Libraries have existed for millennia, but today the library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented (and increasingly digital) information environment. What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings, and committees? In The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes offers a guide to this new landscape for practitioners. He describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning; and he suggests a new mission for librarians: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. The vision for a new librarianship must go beyond finding library-related uses for information technology and the Internet; it must provide a durable foundation for the field. Lankes recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created though conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities. To help librarians navigate this new terrain, Lankes offers a map, a visual representation of the field that can guide explorations of it; more than 140 Agreements, statements about librarianship that range from relevant theories to examples of practice; and Threads, arrangements of Agreements to explain key ideas, covering such topics as conceptual foundations and skills and values. Agreement Supplements at the end of the book offer expanded discussions. Although it touches on theory as well as practice, the Atlas is meant to be a tool: textbook, conversation guide, platform for social networking, and call to action. (M.I.T. Press Web page)

"The preeminent handbook for librarians and booksellers." The Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac includes statistical information on book prices, numbers of books published, library expenditures, and average salaries, plus a planning and research guide, and directory.

Containing more than 4,000 alphabetically arranged entries, this resource for library and information science professionals explains the meaning of terms used in all types of libraries. Coverage includes not only the terminology of the various specializations within the field but also the vocabulary of publishing, printing, the book trade, bibliography, telecommunications, and computer science when these definitions might prove helpful to library professionals in their work. The material in this volume was previously only available at a Web site, entitled Hypertext Library Lingo , maintained by Western Connecticut State U. Libraries. (booknews.com)

Technology is constantly changing; what is cutting edge today is obsolete tomorrow. In this ever-evolving environment, educators, researchers and professionals of the discipline need access to the most comprehensive knowledge about the concepts, issues, trends and technologies in this hi-tech field. The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology is the first work to map this ever-changing field. It is the most comprehensive, research-based encyclopedia consisting of contributions from over 900 noted researchers in over 50 countries. This encyclopedia includes articles highlighting current concepts, issues and emerging technologies. These articles are enhanced by special attention that is paid to over 5,000 technical and managerial terms. These terms will each have a 5-50 word description that allow the users of this extensive research source to learn the language and terminology of the field. In addition, these volumes offer a thorough reference section with over 11,500 sources of information that can be accessed by scholars, students, and researchers in the field of information science and technology.

Listing over 10,000 entries, Harrod's Librarians' Glossary and Reference Book spans everything from traditional printing terms to search engines and from book formats to URLs. Revisions for this tenth edition have centred in particular on the Information Society and its ramifications, on the general shift towards electronic resources, and on e-commerce, e-learning and e-government, whilst at the same time maintaining key areas predating the IT revolution. Web terminology, URLs and IT terms have been checked and updated, and coverage of terms relating to digitization and digital resources, portals, multimedia and electronic products has been revised or expanded as necessary.
Harrod's Glossary now includes Knowledge Management terms, and this edition has also focused on developments in the field of intellectual property, copyright, patents, privacy and piracy. It gives wide international coverage of names, addresses and URLs of major libraries and other important organizations in the information sector, of professional associations, fellowships, networks, government bodies, projects and programmes, consortia and institutions, influential reports and other key publications. Entries are included on classification and file coding, on records management and archiving and on both the latest and the most enduring aspects of library and information skills.
Even with the Web at your fingertips Harrod's Librarians' Glossary and Reference Book remains a quicker reference for explaining specialist terms, jargon and acronyms, and for finding the URLs you need, whether you are working in a print-based or digital library, in archiving, records management, conservation, bookselling or publishing.

Like Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis's Encyclopedia of Library History (ELH) (Professional Media, LJ 4/15/94), this reference set contains entries on both general library history topics and on individual libraries. Whereas ELH emphasizes the topical approach, this work focuses on the histories of individual libraries. The vast majority of the 225 libraries included are in Europe (122 entries) and the United States (59 entries). Editor Stam (University Librarian Emeritus, Syracuse Univ.) did try to make the work global: China has as many entries as France (seven). The typical small country, if included at all, has an entry for the national library and the largest university library. Each entry is three or four pages long, starts with brief directory and statistical information, and concludes with a short bibliography. All of the articles are signed. In the "Introductory Surveys" section, representing one-fifth of the total work, there are topical articles comparable to those in ELH. Among the topics covered here but not in the earlier work are digital libraries and women's libraries. Filling a gap in the reference literature of library history, this work should be in library science collections and large public and academic libraries. (Library Journal)

The International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science was published to widespread acclaim in 1996, and has become the major reference work in the field. This eagerly awaited new edition has been fully revised and updated to take full account of the many and radical changes which have taken place since the Encyclopedia was originally conceived. With nearly 600 entries, written by a global team of over 150 contributors, the subject matter ranges from mobile library services provided by camel and donkey transport to search engines, portals and the World Wide Web.
The new edition retains the successful structure of the first with an alphabetical organization providing the basic framework of a coherent collection of connected entries. Conceptual entries explore and explicate all the major issues, theories and activities in information and library science, such as the economics of information and information management. A wholly new entry on information systems, and enhanced entries on the information professions and the information society, are key features of this new edition. Topical entries deal with more specific subjects, such as collections management and information services for ethnic minorities. New or completely revised entries include a group of entries on information law, and a collection of entries on the Internet and the World Wide Web. (Amazon)