IFLA Journal

The article describes the legal situation in France regarding the legal deposit of digital material, and shows how it has been implemented in practice at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The focus is on web archiving, where the BnF has experience going back almost 10 years, but other aspects of digital legal deposit are discussed, with possible future developments and challenges. Throughout comparisons are made with the situations in other countries.

As graduate LIS/IS education seeks to respond to intensifying virtual information and preservation environments, it becomes increasingly clear that innovative teaching tools and methods are required. These teaching tools must complement and enhance state-of-the-art curriculum offerings in subjects such as digital curation. The digital curation courses offered in the LIS School at Simmons College, Boston illustrate an innovative virtual and experiential approach. At the heart of these courses is the Digital Curriculum Laboratory, a virtual archives and preservation laboratory. This paper discusses and demonstrates the relationship between a digital curriculum laboratory, the successful delivery of a digital curation curriculum and its wider international implications.

The library and information sector is undergoing massive change. In a changing world we must create environments that promote strong development to ensure a viable future and a library that provides benefits to all our customers. Professional development is an essential component of this environment. It must be in line with the organization’s strategy and values. Changes in customer expectations, behavior and technological development make it even more important to form the library’s identity and prioritize our activities. Values, strategy and professional development go hand in hand with the development process. Staff participation in the development process produces a climate that is creative and a means of ensuring success in the future. At the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences University Library we have worked with professional development, strategy and values as well as the concepts of staff empowerment and leadership. This effort has included all staff members and the results have been excellent.

What makes a good director? How does a librarian know she has the competencies needed to be an effective manager-leader? How does the library board or community know what to look for in a director? What should the library profession look for in their rising managers? There are not clear answers to these questions right now. But development of a set of research-based competencies will give answers to these questions, and will give a foundation for other research-based ideas to be developed to assist manager-leaders in the library. The research objective for this study is to refine a set of competencies, identified from the literature, through the opinions of current public library directors. The development of manager/leaders in the library world is too important to be left to chance. Using a research-based set of competencies as a foundation should help in the development of training opportunities for librarians who wish to be successful in their positions as directors.

Engineering education is moving increasingly toward an active-learning based pedagogy. Traditionally relegated to a final-year design project, more and more engineering design projects are appearing earlier, even in the first-year of undergraduate education. With the increased frequency of these projects that are problems without a single ‘right’ answer, engineering librarians are finding more opportunities to work with students throughout their educational careers instead of just in a capstone course. To fully take advantage of these opportunities, librarians need to translate their own knowledge of information literacy into the language of engineering educators, and indeed inform the pedagogy of those educators. This paper attempts to create just such a bridge, focusing on the information resources and processes needed by engineers engaged in the design process and bringing together the literature of both the engineering education and library science communities.

Environmental degradation has become a serious source of concern for contemporary society, giving rise to efforts in the way of advocacies, conferences and awareness campaigns at different levels. While information professionals in developing economies are positioned to contribute to environmental sustainability; they need to apply creativity and innovation to overcome issues like low literacy levels, poor infrastructures, political apathy of environmental information to achieve the intended goal of environmental literacy. New roles are evolving beyond mere provision of information; these include information professionals as change agents, educators, electronic experts and partners to other change agents. The paper argues that information professionals could be more relevant to the needs of sustainable environment by repositioning themselves in terms of their roles in their various communities. Some recommendations made in the paper include revitalizing public libraries, training in Information and Communication Technology skills and collaboration with interest groups.

Old buildings are being recycled into libraries all over the world. The process of rededication of a building with a former different usage into a library is quite obviously a matter of recycling. The transformation of an existing building with a prior non-library function into a library brings the challenge and the opportunity for sustainable thinking in library planning. As non-renewable resources are decreasing, reusing and recycling are going to become increasingly necessary in the future. The recycling of old buildings means reducing the ecological footprint of library buildings in a cost-effective and efficient way. Beside ‘green’ aspects like water conservation, energy conservation, recycled or sustainable building materials, indoor air quality, and solar power from photo-voltaic panels, the planning of an adaptive reuse is a very different task than the planning of a library in a totally new building. Some best practice case studies from Germany, and other countries in Europe are presented.

Free government information fuels innovation among all the world's children and has the potential to enhance every aspect of their lives. The Gov Doc Kids Group, located in the United States, was formed to promote the use of government information to children, kindergarten through high school. Members of the Gov Doc Kids Group describe the formation of the group, international and country websites useful for children, and present tried-and-true, effective means of opening the doors of government information to children. The paper will explore ways the group utilizes the web to promote government information to children and provide an in-depth description of how a Government Documents Children’s Collection was formed. Although the examples discussed here are United States-centric projects, these ideas could flourish in almost any country.

The aim of this paper is to present and analyse some examples of public libraries which have been especially designed for babies and toddlers in Portugal, termed bebetecas in Portuguese, highlighting the role the promotion of reading from a very young age plays in the reader’s development. Some projects implemented in these areas, particularly those which target the family as an audience, but which in some cases are also intended for day care centres and nurseries, create an increased awareness of the role of the library in the dissemination of children's books, as well as creating dynamic reading habits at an early age. This strengthens family ties and promotes healthier and more balanced child development. Taking family and school as two important contexts for the development of the readers, the library becomes a privileged space and vehicle to promote good reading practices from a very young age, and where books can act as the backdrop for interaction between young children, their families and care givers.