Public library as a catalyst for sustainable development: a case study

145-151The paper discusses the activities of the Valapattanam Grama Panchayat Library, a public library of Kannur District, Kerala. Through observation, meeting with the librarian and library committee and study of library records, data were collected. We found that the Valapattanam Grama Panchayat Library is playing an important role in the lives of the local population. People of Valapattanam including children, youth, parents, and senior citizens love to spend time in the library for reading, recreation, learning etc. Other public libraries can gainfully emulate the Valapattanam GP library, customising it wherever required to suite their own community situations and cultural backgrounds

Public library as a catalyst for sustainable development: a case study

The paper discusses the activities of the Valapattanam Grama Panchayat Library, a public library of Kannur District, Kerala. Through observation, meeting with the librarian and library committee and study of library records, data were collected. We found that the Valapattanam Grama Panchayat Library is playing an important role in the lives of the local population. People of Valapattanam including children, youth, parents, and senior citizens love to spend time in the library for reading, recreation, learning etc.  Other public libraries can gainfully emulate the Valapattanam GP library, customising it wherever required to suite their own community situations and cultural backgrounds

Psychological empowerment and improved professional performance as a Rresult of effective information management

Information is essential for organizations. Information and knowledge, associated with technological and scientific advances are, nowadays, easily accessible to all organizations, so whoever holds more information and knows how to manage it in the most adequate way to their vision and style, will be able to acquire a competitive advantage faster than the competitors. In a highly competitive environment for companies today, managers must realize the need to design strategies for organizations based on information as a valuable asset. Companies structure and classify information based on their structure, functions and activities, that is, based on documentary production, information flows between departments, safeguarding and proving what this information constitutes. At Goweb Agency, Lda., the target company of this study, except for the document templates that were intended for commercial proposals and directly linked to sales, most documents existed only for the purpose of quality certification. All documents were organized validly, intuitively and based on the information needs of employees. However these documents weren’t used or even known by the employees. The project planning and the accountability for everyday tasks were lacking meaning to them and conflicts were a constant. By incorporating the documents that described the responsibilities and assignments of each function into the routine tasks of everyday life and encouraging their use, creating and adapting the sharing and management of information in the company's activities, there has been a reduction in internal conflicts among employees, an increase in their degree of satisfaction and motivation, its efficiency and effectiveness and the satisfaction of the company's customers, due to the performance and quality of the work presented. In order to maintain each employee’s accountability and therefore their motivation in doing a better work it is important to continue to invest in the management of information appropriate to the business area of the company, make known the existence of essential information to each workplace and make the access to documentation quick and intuitive for all employees.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lenin on library organisation in socialist society

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and leader of the first Socialist State in the world, devoted great attention from the very first days of the soviet power to the education of the people, to organising the work of cultural and educational institutions, libraries and reading rooms. He considered libraries as the most massive and accessible centres of political education for the workers, propagation of knowledge, and the raising of the peoples cultural and technical level. Lenin’s works, reports and speeches, notes and draft resolutions of Party and state organisations contained a detailed programme for constructing the Soviet socialist system of library services for the people

A gestão da informação como facilitadora do empoderamento psicológico e da melhoria do desempenho profissional

A informação é imprescindível às organizações. Estas estruturam-na e classificam-na com~base na sua orgânica e nas suas funções e atividades, ou seja, com base na produção documental, nos fluxos de informação entre departamentos, na salvaguarda e prova que essa informação constitui. Na Goweb Agency, Lda., a maioria dos documentos existia apenas para efeitos de certificação de qualidade. Por forma a melhorar a gestão da informação na organização, todos os documentos foram organizados de forma válida, intuitiva e assente nas necessidades informacionais dos colaboradores. Ao incorporá-los nas tarefas rotineiras do quotidiano e ao incentivar o seu uso, criando e adequando a partilha e a gestão de informação nas atividades da empresa, assistiu-se a uma diminuição da tensão interna entre os colaboradores, a um aumento do seu grau de satisfação, da sua eficiência e eficácia e da satisfação dos clientes da empresa, devido ao desempenho e à qualidade do trabalho apresentado.Information is essential to the organizations. They structure and classify it based on their organization, functions and activities, that is, based on the document production, the information flows between departments, the safeguarding and proof that this information constitutes. At Goweb Agency, Lda., most documents existed only for quality certification purposes. In order to improve information management in the organization, all documents were organized in a valid, intuitive way, based on the employees' information needs. By incorporating them in the routine tasks of daily life and encouraging their use, creating and adapting the sharing and management of information in the company's activities, there was a decrease in internal tension between employees, an increase in their level of satisfaction, their efficiency and effectiveness and a growing satisfaction of the company's customers, due to the performance and quality of the delivered work.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Against the wait-and-see approach of libraries: pictures at an exhibition

The Covid-19 epidemic period has irrevocably revealed the need for a general rethinking of behaviours, priority values, sociability, and resource allocation. Libraries and librarianship are also facing the urgency of a ‘paradigm shift’, due to the wear and tear of the ‘public library’ concept and model. This essay tries to deal with both librarianship and library crisis highlighting the accelerator role played by the pandemic. In particular, the tendency to wait and see, which in some cases has ‘infected’ the library field, is critically analysed. As if the difficult situation and global vulnerability justified a loss of essentiality of library services, a renunciation of activism, a retreat to ordinary administration. On the contrary, the ‘living-together-library’, outlined in the last part of the article, chooses the path of active and proactive intervention during the pandemic. This idea enters in the daily dimension with empathy and respect and works on the hypothesis of a politics of reading as ‘motor for change’.Il periodo dell’epidemia da Covid-19 ha fatto emergere in modo irrevocabile la necessità di un generale ripensamento dei comportamenti, dei valori prioritari, della socialità, della distribuzione delle risorse. Anche le biblioteche e la biblioteconomia si trovano di fronte all’urgenza di un ‘cambio di paradigma’, a seguito dell’usura del concetto e del modello di ‘public library’. Questo saggio cerca di affrontare in parallelo la crisi della biblioteconomia e quella delle biblioteche, evidenziando il ruolo di acceleratore svolto dalla pandemia. In particolare, viene analizzata criticamente la tendenza all’attendismo e al moderatismo che in alcuni casi ha ‘contagiato’ il campo bibliotecario. Come se la difficile situazione e la vulnerabilità globale giustificassero una perdita di essenzialità del servizio bibliotecario, una rinuncia all’attivismo, un ripiegamento sull’ordinaria amministrazione. Al contrario la biblioteca ‘con-vivente’, tratteggiata nell’ultima parte dell’articolo, è quella che sceglie la strada dell’intervento attivo e proattivo durante la pandemia, entrando con empatia e rispetto nella dimensione quotidiana, e lavorando sull’ipotesi di una politica della lettura come ‘motore del cambiamento’

To what extent do library and information professionals actively manage change? An investigation into organisations based in London and surrounding areas

This research aims to establish the extent to which library and information professionals (LIPs) in London and surrounding areas actively manage change. It addresses the importance of acquiring change management (CM) capabilities for LIPs, particularly at this time of unprecedented change due to globalisation, political uncertainty, economic pressures and the advancement of disruptive technologies. The study commences with a desk research strategy focusing on selected CM literature to identify existing theories and approaches used by practitioners to manage organisational change. The review includes library and information related publications and the wider CM literature to gain a broad perspective. The empirical part of this study is based on a mixed-methods research approach to take advantage of the benefits of quantitative and qualitative research. It comprises of a questionnaire involving 108 respondents from a range of libraries, information centres, museums, archives, knowledge management and other related information services, both in the public and private sectors. Descriptive statistics are used to analyse the resulting data set. Qualitative research was conducted by means of ten individual semi-structured interviews. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the interview transcripts. The results reveal that 91 percent of LIPs think that change management is important and 72 percent are convinced that a more proactive approach to change management would increase the likelihood of a favourable outcome for future transformative changes. However, 32 percent of practitioners use CM models, and nearly a third of participants have never received CM training in any form. This research argues that an introduction to CM should be mandatory on library and information science-related courses. In addition, more research needs to be conducted to establish the extent to which actively managing change impacts the outcome of change initiatives