Thirty years ago, the only person in a library looking for an electrical outlet was a blue-smocked cleaning person who had to plug in a vacuum cleaner with a very long cord. Now, hordes of patrons outfitted with amp-devouring laptops and cell phones expect and need the library to offer an endless supply of electricity. The overall demand for…

People keep writing articles about how valuable libraries are, even with ebooks and the Internet. What people are overlooking is that the reason libraries are having such fits dealing with a changing environment is not that libraries are unrecognized as fountains of value, it's that libraries are so valuable that they attract voracious new…

Librarians should think of Yelp (yelp.com) as a kind of giant suggestion box hanging on the wall of the Internet. This web-based review service describes itself as "an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the…

U.S. libraries gave the world a top talent when Deborah Jacobs left her transformational role as City Librarian of Seattle in 2008 to head the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries program, the international sibling to the U.S. Libraries program. The initiative fosters national-scale projects with grantees in transitioning countries…

The year 2009 will be remembered as one of angst, with the economy dominating news around the world. Few libraries were immune to the extraordinary financial pressures. The library marketplace by year's end was in a weakened position, with prospects of a long recovery at best. Concern persists that even deeper budget cuts will come when federal…

The self-service industry is thriving in the economic downturn. It is meeting increased acceptance by librarians and the public alike, and a new wave of innovations is close behind, according to an informal survey of some leading vendors. Whether the technology creates new points of service outside of the library--like a kiosk--or enhances what…

The past year's best audiobooks, all recipients of starred "LJ" reviews, are more varied than ever--they include a posthumously published novel ("The Girl Who Played with Fire"), two debut works of hard-boiled fiction ("The Manual of Detection" and "Bad Things Happen"), a meditation on the wonders of nature ("Summer World"), and a joint…

This article features Glen Carbon Centennial Library (GCCL), Illinois, which is named "LJ"'s Best Small Library in America 2010. The attitude of doing whatever it takes to encourage every patron to come back permeates GCCL and is the foundation that makes it a model small library. GCCL delivers much "more than one expects." The…

The future of reading is very much in doubt. In this century, reading could soar to new heights or crash and burn. Some educators and librarians fear that sustained reading for learning, for work, and for pleasure may be slowly dying out as a widespread social practice. Several social and technological developments of the 20th century, such as…

For two professions so committed to meeting the needs of readers, publishers and librarians have distinct cultures. Put simply, one culture is all about developing and selling books; the other is about sharing them and fostering a culture of reading. But there is another basic difference, too. Publishers work closely with authors and use sales…

The current recession has hit American workers hard. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ten percent of the U.S. workforce is unemployed (as of November 2009), the highest rate since April 1983. In addition, the labor market is experiencing record rates in the length of time job hunters remain unemployed, while companies receive hundreds…

Drupal is a PHP-and MySQL-based system for managing web sites, developed in 2000 and released in 2001 under the open GNU General Public License (GPL). It is modular, extensible, and scalable. In recent years, Drupal has gained a huge following within libraries as a content management system (CMS). Probably the best-known extension of Drupal in the…

This article reports on a 2009 budget survey conducted by "Library Journal" in which a random sample of U.S. public libraries were surveyed via mail or fax in October 2008. Those that answered the survey projected a modest increase in budgets for 2009, just 2%, with less than a 1% increase in funds for materials, a predictable area for cuts. That…

Libraries are not so unlike market giants Netflix, Amazon, and Pandora. Despite their significantly different business models and missions, they share an interest in facilitating the search for information, including what to read, view, and listen to next. Librarians, too, want their patrons to be able to use their tools to make connections among…

For today's older adults, retirement means adventure, travel, volunteering, and second careers, options that parents and grandparents never had even considered. One reason for this change in attitude is the increase in the lifespan (for both men and women) over the past decades. In 1950, for example, the average life expectancy was 70.8 years; by…