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In today's economy, higher education institutions are struggling to maintain quality while functioning with fewer resources. For libraries, the economic situation is compounded by the impact of an information marketplace that is characterized by prices for resources that increase at 7 to 10% per year, and by near and actual monopolies controlling content. Added to the complexities of the marketplace are the demands of a faculty and student body that prefer individual actions to group efforts. These economic and social issues can become real barriers to innovation, quality improvement, and successful services for today's libraries. One way to combat the economic and social environment is by creating new and improved partnerships to leverage resources and share expertise in order to provide better services and access to wider collections. But forming partnerships is not easy. This paper will review the characteristics of successful partnership as developed by the Gallup Corporation and will show how these values can be used in the academic library environment to create opportunities for success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academic librarians partner with teaching faculty in many ways, but it is uncommon for them to develop a partnership to experiment with course curriculum. It is especially rare to sustain this kind of partnership over multiple terms. This paper reports on such a collaboration and how it has allowed both librarian and instructor to compare the efficacy of different means of information literacy instruction in asynchronous, online-only courses. The paper also presents strategies for establishing a partnership and navigating the partners' different needs in order to reach a common goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2008 Hamilton City Libraries was successful in attaining a partnership as part of Wave 2 of the Aotearoa New Zealand People's Network (APN). This partnership opportunity has provided us with world class technology, communications and a content gateway to enable free, fast Internet access for our customers. The greatest challenge we faced was not the implementation and use of the technology itself The `human' dimension was and remains the most challenging factor - staff acceptance of internet provision as being as a valid library service offering, the influx of a more diverse and challenging group of customers, and balancing the provision of other library services. This paper describes our journey not only to implement the technology, staff training, and business rules across our six libraries on time and within budget but to also ensure the successful management of the new service to minimise customer and staff `stress'. Robust project and business planning as well as risk assessment helped us all the way. We hope our experience will provide some useful guidance to other libraries and information centres to implement similar projects, without the need for extensive support from their IT departments or an external project manager. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries help build social capital in their communities by various means. This paper reviews practical ways public libraries can work with children and their families to provide better learning outcomes, and promote literacy and numeracy skills in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Examples of community partnerships from public libraries across Australia are used as discussion points. The issue of funding is also considered in the light of experiences in North America and the UK. Demonstrated are specific library programs which encourage building on the strengths of the community and working in partnership with a wide range of government, business and not for profit organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the essential goals of OhioLINK is to increase the diversity of resources available to member libraries. OhioLINK and YBP Library Services have worked closely together to achieve this goal. In this paper we discuss what has come to he known as the Not-Bought-In-Ohio Report (NBIO Report). This report is in fact a mechanism designed to report in a shared electronic environment which English language monographs have not been purchased by any OhioLINK library and to enable the efficient purchasing of these materials. Beyond presenting observations regarding the contents of the NBIO Report, we also discuss the evolution of the NBIO Report and the underlying OhioLINK history: we believe that getting to the NBIO Report is an important and informative story. An important leitmotif in the history of this project has been the value created in the partnership between OhioLINK and YBP Library Services (YBP). Partnership in its fullest sense is the sine qua non in developing effective systems and practices for the consortial environment. By allying forces, the vendor and consortium obtain a pool of' material and intellectual resources, and a sense of common purpose, capable of creating far greater and enduring value than either of the constituents could imagine if left to operate individually. Working together OhioLINK and YBP have been able to inform and enhance each other's practices, strategies arid development agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]