Small Libraries, Big Impact: How to Better Serve Your Community in the Digital Age

by Yunfei Du

Overview

This valuable book shows how to get your community behind your library by making it an essential part of community life and demonstrating its benefit to all members of the community.

Evolving technologies and the changing social landscape have put pressure on public libraries to shift their service values and methods in order to maintain funding opportunities. The challenge is substantial: library managers today must adopt a new mindset in order to perform a broad spectrum of activities and attract new users who are not traditional library patrons. Small Libraries, Big Impact: How to Better Serve Your Community in the Digital Age helps readers to meet the challenge of serving diverse users via a community-centered library.

Based on an intensive review of literature on serving library users in smaller libraries as well as the author's own research findings gained from interviewing 55 library directors, this book provides conceptual and practical tools for serving 21st-century users, gaining wider community support, programming dynamic events, and planning rewarding technology learning. Beyond supplying actionable advice, the book will also review relevant concepts and theoretical frameworks, such as community outreach and partnership, social justice and social inclusion, technology and social transition, cultural diversity and the digital divide, entrepreneurship, outreach, best practices for marketing libraries, and library space design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2901440841568
Publication date:	06/13/2016
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Yunfei Du is associate professor at the University of North Texas (UNT), Denton, TX.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Hon. Robert S. Martin, PhD
Chapter One: Libraries, Users, and Communities: An Introduction
Chapter Two: Improving Community Outreach
Chapter Three: Supporting Social Justice and Rights of Access to Information
Chapter Four: Effecting Social Transition
Chapter Five: Nourishing Diversity
Chapter Six: Fostering Collaboration and Entrepreneurship
Chapter Seven: Using Outreach as a Marketing Tool
Chapter Eight: Bridging the Digital Divide
Chapter Nine: Reenvisioning Library Spaces
Chapter Ten: Assessing User Needs and Improving User Services
Selected Annotated Bibliography with Books on Serving Diverse Users in Libraries
Index

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2016
Small libraries often face unique challenges such as limited funding or access to broadband Internet, a lack of public transportation to or from the library, and small candidate pools for job positions. The subtitle of this book suggests a plan to help libraries overcome these obstacles. Instead, Du (Library & Information Sciences; Univ. of North Texas) provides a detailed description of the problems but offers few concrete plans for employees who are likely overworked and undersupported. While his delivery is a bit pedantic, Du admirably describes issues faced by small libraries. He covers topics such as fostering entrepreneurship, bridging the digital divide, addressing diverse constituencies, and marketing and assessing needs. Du is knowledgeable and offers numerous references for further study. VERDICT This work would make a solid textbook for students interested in small libraries. Librarians aware of these issues may be disappointed by the lack of specific plans they can immediately employ. Readers who wish to be inspired by the potential of libraries of any size would be better served by R. David Lankes's The New Librarianship Field Guide.—Lydia Olszak, Bosler Memorial Lib., Carlisle, PA

Library Journal