Instead of using expensive off-the-shelf surveys or relying on a poorly worded survey, read Making Surveys Work for Your Library and design your own that collect actionable data. Library listservs and websites are littered with examples of surveys that are too long, freighted with complex language, and generally poorly designed. The survey, however, is a widely used tool that has great potential if designed well. Libraries can implement surveys for a variety of purposes, including planning, program evaluation, collection development, and space design. Making Surveys Work for Your Library: Guidance, Instructions, and Examples offers librarians a contemporary and practical approach to creating surveys that answer authentic questions about library users. Miller and Hinnant have experience designing, deploying, and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from large-scale, web-based user surveys of library patrons as well as smaller survey instruments targeted to special populations. Here, they offer library professionals a guide to developing—and examples of—concise surveys that gather the data they need to make evidence-based decisions, define the scope of future research, and understand their patrons.

The Maker Movement is hot, and librarians are eager to participate. Even if you feel restricted by budget, staff, or space, this step-by-step guide will help you turn your library into a creativity center.

This valuable guide provides detailed instructions for each step of the survey process, from choosing the right topic to designing the survey, selecting and working with the respondents, and making sense of all the data.

Taking a staff-led approach, this book helps libraries of all types create their own meaningful and authentic strategic plans while demystifying a process that can bring many benefits to the organization. With dwindling budgets to pay for consultants and a growing interest in collaboration across the organization, libraries are increasingly taking a do-it-yourself approach to strategic planning. This book takes a step-by-step approach to grassroots strategic planning for libraries of all types. The authors, who led a successful strategic planning process at their own library, provide practical advice and detailed information to guide library personnel through their own process. Topics include aligning with institutional and community values, creating vision and mission statements, researching stakeholder needs, conducting environmental scans, collaborative drafting of the plan, communication strategies, and implementation and assessment of the plan. Each chapter helps librarians create a strategic plan for a broad spectrum of libraries, including K–12, post-secondary, public, and special libraries. A unique feature of the book is its emphasis on the ways in which different library types can collaborate to meet shared goals. This book is a one-stop-shop, providing everything library staff will need to create a strategic plan without searching for additional sources.

Surveys That Work explains a seven–step process for designing, running, and reporting on a survey that gets accurate results. In a no–nonsense style with plenty of examples about real–world compromises, the book focuses on reducing the errors that make up Total Survey Error—a key concept in survey methodology. If you are conducting a survey, this book is a must–have.

Read professional, fair reviews by practicing academic, public, and school librarians and subject-area specialists that will enable you to make the best choices from among the latest reference resources. This newest edition of American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) provides librarians with insightful, critical reviews of print and electronic reference resources released or updated in 2017-2018, as well as some from 2019 that were received in time for review in the publication. By using this invaluable guide to consider both the positive and negative aspects of each resource, librarians can make informed decisions about which new reference resources are most appropriate for their collections and their patrons' needs. Collection development librarians who are working with limited budgets—as is the case in practically every library today—will be able to maximize the benefit from their monetary resources by selecting what they need most for their collection, while bypassing materials that bring limited value to their specific environment.

This down-to-earth book offers practical marketing solutions for reaching students, faculty, and administration in community college and university libraries, based on real-world examples of team-based communication and practice. In an age in which federal funding for libraries is being cut, libraries of every size and type must prove their value. Practical Marketing for the Academic Library offers academic librarians approachable methods for marketing to students, faculty, and administration, and it also inspires them to attempt new structures for marketing initiatives, including encouraging existing staff to form teams with wide ranges of skills. Librarians from all academic libraries, including at community colleges, can incorporate these ideas even when budgets are tight and staff is limited. While there are many books on library marketing, few specifically cover the diversity within academic institutions and the student body as well as how to target marketing to faculty and administrations. Villamor and Shotick approach library marketing from diverse perspectives and teach readers how to increase student engagement, assess library programs, and connect library marketing to the goals of the overall institution.

Moving beyond simplistic equipment lists, this book provides contextual and practical information to help academic library personnel learn how to plan, collaborate, and sustain relevant makerspaces positioned within the broader ecology of campus innovation. The makerspace movement within academic libraries has largely focused on providing space and equipment for making. Academic libraries, however, have a unique opportunity to push beyond the 3D printer to create makerspaces that complement the broader ecology of innovation happening on campus. Intended for academic library personnel, this book is for those seeking guidance on how to establish a makerspace that is more than an equipment room. Katy Mathuews and Daniel Harper provide important context for the maker movement, a review of the process of making, and an overview of the various types of makerspaces, including the hub-and-spoke model, the centralized model, and the mobile makerspace. Additionally, the book provides practical steps to consider, including situating the academic library makerspace within the campus environment, creating valuable collaborations on campus, finding innovative ways to support the entire making process, programming, curriculum planning, and sustaining daily operations such as staffing, funding, and public service.

1. Compensation Plan Objectives 2. Preliminary Planning 3. Context and Compensation Philosophy 4. Job Analysis 5. Job Descriptions 6. Point Factor Job Evaluation System for Internal Equity 7. Market Pricing 8. Executive Compensation 9. Salary Structure Design 10. Implementation 11. Trends.

Collecting several key documents and policy statements, this supplement to the ninth edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual traces a history of ALA’s commitment to fighting censorship. An introductory essay by Judith Krug and Candace Morgan, updated by OIF Director Barbara Jones, sketches out an overview of ALA policy on intellectual freedom. An important resource, this volume includes documents which discuss such foundational issues as The Library Bill of RightsProtecting the freedom to readALA’s Code of EthicsHow to respond to challenges and concerns about library resourcesMinors and internet activityMeeting rooms, bulletin boards, and exhibitsCopyrightPrivacy, including the retention of library usage records