AUTHOR:William C. Welburn, Janice Welburn, and Beth McNeil (eds.)
STARTED: October 8, 2010
FINISHED: November 16, 2010
PAGES: 210
GENRE: Library Science
FIRST SENTENCE: [From the preface] Accountability.
SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com
] In the current fiscal environment, college and university librarians must clearly articulate their value to the teaching, learning and research missions of their institutions. Advocacy, Outreach and the Nation s Academic Libraries provides a framework for opening dialogue and incorporating advocacy by exploring opportunities for advocacy and focusing on the world of civic engagement as well as the role of librarians as advocates on campus.In twelve insightful chapters, Advocacy, Outreach and the Nation's Academic Libraries highlights the collaborative nature of advocacy and the importance of seeing opportunities for effective advocacy in a variety of areas. The authors focus on scholarly activity and the production of research, outreach and civic engagement, the adoption of new and emerging technologies, information literacy, service to student populations, diversity and organizational development as potential avenues for libraries to assert their value in their communities. Advocacy, Outreach and the Nation s Academic Libraries stresses the importance of all academic librarians embracing advocacy as a core responsibility.
THOUGHTS: Wow. This book was a lot denser than I expected. In some ways, the essays reminded me of all my reading assignments in graduate school. I’m still not sure if that is a good thing or not.
The whole thesis of this book is to show readers that academic libraries need to develop and maintain a strong advocacy and outreach program. This is a relatively new fad in libraries – despite the fact that we’ve struggled to hold onto our budgets and advertise our services for decades.
This book focuses solely on academic libraries; thus, many of the essays were almost too specialized. Every library is different – different patron population, different collections, and different staff. While the general theses and arguments made in these essays can be broadly incorporated, the finer points were harder to imagine working at all libraries.
If a library has never done advocacy and outreach before, then there are valuable lessons to be learned in these essays.
RATING:6/10 [Good]
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