Best Practice guides for library staff
The Library Guides pages contain a number of best practice guides for library staff on the following topics:
Libraries offer a wide range of services - both mainstream and specialist. For many reasons libraries can be daunting places and there may be anxiety about accessing services, communicating needs, knowing what is available and how it can be accessed. This guide looks at the steps you can take to ensure users know what is on offer.
This guidance looks more specifically at how individuals may wish to communicate with the library team and how library staff can communicate with individuals or groups who could benefit from particular services, including how to utilise free portable applications.
To make effective use of the library, users must be able to access the building, find the resources and start to use them. For anyone with disabilities or learning difficulties there can be significant hurdles before they even reach the resources. Building regulations may cover physical access but this guide offers practical recommendations for improving access to all your library resources.
Libraries aspire to be more than storehouses for resources. A major role of the library is supporting individuals in their wish to acquire knowledge by providing an atmosphere conducive to work and tools conducive to effective learning.
The traditional PC set-up consists of a standard mouse, standard keyboard, monitor set up at a standard resolution and Windows operating system set up to default settings that are identical across the network. This helps technical support staff maintain a consistency of provision that most users demand but there remain a minority of users for whom the standard interface is difficult or impossible to use. This guide offers some possible solutions.
Many users with disabilities benefit from having textbooks, journals and magazine articles in alternative formats. However, the whole area of alternative formats is fraught with myth and misinformation. This is not necessarily because it is difficult to obtain alternative formats but because the ease with which these are obtained and used is very context sensitive. This guide offers recommendations for effectively providing alternative formats.
Many library services have excellent accessibility practices but inevitably these are often linked to one or two individuals with relevant experiences or with a particular passion for inclusivity. To move from ‘accidental excellence’ to structural excellence accessibility needs to move from practice to policy and this inevitably ties in with other organisational policies and procedures.
This guide looks at the main policy areas and gives good practice suggestions.
These guidelines will be supported by case studies, and staff will have the opportunity to submit case studies illustrating good practice within their libraries.
