Sandra Tauler has tailored her collection and services to the needs of a community that is 97 percent Hispanic. Unfortunately, that's only half the job. The other half is getting potential users through the door. The solution Tauler and other Imperial Valley librarians came up with was Proyecto Televista. With LSTA funding, and the assistance of…

In an attempt to make the Kansas City Public Library's Web site more user friendly, the Web team took an opportunity to completely redesign the site. This article describes the techniques that the team used to organize and design the new Web site. By adopting a guided approach to the Internet, they were able to streamline their Web links and…

This article explores personalized search technologies showing that various vendors are trying a variety of approaches. Brief descriptions are given of some of beta projects in effort to assist librarians seeking to offer services that meet their patrons' individual needs by exploring how personal search technologies are being used on the Web in…

It is tough to make the staff of a large, highly centralized urban library system believe they should make their own decisions and even take risks--all to serve their community better. But that is what Mary Graham has achieved as Brooklyn Public Library's director of the Office of Neighborhood Services. A study of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) in…

An M.A. in divinity is an uncommon qualification in librarianship, and so is experience in leaching job skills to homeless women. But Cynthia Chadwick, the Arapahoe Library District's manager of outreach services, thinks her background is a good match for library work. Libraries not only "have a duty to serve the marginalized of our society," she…

He may be fated to look boyish when he's collecting social security, but Steven M. Cohen, proprietor of the blog Library Stuff, is as grownup and dedicated a librarian as one will ever meet. His first library job was as a reference librarian and Internet trainer in a public library. He loved its "overall feeling of democracy in action"…

This article details the work of Jeffrey Gegner o the Hennepin County Library in Minnetonka, Minnesota. For Jeffrey Gegner, his day job as Adult Materials Selection Specialist for the Hennepin County Library is not that different from his evening job as a country and western nightclub DJ. Gegner is opposed to a literary snobbery he believes is…

This article details the work of Lorena Mata of the San Jose Public Library. Fresh out of library school, Lorena Mata has already made a mark on her community. At the San Jose Public Library (SJPL) she conducts public Internet classes in Spanish and English and gives quarterly English and Spanish-language presentations at neighborhood academies.…

Leisure has been contested as a valid role of public libraries in the UK since their introduction in 1850 yet it has been a major reason for the public's use of libraries. Where the educational role and information provision function of libraries have been seen as purposeful and worthwhile, the leisure role has been generally valued less with the…

This is the second of two articles examining the leisure role of public libraries. The first article examined the leisure role of public libraries in the UK from a historical perspective. This examines the value of the public library service in providing leisure opportunities from a user point of view. The results demonstrate that public libraries…

A study by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found that in 2003, the number of students being homeschooled was about 1.1 million. That's a whopping 29 percent increase from 1999, when the department first collected information on the subject. In this article, the author shares her experience being a…

Every place has it--coffee shops, bookstores, universities ... and now libraries are offering wireless Internet access too. At the Waterford Township Public Library (Waterford, Michigan), Andrew Mutch created a wide-open wireless network using Public IP open source software. About 20 miles away, at the Novi Public Library (Novi, Michigan), Karen…

A library building consultant discusses ways in which public libraries can plan for the participation of their libraries in the National Information Infrastructure (NII). With participants ranging from schools to agencies of local government, large volumes of information will be passing through the NII network. Public libraries will be engaged in…

This reading program theme deals with mysteries in their broadest sense. The mystery theme is not limited to who-done-its although they are a place to start. The library is full of solutions to other kinds of mysteries. Craft and program ideas, clip art, press releases, a planning time line, and calendars were developed to assist in the…

This document is a step-by-step guide for librarians who wish to host children's authors and illustrators at school and public libraries. Topics include reasons for having an author/illustrator visit; preliminary planning and making proposals; making initial contacts; the program plan, including types of events, examples of successful visits and…