INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND ACADEMIC LIBRARIES - ACRL PUBLICATIONS IN LIBRARIANSHIP

Mack, a librarian and professor of classics and the bibliography of antiquity at Penn State, and Gibson (research and education, Ohio State U.) bring together 10 essays on how academic libraries can transform their programs, collections, and services in response to growing interdisciplinarity. Academic librarians from the US discuss the structure of disciplines and their fluidity in contemporary academia; disciplinary, subdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge and questions of academic professionalization, knowledge generation, and knowledge retrieval in the humanities and social sciences and implications for libraries; the relationship between interdisciplinary study and the communication of research findings in a global and technology-enhanced academy; challenges in collecting, preserving, and promoting resources; collection development across and beyond disciplines; area studies librarianship and interdisciplinarity, globalization, and technological change; digital collections and scholarship; the changing role of the subject specialist librarian; how librarians can teach interdisciplinary research and information literacy; and how research centers, collaborative data initiatives, and centers of excellence can be supported by research and academic libraries. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Daniel C. Mack is Tombros Librarian for Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Head, George and Sherry Middlemas Arts and Humanities Library, at The University Libraries, The Pennsylvania State University.

Craig Gibson is Associate University Librarian for Research, Instructional, and Outreach Services at George Mason University Libraries. He has been the editor of ACRL's Publications in Librarianship series since 2008.