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Best Practices is a collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government libraries and includes content submitted by government librarians and community leaders with an interest in government libraries. The 2011 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors including librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more. • EMBRACING NEW AVENUES OF COMMUNICATION • ADAPTING TO NEW AND EVOLVNG TECHNOLOGIES • ALTERING OUR PLACES AND SPACES • TACKLING CHANGING EXPECTATIONS, RESOURCES, AND JOB DESCRIPTIONS • PRESERVING WHAT WE HAVE AND PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE • EXPANDING HORIZONS http://www.lexisnexis.com/tsg/gov/Best_Practices/Best_Practices_2011.pdf

The University of New South Wales, located in Sydney Australia, is one of Australia's largest and leading universities.) is throwing away thousands of books and scholarly journals as part of a policy that critics say is turning its library into a Starbucks. Academics say complete journal collections, valuable books and newspapers dating to the 19th century are being thrown out to clear space for cafe-style lounges. The policy, which until recently required librarians to remove 50,000 volumes each year does not allow the last Australian copy of any book to be discarded. But it has opened an ideological row about the function of modern libraries as more research material becomes accessible online. Does it mean NSW University has no need for printed materials in its library? http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/books-get-the-shove-as-university-students-prefer-to-do-research-online-20110307-1bl8b.html#ixzz1Uf82f5XZ

The voters on Tuesday gave overwhelming approval to a five-year, dedicated 0.7-mill levy that will provide the library with $3.1 million in its first year. The unofficial result was 12,246 to 8,799 (58.2 percent to 41.8 percent). The library had previously lost two rounds of millage votes (most recently in November 2010 when four separate proposals were defeated). The city council decided to hold another vote after a citywide survey of 400 residents showed that 72 percent of respondents thought library operations should increase or stay the same. http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891496-264/with_resounding_win_at_polls.html.csps

Academic libraries have been beset by changes that have led some observers to wonder. One approach focuses on space; the other on librarians http://chronicle.com/article/Tomorrows-Academic-Libraries-/127393/?key=S21xIABuYixBNikwNjZJYTpWaSA4NUh0ZnAQPy4gbl9dFw%3D%3D

EBSCO Publishing acquired the venerable H.W. Wilson Company. Wilson operates a similar business to EBSCO offering abstract/index records and full text databases via its proprietary platform, Wilson Web, but it is a much smaller company with about 200 employees and sales that are less than 10 percent of EBSCO's. All Wilson indexing, abstracts, and full text will be fully searchable via EBSCO Discovery Service for subscribers of Wilson databases. Databases from Wilson will be integrated with EBSCOhost over the coming months, and, eventually, the WilsonWeb platform will be eliminated, the companies said in a press release. EBSCO will maintain WilsonWeb until all Wilson databases are available on EBSCOhost and customers have been transitioned to EBSCOhost. http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/890843-264/in_major_deal_ebsco_publishing.html.csp

In April 2010, Twitter announced it was donating its entire archive of public tweets to the Library of Congress. Every tweet since Twitter's inception in 2006 would be preserved. The donation of the archive to the Library of Congress may have been in part a symbolic act, recognition of the cultural significance of Twitter. When the donation was announced users were creating about 50 million tweets per day. As of Twitter’s fifth anniversary several months ago, that number has increased to about 140 million tweets per day. It's important to note that the Library of Congress is quite adept with the preservation of digital materials, as it's been handling these types of projects for more than a decade. The library has been archiving congressional and presidential campaign websites since 2000, for example, and it currently has more than 200 terabytes of web archives. It also has hundreds of terabytes of digitized newspapers, and petabytes of data from other sources, such as ...

The New York Public Library is granting amnesty to 143, 000 young readers who have overdue books and have been barred from checking out any more material. The kids owe $15 or more in fines. The idea of this program is to bring them back in as kids might be afraid because they are delinquent with the library. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/New-York-Public-Library-Overdue-Books-Fines-Kids-126111259.html

We definitely are in the information age. People are sending 1,200 tweets per second (tps) and spending 800 million minutes a month on facebook posting 900 million objects. What do we do with all of this information that is constantly being thrown our way? The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. Librarians – information professionals – are more critical to knowledge sharing than ever before because of the increased amount of information being shared. While librarians are “information professionals” you also are a knowledge expert in your organization. Are you ready to be a change agent? As leaders in knowledge management we are uniting as change agents as the future of information is rapidly changing. Are you ready today to be an information sherpa for your organization? Be Future Ready. http://futureready365.sla.org/06/07/we-are-information-sherpas/