This summer, as public libraries continued to get budget hit after budget hit across the country, several readers asked for a comprehensive picture of the ravages of the recession on library service. In partnership with 2010 Movers & Shakers Laura Solomon and Mandy Knapp, Ohio librarians who bought the Losing Libraries domain name,…

The purpose of this research was to determine the status of Puerto Rico's public libraries to new information technologies. Obtaining the views of library staff working in the same, characteristics and attitudes and knowledge in new information technologies needed to serve as information specialists in libraries. To know the opinion of the…

Jane Maud Campbell's career demonstrated her commitment and passion for library services with immigrants and minorities as one of the first advocates for multiculturalism in librarianship. She began her career working in the Newark Public Library and soon was employed as the librarian of the Passaic Public Library. She was the first woman employed…

Like a bright beacon on the hill, the Lillian Marrero public library rises majestically above the deserted buildings and bulldozed voids below on Germantown Avenue. Here in the heart of what is known as the Philadelphia Badlands, makeshift garbage dumps line the sidewalks. The tall grass that surrounds abandoned lots does nothing to obscure the…

The study looked into the 307 Koha libraries listed in Breeding's Library Technology Guides. Since all the tag clouds in Koha are user-contributed, their adoption and usage can shed light on the extent to which libraries are supporting user tagging. The research also revealed that public library users are more actively involved in tagging than…

Presented as the keynote address at the Library Research Seminar, University of Maryland, October 7, 2010, this essay identifies and explores three agendas ever appropriate for study, the pursuits of which are especially needed now. They are as follows: to (1) explore the historical dimension of library topics, (2) revive study of the institution…

The purpose of this study was to identify feelings and behaviors of fieldwork supervisors in public libraries using Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development theory as a background for design, analysis, and discussion of results. This research sought to find out how fieldwork supervisors perform initial assessments of their fieldwork students,…

Research examining ethnolinguistic community schools (García, Zakharia, & Otcu, 2013) proposes that local spaces not directly affiliated with schools sustain bilingualism and identity. Though researchers often theorize about how community schools sustain home language literacies, less research examines how local public spaces sustain…

This study examined the possibility that the relationship between the number of ideas an employee generated and the number of those ideas that were adopted by the organization was moderated by the general radicalness of the employee's ideas (i.e., the extent to which the ideas were breakthrough or groundbreaking), the employee's intention to stay,…

The main goal of this research study was to develop a conceptual model for the design of public library websites for teens (TLWs) that would enable designers and librarians to create library websites that better suit teens' information needs and practices. It bridges a gap in the research literature between user interface design in human-computer…

Since the adoption of faceted search in a small number of academic libraries in 2006, faceted library catalogs have gained popularity in many academic and public libraries. This dissertation seeks to understand whether faceted search improves the interactions between searchers and library catalogs and to understand ways that facets are used in…

Libraries are critical learning spaces and may play a significant role in intercultural education initiatives, particularly in Sweden where the national curriculum ascribes central functions to libraries for learning activities. Unfortunately, the ways in which teachers and librarians may collaborate to leverage mutual resources is not fully…

This article features Naturita Community Library (NCL), winner of "LJ"'s 2011 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is the largest straw bale library in America. It sits on the western slope of the Rockies, across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the county seat in Montrose,…

A hundred years after Marie Curie received her Nobel Prize in Chemistry, this arm of science is pointing the way to a more sustainable future. Growing movements like green chemistry, which strives to create alternative and new chemical reactions that produce no harmful waste products, and molecular engineering hold great potential for industry,…

Wayfinding is the method by which humans orient and navigate in space, and particularly in built environments such as cities and complex buildings, including public libraries. In order to wayfind successfully in the built environment, humans need information provided by wayfinding systems and tools, for instance architectural cues, signs, and…