Briefly Noted
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Briefly Noted
Reinventing Reference: How Libraries Deliver Value in the Age of Google ed. by Katie Elson Anderson and Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic
Editors Katie Elson Anderson and Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic bring together a diverse group of librarians and library professionals to explore the changing nature of reference work in public, academic, and school libraries. Starting with a reflection on the image of librarians in popular culture and the definitions of reference work and reference transactions, the editors introduce the challenge of reinvention in the twenty-first century. Reinventing Reference: How Libraries Deliver Value in the Age of Google is divided into three parts covering the history, current state, and future of reference, with a brief coda by John Gibson, instructional technology specialist at Rutgers University Libraries, describing the library of 2052. Part 1 looks at the long history of reference work, its ethics, and the digital library user. Part 2 provides contemporary insights from public, school, academic, and, notably, arts libraries, which highlight the importance of visual literacies in the future of reference work. Part 3 deals with reinventing the relationships and interactions between the reference librarian, technology, and the user. This is a useful collection for librarians and library administrators trying to envision the future in this rapidly changing field. (FR)
Useful, Usable, Desirable: Applying User Experience Design to Your Library, Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 216 pages. $65.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-1226-3)
Redesigning spaces for efficiency, usability, and comfort is increasingly the focus of library transformation, since digital users have so many choices about where to study, relax, and pursue intellectual and creative activities. As the collection floats into the cloud, the user becomes ever more visible. For those who want to make their library a destination, Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches have written a practical guide to user experience design that can be applied in its entirety to evaluate and remake a library or in bite-size chunks as projects and problem spots arise. Useful, Usable, Desirable: Applying User Experience Design to Your Library leads the reader through all the touch points between “members” (as Schmidt and Etches call users or patrons) and library staff, facilities, and online venues. For each touch point, the authors provide a user-centered perspective, a means of assessment, and ways of improving a library’s performance. Useful, Usable, Desirable offers a clear and accessible approach to bringing user experience design into your library. (FR)
Who Owns the Future? Jaron Lanier. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. 448 pages. $17.00 (ISBN 978-1-451-65497-4)
Jaron Lanier has written a fascinating and troubling work that explores the dynamics behind the digital revolution. With so many mediocre books claiming to reveal the inner workings of the Internet, it is refreshing to find one with genuine insights on the increasing concentration of industry and personal wealth that ubiquitous connectivity [End Page 556] and digital participation has helped to spawn. Lanier, though a pioneer in virtual reality and a computer industry insider, is nevertheless no utopian. His principal metaphor is the “siren server” that draws in online users with free services while continually expanding its monopoly on information. In many of the hyberbolic claims of successful Internet start-ups, Lanier sees rather mundane business plans recycled time and time again. Though he admits that solutions to many of the problems our digital culture faces are daunting, he offers his own preliminary correctives and encourages others to do so as well. This is essential reading for librarians and administrators. (FR)
Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies, ed. Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 176 pages. $57.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-1220-1)
In their introduction to this anthology, Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong explain that planned abandonment is a strategy pioneered by famed management consultant and theorist Peter Drucker. With planned abandonment, an organization can carefully and systematically shed the managerial and operational components that tie up resources and limit change and transformation. Digital technologies and budget deficits have prompted a renewed interest in this important concept. The editors use planned abandonment as a lens through which to view nine case studies...
