Library Technology Midterm
February 21, 2003

1. According to one definition, the purpose of a library is to provide and promote equitable access to information resources and services which support the intellectual, economic, cultural, social and recreational needs of the people.

2. First, there is a public library. It serves every citizen at every stage of life. It generally serves a wider range of needs, objectives, and interests than other types of libraries. Then there is the school library. It supports the curriculum of the institution to which it belongs, promotes informational literacy, and improves basic literacy. Next there is an academic library, whose purpose is to support the faculty, students, and staff of the college or university to which it belongs, and in doing so, help achieve the mission of the parent institution within which the library is located. Lastly there is a special library, which is often a highly-specialized collection of materials relating to a particular subject.

3. First there is support (clerical) staff, who generally are required to have earned a certificate in the LTA program. There are also paraprofessionals, which may accept a certificate but generally a bachelor’s degree is recommended. Lastly there are actual librarians, who have a MLS or MLIS.

4. Mainly, an LTA’s job involves specific technical skills, such as handling multimedia equipment and bibliographic searching. They may have clerical duties on occasion; training deals more with duties similar to supportive staff rather than professional. Librarians look at the information needs of the primary customers of a particular library. They look at the information and resources available to meet those needs as best they can. They plan strategies to make the best information readily available. They analyze problems, set goals, and formulate solutions. They practice, plan, organize, and communicate. Both of these types, however, take on everyday tasks and both generally deal with patrons directly.

5. A serial is “a publication issued in successive parts at regular or irregular intervals and intended to continue indefinitely. Included are periodicals, newspapers, proceedings, reports, memoirs, annuals, and numbered monographic series.”

6. ISBN: Acronym for International Standard Book Number, which deals with how it is catalogued and where it goes. (Poor description...)
   Verso of the title page: The back side of the title page which gives the copyright date and by whom it is copyrighted.
   AACR2: Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. Basically a set of rules/guidelines which describe how a book should be described relating to title, description, series, notes, and such in the bibliographic entry.
   CIP: Cataloguing in Publication. Bibliographic record prepared by the Library of Congress for a book that has not yet been published
   OPAC: Online Public Access Catalog. Databases which a library has made available online so users can access articles and the like.

7. OCLC, which was developed in the 1970s as a type of electronic bibliographic record, originally meant Ohio College Library Center, where it was first used. Now it means Online Computer Library Center. OCLC is one of the largest databases of library cataloguing and holdings data; before that there was the LC MARC program, and even before that there were book and card catalogs. OCLC was basically revolutionary in the new way it used computers to store data efficiently.

8. MARC stands for “machine-readable catalog records.” MARC records, developed in 1966, were the world’s first standard format for communicating bibliographic information between libraries via computer.

9. Sorry, someone has omitted a “Question #9” from the sheet. There is none.

10. According to the ALA, intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.

11. Censorship is the removal or suppression of materials or ideas that are believed to be dangerous or objectionable by a certain group of people, individual, or government agency. Selection of library materials has to take place because no library can make everything available, and so they have to pick the materials which they feel will best serve the library’s mission to provide many different points of view and diversity of subject matter.

12. The Library Bill of Rights, Freedom to Read Statement, and the Freedom to View Statement. Also the Freedom of Information Act.

13. Give them a Request for Reconsideration Form, which is available at the Adult Reference and Adult & Children’s Circulation desks. Have them fill out the form in full. (Also try discussing why they find the material objectionable and tell them about what the procedure is.) Professional libraries review the item, the criteria used to pick the item, the place it has in the collection, and reasons the item was included in the collection. The Library Director sends a written decision, and until the decision is reached, no removal or restriction takes place.