EDITOR'S NOTES
Winning Strategies for Achieving Library Objectives
by Dick Kaser
What are the things that matter most to your library’s leadership? What matters to the sponsors and the patrons? How will you continue to be essential in the days and years ahead? In this issue, we think strategically about some key areas that are imperative for you to develop, preserve, and protect.
Library security expert Steve Albrecht suggests you review something that may be overlooked because it is so fundamental to digital services: the very electronic devices that power connectivity, storage, and information management and retrieval. The devices all need protection from theft, vandalism, and cyber-sabotage. Listen to his sound advice.
Alexandra Houff, manager of the Baltimore County Public Library’s digital equity and virtual services department, shares the approach she and her colleagues developed to ensure that all members of the community have equal access to digital resources.
Kimberly B. Kelley, director of libraries and professor at the University of South Carolina–Beaufort, takes on the timely and often controversial topic of controlled digital lending for interlibrary loan by considering both the risks and rewards of the approach.
Randy Oldham, head of digital strategy and technology at the University of Guelph, picks up where he left off in the May edition by discussing the steps members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries consortium took to configure Alma/Primo to seamlessly integrate materials in the shared collection to provide access to all.
David Lee King, the digital services director at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, Kan., shares the why’s and how’s of supporting patrons in media production.
And in the EDTECH section, Sandra Michele Echols—who advocated for teaching students how to use AI tools in an earlier article (“Did a Bot Do Your Work?” December 2023)—encourages teachers to use AI tools in an article called “The Bot’s Got Your Back.”
It’s an inspiring lot of ideas that I hope will stimulate your own strategic thinking.
Dick Kaser, Executive Editor
kaser@infotoday.com
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