July/August 2011

Features

Step Easily into the Digital Future
By Kathy Anderson and Laurie Gemmill
Libraries know the future is digital, but how do we get there in these times of shrinking budgets and staffs? In a...
First Things First: First-Class Service for 1st Graders
By Becky Cothran-Nichols
On eight school-day mornings every September, school buses pull into the Selma–Dallas County (Ala.) Public...
How to Offer More than a Movie
By Alan Jacobson
Many libraries don’t screen films. Many just “play and walk away.” Here’s how to make your...
How One Library Digitized Its Community’s Newspapers
By Allison Quam
The Winona Newspaper Project, an open, noncommercial digital archive, is providing access to a number of historic...
Libraries and the Future of Electronic Content Delivery
By Lisa Carlucci Thomas
“Libraries are about content plus community,” says Michael Porter. “What does that mean in a world...
Who’s the Boss?
By Jamie E. Helgren and Linda Hofschire

Departments

Rousing Reads: Surf’s Up
Bill Ott
I’ve never been on a surfboard, never even seen one up close, but after finally getting around to reading Don...
Editor's Letter: What You Told Us
By George M. Eberhart and Beverly Goldberg
In April, we conducted an online survey of our readers, in order to find out what American Libraries is doing right and...
Dispatches from the Field: Librarians’ Assessments of Automation Systems
By Marshall Breeding and Andromeda Yelton
In Practice: Tutorials That Matter

Over the past decade, a large number of academic libraries have created online learning objects for their patrons....
Next Steps: A Pioneer Evolves
by Brian Mathews
Andrew Carnegie had a radical idea. In 1895 when he developed the public library complex in Pittsburgh, it included...
Youth Matters: My Midsummer Metamorphosis
By Jennifer Burek Pierce
Summer is an island. The trees around my house come into leaf, a bright and wafting curtain of green between me and the...
Newsmaker: Daniel Ellsberg

President's Message: Empowering Voices
By Molly Raphael
We are living in extraordinary times. Throughout the library world, reductions in financial resources threaten our...
Librarian's Library: New from ALA Editions
by Karen Muller
Librarian's Library: Conquering the Digital Divide
By Karen Muller
“The digital divide gets bridged in public libraries everywhere in America,” said Mary Dempsey, Chicago...
Executive Director's Message: E-books, Young Professionals, and Reinventing ALA
Keith Michael Fiels
ALA’s Executive Board and governing Council spent much of their time during Annual Conference in New Orleans...
Will's World: Dead Trees We Have Known
by Will Manley
Another Story: As They Like It
Joseph Janes
One of the best parts of my job, especially this time of year, is marveling at great achievements; how splendid it...

News Stories

Privatization—and Pushback—Proceed in Santa Clarita

The three-branch Santa Clarita (Calif.) Public Library opened its doors over the Fourth of July weekend as an...
The Smartest Readers
Karen Muller
We all know that “Libraries are the smartest investment.” Study after study shows that for every dollar...
The Merger of the Century: EBSCO Acquires H. W. Wilson

In a surprise announcement June 2, two of the leading names in digital reference publishing told their library...
Book Buzz Still Packs Librarians into BEA
Rocco Staino
Librarians were well represented at the 2011 BookExpo America (BEA) in New York City, held May 24–26, in...
Google Ends Newspaper Digitization Project

Google emailed its newspaper partners May 19 to inform them that it would be discontinuing its effort to digitize the...