysis, guided imagery and local planning, conservation of wildlife habitat, forest management, prairie agriculture, wetlands habitat conservation, and case studies on Canadian landscapes in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta. The collection concludes with a discussion of challenges involved in the application of a landscape approach in Canada.

This volume of Advances in Library Administration and Organization will focus on the future of library spaces. Libraries are dealing with unprecedented changes on several fronts and these factors understandably impact physical library space. Looking toward the future what changes can we expect to see in how libraries use space?