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The article reports that the collections of the New York State Library in Albany will be available to all New York residents. In a six-month pilot project, all residents of New York State will now have access to the collections of the New York State Library in Albany. Previously, access was available only to state officials and employees, legislators, members of the state bar, state licensed physicians, and local government historians. With the project, announced by New York education commissioner Richard Mills, all New Yorkers 18 and older can borrow directly from the library's circulating collection, as well as getting remote access to the library's NOVEL online databases, New York's statewide virtual library. NOVEL includes a range of resources, including full-text electronic-collections of national and international newspapers and magazines. The policy addresses a 2000 New York State Regents Commission on Library Services report that outlined ten recommendations to improve library services in New York State, which included improving access to the collections of the state library.

The article offers information on the development of Audiobook-on-Ipods program in the U.S. It states that the Research Library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) established the program using leadership and management audiobooks. It describes audiobooks as digital sound recordings of books that can read aloud and have become widely used over the past few years. It explores the inclusion of audiobooks in the library's collections, and investigates the best way to make the audiobooks available for customers.

Focuses on the use of the Internet for libraries to index their archives collections. Index of obituary records made available to the public by the Vigo County Public Library in Terre Haute, Indiana; Use of a Microsoft Access 97 database which was later converted to Hypertext Markup Language; Decision to add a search feature to the database; Other archive projects attempted in Vigo County, such as the 1820 Census and Township Histories.

The article discusses the findings of the Lilead Project survey, which researched the conditions facing U.S. school libraries. Topics discussed include the lack of resources available to district school library supervisors, the professional development, technology support, and collection development responsibilities held by school library supervisors, and the stress experienced by school library supervisors. Charts and graphs illustrating the findings of the survey are also provided.

This article focuses on the information tools and services developed by the Foundation Center to help librarians empower their efforts to obtain pluralistic funding in the U.S. Most librarians are familiar with the outstanding work of the Foundation Center. It is common to see libraries make Foundation Center resources available to patrons as part of a library's collection. With the coming of the Web, the Foundation Center has developed a much larger range of tools and services, print and online, free and fee-based. Fee-based resources of the Foundation Center include over 40 print titles including the National Guide to Funding for Libraries and Information Services, CD-ROM, and online databases. The premier electronic offering of the Foundation Center is The Foundation Directory Online. In addition, the center offers a variety of training and support options, including an Associates Program. The Foundation Center was established in 1956 with this mission statement: To strengthen the nonprofit sector by advancing knowledge about U.S. philanthropy. Headquartered in New York City, the Foundation Center has offices and libraries in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Atlanta. Physical access to Foundation Center resources expands via its Cooperating Collections Network members, which are either libraries or non-profit information centers. There are 241 such centers in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico.

Describes how the Saint Louis Municipal Library Cooperative employed an integrated computer package for the Missouri library. Courses and workshops attended by library staff and officers; Barcoding the collection; Effort to make computer available by appointment for use by individuals of the community; Vendor support for the Book Trak program; Funding for the computers.

Reports that the Old Dominion University (ODU) Library's Special Collections are available to researchers. Types of resource materials available from the library; Components of the manuscript collections; Background information on the library.

The article discusses prospects for systemic change across academic libraries. It states that the prospective creation of the National Digital Library (NDL) is an transformative direction advanced by Robert Darnton of the Harvard University Library which aims to make available the full-text digital collections being created by libraries in the U.S. Also stressed is the need for libraries to advance a plan of creating a coordinated national strategy in collecting and archiving websites and web documents.

Comments on a campaign to be launched by the Library of Congress to create the world Digital Library, an online collection of information resources that would be freely available for viewing to Internet users, as of February 2006. Objective of the campaign; Statement issued by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington regarding the campaign; Views of Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers, on the campaign.

Reports that Earlham College's Library and its Friends Collection and Archives have made available on the Web the American Friend Obituary Index. Name change from `The American Friend' to `Quaker Life'; Creation of the index by Tom Hamm; Publication on the Friends Collection Web pages by Neal Baker.

This article discusses the factors which may contribute to campus literacy programs in the U.S. as of March 1, 1991. The Federal Student Literacy Corps provides funding over two years to institutions of higher learning for developing courses that address literacy and include a volunteer component for students to become involved in field service work. The second edition of the book Literacy Action: A Resource Book for Colleges and Universities written by Louisa B. Meacham, covers all the major issues involved in establishing and running a campus literacy program. College and university librarians support student literacy initiatives or the literacy efforts of their local public libraries by providing office/meeting space for student literacy coalitions, space for tutoring/student training sessions and access to bulletin boards and campuswide publications. They can also develop professional collections of literacy materials for program coordinators, tutors and trainers. Support may also be given through the creation of a demonstration collection for tutors to review literacy materials. If there are children's titles in education or library science collection, it should be made available to student tutors to use in family literacy activities.

This section presents information on several computer software and CD-ROM packages for U.S. libraries. Get-A-Ref version 4.0 is a tool for researchers, scientists, physicians, graduate students, or anyone else who must access and update personal libraries of reprints. The Third College Edition of Webster's New World Dictionary database holds approximately 30 megabytes of standard dictionary data including 140,000 lexemes, 180,000 definitions, 51,000 etymologies, and 50,000 classification descriptors. Utlas International has released a CD-ROM containing over 460,000 full MARC serials records to complement its CD-CATSS cataloging system. The records consist of the pre-1987 authenticated CONSER files from the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada as well as original serials records from selected Utlas customers. The Unisys Corp. has completed negotiations with the University of North Dakota for the implementation of a PALS Library Management system to serve libraries statewide. The network will allow the Grand Forks Public Library and the North Dakota State Library to make their combined 1.7 million-volume collection available to any library system.

This article reports that the "Directory of Historical Textbook and Curriculum Collections" is now available from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The directory encompasses historical collections of school-book and curriculum materials in the United States and Canada. Entries include contact information, Web addresses, and brief narrative information.

This section provides an update on several new online information services launched in the U.S. as of September 2005. The Normative Data Project for Libraries announced that its new online interface is now available to libraries that contributed transaction- and collection-level data to the project .Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) implemented Ask a Librarian, a pilot project within the Open WorldCat program that allows searchers to submit questions to librarians through online reference services of OCLC member libraries. Thomson Gale launched a beta version of AccessMyLibrary.com, which allows Thomson Gale's content to be crawled and indexed by major search engines.

This article reports that a consortium of libraries at five New York State independent colleges and universities have been awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support development of a resource-sharing system for academic libraries throughout the state. The project, called the ConnectNY, allows the institutions to share library holdings, making the collections of all five readily available to students, faculty and staff.

Highlights the move of the Library of Congress to make its collections available online to children in all schools in the United States. Budget asked by President Bill Clinton to be allocated for the project; Cultural documents available online; Comments from Bill Tally, senior research associate at the Center for Children and Technology; When the Digital Library Initiative started.

Relates news briefs on digital libraries. A partnership at Cornell University with computer scientists and librarians to develop better strategies for documents and other data; The funding by the United States Department of Education of two projects at Columbia University to make South Asian resources and library collections more available through enhancement and use of the World Wide Web.

States that the papers of Hermine Dalkowitz Tobolowsky are available at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University. Reference to Tobolowsky's death in 1995; Tobolowsky's contribution to the Texas Equal Rights Amendment.

Announces that several online collections from the Library of Congress are available from American Memory, a project of the National Digital Library Program. Features of the online collections; Vendor contact information.

Announces that portraits of all the United States presidents and most of the first ladies are available from the Library of Congress American Memory online collections. Brief background on American Memory; World Wide Web address.

Introduces an on-line Library of Congress collections available to anyone with an Internet connection. Some of the 350,000 American history collections on-line; When this large-scale digitation effort began; Significance of the National Digital Library.

Reports that the papers of Adele Goodman Clark, a prominent figure in the Richmond and Virginia political and arts communities, have been made available for research by the Cabell Library's Special Collections and Archives at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. Includes Clark's personal papers, as well as records of organizations with which Clark was actively associated during her lifetime.

Announces the plan of the United States Library of Congress (LC) to collaborate with the Association of American Colleges (AAC) for a `digital library project.' Purpose; LC collections available on the Internet.

Presents a checklist of recent announcements in regards to information and library science. Conversion of thousands of manuscript collection records to machine-readable form; Acceptance of a hundred thousand dollar bequest from Ethel M. Crate to the Tulsa Library in Oklahoma; Automation project to make Vermont's public and private library collections available to every citizen in the state; Other announcements.

Reports that the ethnographic field collection `Voices of the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection' from the Library of Congress is available from the American Memory Program at its web site address. Contents of the collection; Reference to the documentation of the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941; Contact point for source of the collection.