Academic Libraries in Urban and Metropolitan Areas

Solutions to the unique problems of academic libraries in urban and metropolitan areas are provided in this professional handbook. Issues faced by the administrators of these libraries can differ markedly from those encountered by their counterparts in residential college towns, with service demands emanating from both the surrounding community and their own academic community. Written by experienced urban university librarians, each chapter addresses issues unique to the in-city academic library.Reaching out to their communities to establish links with business, industry, and other libraries, the administrators of the urban/metropolitan libraries require a great degree of diplomacy and management skills. Service demands arising from urban high schools place additional pressures on limited resources. This handbook shows how the use of new technologies can assist the urban academic librarian in fashioning services for a nonresident faculty, as well as a usually older student body, comprised of many international and part-time students. The characteristics of city living and their impact on information-seeking behavior are discussed. Other topics covered are resource sharing, setting fees, staff and collection security, environmental pollution and space requirements.

?This book's basic premise is that urban academic libraries are sufficiently different from their nonurban counterparts to warrant separate consideration. Editor McCabe has brought together 23 essays by 32 librarians, administrators, and library school faculty members on such topics as the mission of the urban academic library, services to diverse internal and external populations, and various management issues. Some of the chapters concentrate on public or private institutions; others report on surveys. Many represent the voice of experience. Especially pertinent are the sections on access and borrowing privileges for unaffiliated users, resource sharing, space planning, and security of collections and people. Many of the other chapters are also quite good, but some of them lack a distinctly urban focus and could be in any book on academic library management. There is also some ambiguity as to who is urban. Columbia University, for example, is specifically excluded from Chapter 1, which describes the mission of the urban academic library, but included in Chapter 17 as one of 21 urban libraries listed in a survey. The intended audience for this book, however, should find it of interest.?-Library Journal, ?This is a worthy purchase--helpful to beginners and appealing to practitioners.?-The Journal of Academic Librarianship, "This is a worthy purchase--helpful to beginners and appealing to practitioners."-The Journal of Academic Librarianship, "This book's basic premise is that urban academic libraries are sufficiently different from their nonurban counterparts to warrant separate consideration. Editor McCabe has brought together 23 essays by 32 librarians, administrators, and library school faculty members on such topics as the mission of the urban academic library, services to diverse internal and external populations, and various management issues. Some of the chapters concentrate on public or private institutions; others report on surveys. Many represent the voice of experience. Especially pertinent are the sections on access and borrowing privileges for unaffiliated users, resource sharing, space planning, and security of collections and people. Many of the other chapters are also quite good, but some of them lack a distinctly urban focus and could be in any book on academic library management. There is also some ambiguity as to who is urban. Columbia University, for example, is specifically excluded from Chapter 1, which describes the mission of the urban academic library, but included in Chapter 17 as one of 21 urban libraries listed in a survey. The intended audience for this book, however, should find it of interest."-Library Journal

GERARD B. McCABE is Director of Libraries at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. He is co-editor of Advances in Library Administration and Organization: A Research Annual, and editor of The Smaller Academic Library (Greenwood Press, 1988) and a companion volume, Operations Handbook for the Small Academic Library (Greenwood, 1989). He has contributed many articles to professional library publications.