A Practical Writing Guide for Academic Librarians

Style: Short and sweet; Audience; Getting and keeping a job: Letters of recommendation, cover letters, résumés, self-assessments, thank-you notes; Meetings and reports: Minutes, formal reports, progress reports, annual reports, project proposals; Managing: Performance reviews, employee documentation, job descriptions, search committee reports, budget requests; Public services and collections: Subject guides (pathfinders), collection assessments and other documents related to collection development, memos or letters to faculty about the library collection, external reviews, marketing tools (bookmarks, brochures and posters); Online and presenting data: Writing for the website, blogging, e-mail, tables, graphs, charts; Scholarly work and teaching: Articles, abstracts, case studies, syllabi, handouts; More resources for writing.

Mastering the skills necessary for clear, effective writing can make writing tasks flow more easily. This book helps academic librarians who are new to the profession or new to a supervisory or management position, as well as those who want to be more productive and make the their writing for work go more smoothly. From progress reports to project plans, cover letters to case studies and book reviews to blogging, readers will find examples and how-tos for most of the types of writing they need to do in their academic library careers.

• Discusses the importance of style and audience
• Analyzes and guides the reader through the types of writing that academic librarians use in their everyday work
• Includes information on presenting data: specifically, tables, graphs and charts

Practitioners and students of Library and Information Science