Guidelines on organising documentation and library services

The International Water and Sanitation Centre recently published guidelines on 'organising local documentation services for the water and sanitation sector.' The guidelines aim to help people understand how to organise collections of documents in their institutions in such a way as to be able to find information quickly and easily - without the help of a professional librarian or documentalist.

Reviewed by Julie Fisher in January 2006, the book "takes the reader right back to basics (such as ensuring staff washing facilities), and goes on to more complex managerial and technical issues, presenting theory along with practice, while still retaining a wonderful clarity of style."

Available to download as full text, the guidelines include discussion of 'Essentials of information management', 'Effective performance', 'Identifying information users and their needs', 'Formulating policy', 'Staff and training', 'Finance and budgeting', ' Physical facilities', 'Information resources policy', 'Discovering information resources', 'Organising information resources', 'Information products and services', 'Electronic delivery', 'Promoting and marketing', 'Developing a web site', and 'How to conduct information surveys'.

Tags: information libraries documentation centres