THE SERVICES: THE HEART OF THE LIBRARY? by Antonio Acevedo

Author: Antonio Acevedo
All or most academic libraries were created for the purpose of supporting the curricula, research, and development programs of the institution it serves. Librarians and information management specialists are the professionals responsible for selecting, acquiring and organizing the collections, classifying the information and making available to users all the information resources that are acquired for this purpose.

Developing collections is a great responsibility, for this, it is necessary to know deeply the institution, its professors and researchers. Furthermore, the curriculum, the sources of information used by academics, and the most recent editions of these materials. Otherwise, many obsolete books and bibliographic resources will be stored in the Library that are losing their value because new editions circulate in bookstores, and publishers are in charge of flooding the market, seeking that academics buy the most innovative concepts, theories and Issues published in your editorial news.

If developing collections represents a great responsibility, planning library services is even more cumbersome and serious ... I would dare to say, without a doubt, that library services constitute the heart, or the backbone of academic libraries, since it implies the search for a balance between information resources and customer satisfaction. The quality of services, the agility to respond to requests, the ability to find information in databases and the warmth shown by librarians to serve users is one of the great challenges that we have ahead ...