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Since their inception, public libraries in the United States have been understood to be free for all to use. Yet throughout their history, socio-political currents and developments limited or barred access for certain segments of the population. The paper looks at the accessibility for women and Black Americans during the 1850–1950 period, taking into account the image of women in the Victorian and New South era, as well as the Jim-Crow segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1945, Western medicine was influenced mostly by investigations from Britain and the USA. This paper deals with the presentation of German medicine in the German weekly «Der Spiegel» between 1947 and 1955, when German society changed from a postwar community focussed on survival to a modern western society. The paper will particularly focus on medicine as a service, dealing not with diagnostic and therapeutic innovations, but with troublesome every-day problems of body and soul at the border of health and disease. The paper argues that »service medicine« was an important tool for German medicine to achieve social acceptance and to integrate itself into the new German democratic society with its private market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the opening hours of 50 randomly selected university libraries (UL) in Austria, Germany, Canada and the USA. The aim of this analysis is to identify possible influences on the extent of the opening hours. Potential influencing factors that we consider are library size and country (state) or linguistic area in which a library is located. The results of the analysis show that larger UL and UL that are located in the United States tend to be opened longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2012, U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, jointly visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to demonstrate their united vision of the country's Euro-Atlantic integration. Although the cooperation between the EU and the U.S. in the Balkan state can generally be considered as good, some disagreements between the Transatlantic partners remain, particularly with regards to the closure of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The paper reflects these controversial issues as well as the current attempts to support constitutional reform in Bosnia. Being a highly sensitive topic, close transatlantic cooperation on the issue seems indispensable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the conference "The Transnational Significance of the American Civil War: A Global History," held at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany from September 15 to September 18, 2011, is presented. Topics include the founding of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. cotton in the global economy, and the impact of the U.S. Civil War on Latin America. Speakers included scholars Nicola Miller, Brian Schoen, and Axel Jansen.

The article reports on the workshop "Regulierung im Telekommunicationssektor: Chancen und Risiken im historischen Prozess" (Regulation of the Telecommunications Industry: Chances and Risks in the Historical Process), held on January 27, 2011, in Bonn, Germany. Papers presented discussed such topics as comparisons between regulatory agencies in Germany and the U.S., telecommunications markets in the 19th century, and the legal and economic rationale for state regulation of telecommunications.

The article reports on the conference "'Bro's, Homes, Dudes': Men and Masculinities in the 20th Century American Family," held at the University of Münster, Germany, from December 2-4, 2010. Papers approached the subject from various angles, including young men's sexualities, the gender politics of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and debates about absent fathers and good fatherhood. Presenters included Isabel Heinemann, Michael Kimmel, and Jürgen Martschukat.

The article reports on the conference "Der Kult des großen Plans um 1910: Gestaltung von Metropolen in historischer Perspektive," held on November 25-26, 2010, at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. The conference discussed philosophies and standards of urban planning in the early 20th century in cross-cultural perspective, with papers focusing on various cities, including Chicago, Illinois, Vienna, Austria, and Canberra, Australia.

The paper describes the stations of a study tour to selected US American libraries which give particular attention to their special collections and whose special collections contribute to their distinctive image. Of particular interest was the question of what German libraries can learn with regard to practice and strategy related to their special collections. The authors visited among other libraries the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Yale University Library with the Beinecke Library and the Harvard College Library with the Houghton Library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composer-pianist Otto Dresel (1826–90), studied with Liszt, Schumann, and Mendelssohn and emigrated to the United States in 1848. Dresel came to the New World with talent, energy, and influential recommendations. Within a week of his arrival he had performed the Mendelssohn G minor piano concerto in public, his chamber music and songs were later to be played and sung by the city's leading performers, and a selection of his songs was published by his co-émigré, William Scharfenberg. Yet his three years in New York were ultimately a failure, personally and professionally. Disappointed in New York, he eventually moved to Boston, where as an influential pianist and composer he helped to shape American tastes for the canon of European Music. The traces of Dresel's brief New York years lie in the works he composed there: German Lieder, a few fascinating settings of English poetry, and several instrumental works. This paper examines his New York vocal compositions as well as how his presence in the midst of a highly intellectual German-American community—which included William Scharfenberg, the publisher and impresario Hermann Saroni, the writer and linguist Therese Albertine Luise von Jacob Robinson (known as Talvj)—influenced his musical choices. His songs reflect, in both their literary and musical dimensions, the émigré experience as well as Dresel's own personal successes and failures, and they continue to speak to us in an autobiographical manner even today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]