This book, first published in 1987, provides important information on reference publishing, including valuable guidelines on evaluating publications and sources. The articles contained here are all written by leading experts in the field.

Get the most out of your reference information systems and technology! Reference Services and Media meets the information challenges that overwhelm and assist us today with computerization, electronics, and telecommunications changes in the reference services of our libraries. As a professional in the library science field, you will discover innovative theories and researched solutions on many technology problems and challenges such as formatting and compatibility, training of reference professionals and library users, costs, and information have and have nots. With the year 2000 and beyond upon us, emerging technologies afford tremendous opportunities for reference librarians and for improved and enhanced public access to information. In Reference Services and Media you will learn about planning for staffing, troubleshooting fund-raising, and budget developing to support the use of information technologies. You will also examine the impact new media has on academic libraries, specifically video and movie clips that are transferred over intranets and internets and their opportunities and legal implications. In Reference Services and Media you will also explore: desktop conferencing and web access for reference services versus personalized contact desktop conferencing with personal computers in remote areas for reference service assistance positive and negative aspects of using each technology in reference use instruction creative methods for procuring funding for an electronic information literary instruction classroom providing a digital library for a state library network raising confidence levels of public service librarians in using electronic resources to answer reference questions Reference Services and Media includes case studies, tables, and an annotated bibliography that serves as a librarian's media reference toolkit, making it essential for effective media reference work. An excellent source for the reference librarian, Reference Services and Media will assist you in adopting and incorporating new information technologies for the present and future.

Packed with discussion questions, activities, suggested additional references, selected readings, and many other features that speak directly to students and library professionals, Gregory’s Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections is a comprehensive handbook that also shares myriad insightful ideas and approaches valuable to experienced practitioners. This new second edition brings an already stellar text fully up to date, presenting top-to-bottom coverage of the impact of new technologies and developments on the discipline, including discussion of e-books, open access, globalization, self-publishing, and other trends; needs assessment, policies, and selection sources and processes; budgeting and fiscal management; collection assessment and evaluation; weeding, with special attention paid to electronic materials; collaborative collection development and resource sharing; marketing and outreach; self-censorship as a component of intellectual freedom, professional ethics, and other legal issues; diversity and ADA issues; preservation; and the future of the field. Additional features include updated vendor lists, samples of a needs assessment report, a collection development policy, an approval plan, and an electronic materials license.

Searching for health information may be the most important type of search a librarian performs in a day. Instead of starting a health care search with a blank computer screen or simply accessing ordinary information available most anywhere on the Web, start with help from the prestigious Medical Library Association. Each entry will show you how an experienced health sciences librarian would approach the question.

The second edition of this guide to basic reference sources in the social sciences contains nearly three times as many entries, - 2,200 - as the earlier edition and also includes several other notable enhancements. In addition to revising and substantially enlarging the chapters on reference sources, Li has further increased the usefulness of this reference volume by adding a chapter on geography and one on business that is distinct from economies. Since the publication of the first edition, there have been two obvious developments in information storage and retrieval: the rapid development of online databases and the development of CD-ROM. Instead of devoting a separate chapter to these developments, the book incorporates online databases, CD-ROM and other forms of data sources into the text. In addition, there is a brief introduction to these developments. Although the general deadline for inclusion in the volume was December 1988, quite a few titles published in 1989 are included.

A comprehensive reference work which provides a way to access research on urban politics and policy in the United States. Experts in the field guide readers through major controversies, while evaluating and assessing the subfields of urban politics and policy. Each chapter follows the same basic organization with topics such as methodological and theoretical issues, current states of the field, and directions for future research. For students, this work provides a starting place to guide them to the most important works in a particular subfield and a context to place their work in a larger body of knowledge. For scholars, it serves as a reference work for immediately familiarity with subfields of the discipline, including classic studies and major research questions. For urban policymakers or analysts, the handbook provides a wealth of information and allows quick identification of existing academic knowledge and research relevant to the problem at hand.