Page 55 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Library and Information Society

Notes 5.1 Public Libraries

For many people, this is what a library is—a publicly funded institution that provides books for
loan and is used mainly by the very old and the very young. It is probably divided into Lending
and Reference, and the Lending stock is split between fiction and non-fiction. The threat to the
public library comes partly from the fact that fewer people now read for pleasure, and those who do
are more likely to buy their books from Borders or Water stones than borrow them from the library,
and, on the non-fiction and reference sides, information is easily and quickly obtainable from the
WWW, without the need to make a trip to the library.
However, public libraries provide much more than that, such as materials for entertainment and
information in a wide range of media. You will also find a lot of information about local services
across the spectrum, tailored to the needs of the community served by the library. Above all, you
will find professional librarians who are trained to help you find exactly what you are looking for.
This includes help with searching the Internet, which you can do from most public libraries these
days.

Academic Libraries
These cover the spectrum from libraries in schools of all sizes, through to those of major universities
and research institutions. They have something of a captive audience, in that the institutions they
serve are dedicated to teaching and learning, and the libraries’ role is to provide access to the sources
of information from which that teaching and learning can develop. However, they are still under
threat, because they cost money to stock and to run, and a school or university has to make a decision
as to the proportion of its funds to devote to its library. Academic libraries are therefore bending
over backwards to add increasingly more value to the services they provide.
For example, the university library in which we work part-time is now kept open 24 hours a day,
during term time, so that students can always get access to learning materials. We also offer a wide
range of courses in study skills, and 1-on-1 sessions so that students are helped in all sorts of ways.
Follow this link for the library’s home page, and have a look at the full range of services on offer.
Just as with the public library sector, it is the people who run and staff academic libraries who make
them what they are. It has been known for institutions to try to run their libraries without professional
librarians, but this is a highly misguided attitude, because the expertise of a professional librarian is
essential in the process of translating a vaguely worded enquiry into the true needs of the enquirer
and then into the solution that will best satisfies those needs.

Special Libraries
If you think of “special” having the meaning of “specialist”, you will get closer to the mark. These
are libraries that serve a particular institution that has a specific role to play, and they will therefore
tend to be “one subject” libraries. For example, they could serve a hospital, or a law practice, or an
industrial company. They also vary in size, depending in part on the size of the institution they
serve, but many of these libraries are run by “solos”, that is, librarians working alone or maybe with
only clerical assistance.
Special librarians have become adept at “reading the runes” of the environment in which their
business operates, and scan information sources to find material that they know will be of interest
to the people working in their company (etc). They also need to be on top of all the information
technology that is available to them, and at ways of collecting and presenting information that will
save the time of busy people. They may also organize the institution’s own information resources in
ways that best suit local needs, maybe through a company intranet. The title “librarian” has been
questioned in some quarters, and many people in this sector prefer to be known as “information
scientists”.

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