The Libraries of the Future: Public Libraries and the Internet

Batt, Chris

doi:10.1177/034003529602200104

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Value of libraries as institutions of library materials and library services has been an important research topic among the public, academic and special library community for years (Batt, 1996; Feret and Marcinek, 2006; Tenopir, 2011; Whitehall, 1995). A good deal of evidence on how the library can best demonstrate its value, especially to users and to the mother institution, has been collected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The predicament of library value

Namhila

2017

IFLA Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on library ‘value’ in collection management. It is written from the perspective of library practice in a developing country. It focuses on the micro-level of individual library and archival items and comes to the conclusion that value is a multidimensional concept and that one item can have many different values for different individuals, different groups of people, different uses and purposes which are not static but changing over time. This makes de-selection or ‘weeding’ of library and archives material a complex exercise, affecting the benefits from library use in various ways. There may be educational, entertainment, informational, research, evidential (legal), monetary, intrinsic, sentimental and other values inherent to individual library material. Weeding driven by narrowly interpreted criteria of usefulness, curriculum relevance and concerns about storage cost, may not do justice to the educational, social and cultural common good embodied by libraries.

show abstract