Search

This book will contemplate the nature of our participatory digital media culture, the diversity of actors involved, and how the role of the news librarian has evolved—from information gatekeeper to knowledge networker, collaborating and facilitating content creation with print and broadcast media professionals. It will explore how information professionals assist in the newsroom, drawing on the author's experiential knowledge as an embedded research librarian in the media industry. The past decade has seen significant changes in the media landscape. Large media outlets have traditionally controlled news and information flows, with everyone obtaining news via these dominant channels. In the digital world, the nature of what constitutes news has changed in fundamental ways. Social media and technologies such as crowdsourcing now play a pivotal role in how broadcast media connects and engages with their audiences. The book will focus on news reporting in the age of social media, examining the significance of verification and evaluating social media content from a journalistic and Information Science (IS) perspective. With such an emphasis on using social media for research, it is imperative to have mechanisms in place to make sure that information is authoritative before passing it on to a client as correct and accurate. Technology innovation and the 24/7 news cycle are driving forces compelling information professionals and journalists alike to adapt and learn new skills. The shift to tablets and smartphones for communication, news, and entertainment has dramatically changed the library and media landscape. Finally, we will consider automated journalism and examine future roles for news library professionals in the age of digital social media.

Librarianship may be said to be facing an identity crisis. It may also be said that librarianship has been facing an identity crisis since it was proposed as a profession. With the advent of technology that lowers barriers to the access of information, the mission of a library has become indistinct. This volume will explore the current purpose of librarianship and libraries, how we become “Masters of our Domains”, develop expertise in various elements of the profession, and how we extend outward into our communities.

What are the library services and resources that Asian Pacific Americans need? What does it mean to be an Asian Pacific American librarian in the 21st century? In Asian American Librarians and Library Services: Activism, Collaborations, and Strategies, library professionals and scholars share reflections, best practices, and strategies, and convey the critical need for diversity in the LIS field, library programming, and resources to better reflect the rich and varied experiences and information needs of Asian Americans in the US and beyond. The contributors show that they care deeply about diversity, that they acknowledge that it is painfully lacking in so many aspects of libraries and librarianship, and that libraries and the LIS profession must systematically integrate diversity and inclusion into their strategic priorities and practices, indeed, in their very mission, such that the rich diversity of experiences and histories of Asian Americans in library and archival collections, services, and programming are not only validated and recognized, but also valued and celebrated as vital components of the shared American experience. The volume recognizes and honors the creative and intentional work librarians do for their constituent Asian American communities in promoting resources, services, and outreach.

In this update of the ideal introduction to the library profession, the core competencies of professional librarians are presented in 14 essays supplemented with foundational principles and context.• Updates a core textbook and introduction to the profession that will be useful for almost all LIS programs and new librarians• Brings together the work of authors who are experts in various core areas• Provides content based on an analysis of emerging trends and issues • Includes key resources for further reading

With the appearance of big data, open data, and particularly research data curation on many libraries'radar screens, data service has become a critically important topic for academic libraries. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse community of practitioners, this collection of case studies, original research, survey chapters, and theoretical explorations presents a wide-ranging look at the field of academic data librarianship. By covering the data lifecycle from collection development to preservation, examining the challenges of working with different forms of data, and exploring service models suited to a variety of library types, this volume provides a toolbox of strategies that will allow librarians and administrators to respond creatively and effectively to the data deluge. Edited by Kristi Thompson and Lynda Kellam, Databrarianship: The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice provides advice and insight on data services for all types of academic libraries and will be of interest to library educators.

The book Library Media Connection cited as something'all librarians need to have on their shelves'is now thoroughly revised for today's 21st-century library environment. Covering both technology and library practices, the title has been a go-to text for librarians and library school students since 2002.Since the second edition of this must-have book was published in late 2009, libraries have undergone profound changes, primarily linked to advances in technology. We've seen the debut of RDA, the release of new Pew Research library and Internet use data, and the establishment of digital repositories, community MakerSpaces, and'community reads'programs. Of course, libraries have also been affected by the expanding use of social media. This thoroughly updated title addresses all these changes and more, bringing you up to date on the monumental shifts impacting librarianship.The book is designed to introduce LIS students to the profession, preparing them to enter an exciting and evolving world. It clarifies the changing roles and responsibilities of library professionals, new paradigms for evaluating information, and characteristics and functions of today's library personnel. Among other subjects, chapters cover preparing materials for use, circulation, reference services, ethics in the information age, Internet trends, and job search basics. References, websites, and publications at the end of every chapter point to further resources, and appendices supply information such as policies, the library bill of rights, and the Freedom to Read statement.

This book explores the development, trends and research of library and information sciences (LIS) in the digital age. Inside, readers will find research and case studies written by LIS experts, educators and theorists, most of whom have visited China, delivered presentations there and drafted their articles based on feedback they received. As a result, readers will discover the LIS issues and concerns that China and the international community have in common.The book first introduces the opportunities and challenges faced by the library and information literacy profession and discusses the key role of librarians in the future of information literacy education. Next, it covers trends in LIS education by examining the vision of the iSchool movement and detailing its practice in Syracuse University.The book then covers issues in information seeking and retrieval by showing how visual data mining technology can be used to detect the relationship and pattern between terms on the Q&A of a social media site. It also includes a case study regarding tracing information seeking behavior and usage on a multimedia website.Next, the book stresses the importance of building an academic accreditation framework for scientific datasets, explores the relationship between bibliometrics and university rankings, and details the birth and development of East Asian Libraries in North America.Overall, the book offers readers insight into the changing nature of LIS, including the electronic dissemination of information, the impact of the Internet on libraries, the changing responsibilities of library professionals, the new paradigm for evaluating information, and characteristics and functions of today's library personnel.

Relationships abound in the library and information science (LIS) world. Those relationships may be social in nature, as, for instance, when we deal with human relationships among library personnel or relationships (i. e.,'public relations') between an information center and its clientele. The relationships may be educational, as, for example, when we examine the relationship between the curriculum of an accredited school and the needs of the work force it is preparing students to join. Or the relationships may be economic, as when we investigate the relationship between the cost of journals and the frequency with which they are cited. Many of the relationships of concern to us reflect phenomena entirely internal to the field: the relationship between manuscript collections, archives, and special collections; the relationship between end user search behavior and the effectiveness of searches; the relationship between access to and use of information resources; the relationship between recall and precision; the relationship between various bibliometric laws; etc. The list of such relationships could go on and on. The relationships addressed in this volume are restricted to those involved in the organization of recorded knowledge, which tend to have a conceptual or semantic basis, although statistical means are sometimes used in their discovery.

The only things librarians seem to encounter more often than acronyms are strings of jargon and arcane technical phrases—and there are so many floating around that even just reading an article in a professional journal can bewilder experienced librarians, to say nothing of those new to the profession! Featuring thousands of revised and brand new entries, the fourth edition of ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science presents a thorough yet concise guide to the specific words that describe the materials, processes and systems relevant to the field of librarianship.A panel of experts from across the LIS world have thoroughly updated the glossary to include the latest technology- and internet-related terms, covering metadata, licensing, electronic resources, instruction, assessment, readers'advisory, and electronic workflow. This book will become an essential part of every library's and librarian's reference collection and will also be a blessing for LIS students and recent graduates.

One of the characteristics of the final decade of this century is the treatment of information as a commodity. As the world becomes increasingly dominated by information and its technology, in all its facets, librarians must learn to integrate all the new developments into daily practice.'It is to the extent to which we shall succeed in developing powerful information networks through efficient information transfer that we shall succeed in contributing to the betterment of health throughout our nations'. It is this challenge which medical librarians from some 34 countries set for themselves in convening the Third European Conference of Medical Libraries in Montpellier, France, in September 1992. All aspects of medical information were addressed - the technical aspects of transfer, ethical and legal issues, costs, benefits, rights and responsibilities, quality assurance, guidance systems, communications technology, education and training both of information professionals and end-users were discussed and debated in depth in Montpellier. This volume presents an accurate account of a conference which has made a significant contribution to the development of medical librarianship in Europe and the wider world.

The 1994 conference of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries drew together an exceptional group of invited speakers and contributed papers. Speakers came from every part of Europe, from N. America, and even from Australia, and almost all the papers presented are collected in this volume. They represent an important summary of the state of the art in libraries and information services in the medical and health areas and are a rich source of advice, assistance and information for everyone working in related fields. Most of the themes concentrate on the important growth areas of the profession: computer-based information services, networking (especially the Internet), and CD-ROMs. More general topics are not ignored, and the book contains many interesting contributions on identifying the needs of library users and evaluating how well these are being met. There is also an important section on the history of medicine.

IT ALL STARTED with the American Library Association (ALA) which wanted to celebrate its centenary in 1976 at its headquarters in Chicago. With five American librarians and non-librarians I was invited to give a centennial paper. I declined the flattering offer because I had left the profession and had no time to do any research. I added innocently, however, that I would be delighted to speak out of personal experience, for instance on the impor­ tance of American librarianship in my professional life. This pro­ posal was accepted; I delivered the lecture and my text was printed in Libraries and the Life cif the Mind. Before I had read my paper in Chicago I received a request from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to contribute with Recollections of a President to the fiftieth anniver­ sary volume of IFLA (1927-1977). For reasons with which I agreed IFLA did not publish my paper in full, such as it is given here as chapter 10. I am confident that no one will compare the two versions in order to try to find out \\That has been left out in the earlier printing. Two other papers have appeared in German Festschrifts, one for Kurt Koster from Frankfurt-aiM (chapter 7) and one for Gerhard Liebers from Munster (chapter 5) the former being focussed to accord with the interest of the recipient on medieval Dutch manuscripts, the latter, for similar reasons, on library buildings.

The proliferation of online access to social science statistical and numeric data sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau's American Fact Finder, has lead to an increased interest in supporting these sources in academic libraries. Many large libraries have been able to devote staff to data services for years, and recently smaller academic libraries have recognized the need to provide numeric data services and support. This guidebook serves as a primer to developing and supporting social science statistical and numerical data sources in the academic library. It provides strategies for the establishment of data services and offers short descriptions of the essential sources of free and commercial social science statistical and numeric data. Finally, it discusses the future of numeric data services, including the integration of statistics and data into library instruction and the use of Web 2.0 tools to visualize data.Written for a general reference audience with little knowledge of data services and sources who would like to incorporate support into their general reference practiceCombines information on establishing data services with an introduction to available statistical and numeric data sourcesProvides insight into the integration of statistics and data into library instruction and the social science research process

This volume of'Advances in Librarianship'makes contributions to three largely unexplored areas in the field: managing intellectual capital in libraries, reporting on the effects of spatial factors and cooperation and competition upon intellectual capital utilization in libraries; Native American Libraries, offering findings which can apply in any country with ethnically or culturally isolated libraries; and the nature and extent of the engagement of humanities scholars with electronic texts. Other topics explored in this volume include the growth and decline of Operations Research both in general and within academic libraries, approaches to intellectual capital in libraries, and an historical analysis of the two streams of library education in Australia over 40 years.'The Advances in Librarianship'book series presents current international research and professional issues in libraries, the information industry, education and development of information professionals. The series is a key resource for practitioners, researchers, students and faculty members seeking in-depth literature and solutions to current and emerging issues in library and information science and related fields.

Library and Information Science: Parameters and Perspectives focuses on how libraries function today, covering the most significant aspects of the field. The book includes chapters on the digitization of library materials, how technology has changed the role of libraries and librarians, Google's book and information applications, library user fees, customer service in the library, teaching information literacy and research skills, and more. Readers receive a broad understanding of the roles and functions of libraries and librarians today.

Description based on print version record.

'The Advances in Library Administration and Organization Series'seeks to develop a body of research literature that contributes to the base of organizational theory upon which library administrators rely. Its mix of contributions to the literature of library administration and organization is intended to be both diverse and eclectic. The volume 28 provides a collection of thought-provoking articles on issues relating to problems library managers face and strategies in addressing those challenges. The topics covered in this volume include: managing change in research libraries; the agility of library consortia and its member libraries; the evaluation of reference services; developing a recruitment strategy for a diverse workforce; the evaluation of training and professional development programs; and, collective bargaining within faculty unions on college campuses.'Advances'is widely read by practitioners, library and information science graduate students, and those working in associated fields of information management, and remains the premier series in its area of coverage. This latest volume adds another significant contribution to the literature of library and information centre management.

Professionals in all areas of librarianship will find inspiration in the essays collected here--each of them innovative tips for increasing circulation, enhancing collections, and improving flexibility. With extensive experience in the nation's top libraries and media centers, the 73 contributors describe what really works based on their real-world experiences. Organized by subject, the essays offer succinct and practical guidelines for dozens of tasks. Topics include preparing and delivering distinctive presentations; forming a successful grant proposal; hosting a traveling multimedia exhibition; organizing effective community partnerships; writing blogs; hosting authors; creating cybertorials; preserving local culture--and many others.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, ECDL 2008, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in September 2008. The 28 revised full papers and 10 revised short papers presented together with 1 panel description, the extended abstracts of 24 revised poster and demo papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 125 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on digital preservation, social tagging, quatations and annotations, user studies and system evaluation, from content-centric to person-centric systems, citation analysis, collection building, user interfaces and personalization, interoperability, information retrieval, and metadata generation.

Get the foundational knowledge about health sciences librarianship. The general term “health sciences libraries” covers a wide range of areas beyond medical libraries, such as biomedical, nursing, allied health, pharmacy, and others. Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship provides a sound foundation to all aspects of these types of libraries to students and librarians new to the field. This helpful guide provides a helpful overview of the health care environment, technical services, public services, management issues, academic health sciences, hospital libraries, health informatics, evidence-based practice, and more. This text provides crucial information every beginning and practicing health sciences librarian needs—all in one volume. Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship presents some of the most respected librarians and educators in the field, each discussing important aspects of librarianship, including technical services, public services, administration, special services, and special collections. This comprehensive volume provides all types of librarians with helpful general, practical, and theoretical knowledge about this profession. The book's unique'A Day in the Life of...'feature describes typical days of health sciences librarians working in special areas such as reference or consumer health, and offers anyone new to the field a revealing look at what a regular workday is like. The text is packed with useful figures, screen captures, tables, and references. Topics discussed in Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship include: overview of health sciences libraries health environment collection development of journals, books, and electronic resources organization of health information access services information services and information retrieval information literacy health informatics management of academic health sciences libraries management and issues in hospital libraries library space planning specialized services Introduction to Health Sciences Librarianship provides essential information for health sciences librarians, medical librarians, beginning and intermediate level health sciences/medical librarians, and any health sciences librarian wishing to review the field. This crucial volume belongs in every academic health sciences library, hospital library, specialized health library, biomedical library, and academic library.

ECDL 2002 was the 6th conference in the series of European Conferences on Research and Advanced Technologies for Digital Libraries. Following previous events in Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), Paris (1999), Lisbon (2000), and Da- stadt (2001), this year ECDL was held in Rome. ECDL 2002 contributed, - gether with the previous conferences, to establishing ECDL as the major - ropean forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. ECDL 2002 continued the tradition already established by the previous conferences in meeting the needs of a large and diverse constituency, which includes researchers, practitioners, educators, policy makers, and users. The focus of ECDL 2002 was on underlying principles, methods, systems, and tools to build and make available e?ective digital libraries to end users. Architecture, metadata, collection building, web archiving, web technologies,- books, OAI applications, preservation, navigation, query languages, audio video retrieval, multimedia-mixed media, user studies and evaluation, humanities, and digital libraries were some of the key issues addressed. An international Program Committee was set up composed of 61 members, with representatives from 25 countries. A total of 145 paper submissions, 15 poster submissions, and 18 proposals for demos were received. Each paper was evaluated by 3 referees and 42 full papers and 6 short papers of high quality were selected for presentation.

This practical combination textbook/workbook provides a comprehensive yet simple introduction to the information industry, the nature and uses of information, and information literacy. It covers the roles and functions of various information agencies, such as libraries and library networks, archives, records management sections, information brokers, and community information agencies. It also discusses legislation that impacts the information industry, as well as relevant professional associations. Presented in workbook format, it includes background information; numerous explanations, examples, and practice exercises; and a glossary, bibliography and index. It is designed for library technician/library assistant college programs, as well as library science programs in universities. It is also useful for library staff needing to increase their knowledge and understanding of information issues.

Written by a team of international librarians and library educators, this workbook covers all areas of library work, including the types of materials collected by libraries; bibliographic records and tools; cataloging; acquisition and processing of materials; circulation systems; collection maintenance; shelving; damage; and inventory. Plentiful, clear examples and practice exercises help the reader master the basic skills needed for working in public, school, college, corporate, government, and special libraries.

The public information available on the Web today is larger than information distributed on any other media. The raw nature of Web content, the unpredictable remote changes that can affect it, the wide variety of formats concerned, and the growth in data-driven websites make the preservation of this material a challenging task, requiring specific monitoring, collecting and preserving strategies, procedures and tools. Julien Masanès, Director of the European Archive, has assembled contributions from computer scientists and librarians that altogether encompass the complete range of tools, tasks and processes needed to successfully preserve the cultural heritage of the Web. His book serves as a standard introduction for everyone involved in keeping alive the immense amount of online information, and it covers issues related to building, using and preserving Web archives both from the computer scientist and librarian viewpoints. Practitioners will find in this book a state-of-the-art overview of methods, tools and standards they need for their activities. Researchers as well as advanced students in computer science will use it as an introduction to this new field with a hopefully stimulating review of open issues where future work is needed.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, ECDL 2006. The book presents 36 revised full papers together with the extended abstracts of 18 demo papers and 15 revised poster papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on architectures, preservation, retrieval, applications, methodology, metadata, evaluation, user studies, modeling, audiovisual content, and language technologies.

Seeks to spread the concept of evidence based practice beyond the health sector. Librarians need to increase their reliance on sound evidence to support their programs and services. They also need to become more active in producing and publishing evidence for their peers and others outside the profession. This collection of articles examines the research base of librarianship; outlines the process of evidence based librarianship; the theory and practice of formulation of answerable research questions; bibliomining-based EBL; qualitative research in evidence-based practice; using critical appraisal to evaluate evidence; and the incorporation of EBL into library education.

Each summer, circulation staff in my library inventories a section of the stacks andbrings collection issues to the attention of appropriate bibliographers. Since I amresponsible for the economics collection, I see an array of government documents thathave managed to elude the cataloging process. Many of these titles are decades old, having squatted in the library undisturbed and uncirculated since our online catalogwas implemented in 1990.

Describes what is happening in the many OSS applications that have been or are still undergoing development in the university library environment, particularly Canadian.

Welcome to ECDL 2003 and to these conference proceedings, featuring all the papers presented at the 7th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Following Pisa (1997), Heraklion (1998), Paris (1999), Lisbon (2000), Da- stadt (2001) and Rome (2002), ECDL 2003 in Trondheim reaches some of the northernmost shores of the continent. Being the seventh in an annual series of conferences represents, for better and for worse, a considerable tradition in the fast changing world of digit- library-related research and development. It is still a di?cult and slow job to change traditional forms and formats of communication at – and related to – scienti?c conferences, and also to change participants'expectations. Yet each new conference builds upon the topics and communities involved in previous events and inherits the commitment to quality established by its predecessors. Each year, ECDL has to live up to its role of being “the major European forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues,”bringingdiversedisciplinesandapplicationcommunitiestogether.There arestillchallengesinthisrespectaheadofus,butthequalityandrangeofpapers and other contributions, combined with opportunities for debate, should ensure that ECDL 2003 sets high standards for the future.

Digital libraries (DLs) are major advances in information technology that frequently fall short of expectations [7, 28]. Covi & Kling [7] argue that understanding the wider context of technology use is essential to understanding digital library use and its - plementation in different social worlds. Recent health informatics research also - gues that social and organisational factors can determine the success or failure of healthcare IT developments [8, 11, 12]. Heathfield [11] suggests that this is due to the complex, autonomous nature of the medical discipline and the specialized (clinician or software engineer) approach to system development. Negative reactions to these systems is often due to inappropriate system design and poor implementation. H- ever, there may be other less obvious social and political repercussions of information system design and deployment. Symon et al [26] have identified, within a hospital scenario, how social structures and work practices can be disrupted by technology implementation. Although these systems often deal with sensitive, personal infor- tion, other system design research has found that apparently innocuous data can be perceived as a threat to social and political stability [1,2,3]. To understand the impact of DLs within the medical profession, an in-depth evaluation is required of the int- duction and later development of these applications within their specific social and organisational settings. However, as Covi & Kling [7] have highlighted, there are few high-level theories that aid designers in understanding the implication of these issues for DL design and implementation.

The International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL) is an annual international forum for participants to exchange research results, innovative ideas, and state-of-the-art developments in digital libraries. Built upon the successes of the first four ICADL conferences, the 5th ICADL Conference in Singapore was aimed at further strengthening the position of ICADL as a premier digital library conference that draws high quality papers and presentations from all around the world, while meeting the needs and interests of digital library communities in the Asia-Pacific region. The theme of the conference, “Digital Libraries: People, Knowledge & Technology,” reflects the shared belief of the organizers that success in the development and implementation of digital libraries lies in the achievement of three key areas: the richness and depth of content to meet the needs of the communities they intend to serve; the technologies that are employed to build user-centered environments through organization, interaction, and provision of access to that content; and the human elements of management policies, maintenance, and vision necessary to keep pace with new content, new technologies, and changing user needs.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libaries, ECDL'99, held in Paris, France in September 1999. The 26 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 124 submissions. The book is divided in topical sections on image categorization and access, audio and video in digital libraries, information retrieval, user adaptation, knowledge sharing, cross language issues, case studies, and modelling, accessability and connectedness.

British Archives is the foremost reference guide to archive resources in the UK. Since publication of the first edition more than ten years ago, it has established itself as an indispensable reference source for everyone who needs rapid access on archives and archive repositories in this country. Over 1200 entries provide detailed information on the nature and extent of the collection as well as the organization holding it. A typical entry includes: name of repositiony; parent organization ; address, telephone, fax, email and website; number for enquiries; days and hours of opening; access restrictions; acquisitions policy; archives of organization; major collections; non-manuscript material; finding aids; facilities; conservation; publications New to this edition: email and web address; expanded bibliography; consolidated repository and collections index

A comprehensive perspective on multiculturalism in libraries!Diversity Now: People, Collections, and Services in Academic Libraries delivers a comprehensive look at diversity issues for librarians. It examines partnerships between academic research libraries and campus agencies and provides effective retention strategies for diverse employees. It also shows how librarians can lobby for domestic partner benefits for university employees who are unmarried same- and opposite-sex couples. Diversity Now: People, Collections, and Services in Academic Libraries provides a unique research perspective on assessment and diversity integration in the academic libraries and highlights effective working strategies for a multicultural library environment, examining: partnerships between academic research libraries and campus agencies which work directly with students assessment and diversity integration in the academic library workplace and six critical challenges for working well in a multicultural environment communication and teaching incorporating service learning experiences in the library and information science curriculum model retention programs for junior faculty of color

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the information profession. The series IFLA Publications deals with many of the means through which libraries, information centres, and information professionals worldwide can formulate their goals, exert their influence as a group, protect their interests, and find solutions to global problems.

This guide contains over 1000 entries of centres holding archive and manuscript collections in the UK includes many newly-established and specialist archives and their details. This edition includes over 400 additional entries, new indexes and cross-references.

Since it was first published in 1982 British Archives has established itself as the premier reference work to holdings of archives and manuscript collections throughout the UK. The 3rd edition has been extensively revised and enlarged with more than 150 new entries, further widening the range of the book. Entries are structured to show the archives of the organisation as distinct from deposited collections and significant non-manuscript material, and additional details of fax number and conservation provision are included for the first time. All the existing entries have been significantly updated, together with the select bibliography and list of useful addresses of various organisations involved in the care and custody of archives. The introduction provides an invaluable guide to researchers using archives, including a summary of the relevant legislation and a detailed description of the usual holdings of county and other local authority record offices.