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While public libraries are commonly perceived in their role of providing access to books, many urban public libraries are finding new ways to contribute to local economic growth through services to entrepreneurs and small business owners. This paper explores the unique audiences that public libraries can reach, the assets they provide, explorations into the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and two case studies of library systems. Public libraries provide economic benefits through their physical buildings, economic mobility programmes and services, particularly their workforce development offerings. Building on this, targeted business outreach to entrepreneurs creates a new opportunity for economic impact. As inventoried by public library staff, libraries provide physical space, technology and equipment, training and education and research service assets to local entrepreneurs. The two case studies of urban public libraries in the US, Mid-Continent Public Library, Missouri and Spokane Public Library (SPL), Washington, show different service models to entrepreneurs and business owners and aligned partners. As public libraries continue to evolve their service models in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are additional opportunities for the library to contribute to their local economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lists the latest American history collections available on The Library of Congress's National Digital Library Program online site.

There is a growing trend toward a consolidation of services for electronic resources management, A–Z journal listings, full text link resolving, and discovery services under a single service provider. In many cases, the adoption of a discovery service from a provider that is not the same as the libraries’ existing link resolver service means managing multiple knowledgebases. In this session, three librarians gave an overview of their experiences and strategies for maintaining separate link resolving and discovery services in lieu of adopting a full suite of services from a single service provider. Each speaker presented a case study on the advantages and challenges of managing their chosen discovery service: EBSCO Discovery Service, Ex Libris’ Primo and ProQuest’s Summon, in conjunction with the CUFTS/GODOT open source knowledgebase and link resolver service. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public homeless shelters are at the center of a strategy for neoliberal urban development in Washington, D.C. City-level policymakers have sought to sell public property to developers who will convert the sites into luxury condos and boutique hotels, but the implementation of this policy has not been smooth. To understand the third-wave gentrification strategy of public property disposal, I argue that it is necessary to pay attention to the interruptions, exceptions, and stalled attempts at policymaking, which I call policyfailing. I contend that the growing critical policy literature on mobilities and mutations is keenly positioned to contribute to a research agenda about how policies fail to take hold evenly across space and time. Using the under-examined subject of public property disposal as an empirical vehicle, I examine some of the institutional mechanisms, ideologies, mobilizations, and regulatory practices through which public property disposal has worked in Washington, D.C. and, subsequently, how a different set of forces have created instances of policyfailing. I ultimately demonstrate how the concept of policyfailing can help geographers understand governance and its relationship to uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Funds made available at the close of the 2010–11 fiscal year allowed purchase of the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) for a year-long trial. The appeal of this web-scale discovery product that offers a Google-like interface to library resources was counter-balanced by concerns about quality of search results in an academic health science setting and the challenge of configuring an interface that serves the needs of a diverse group of library users. After initial configuration, usability testing with library users revealed the need for further work before general release. Of greatest concern were continuing issues with the relevance of items retrieved, appropriateness of system-supplied facet terms, and user difficulties with navigating the interface. EBSCO has worked with the library to better understand and identify problems and solutions. External roll-out to users occurred in June 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the advent of e-journal preservation projects and publisher digitization of journal backfiles, academic libraries have begun to move their corresponding print volumes of these titles to storage to avoid duplication and save space. This article examines the supporting justifications, outreach mechanisms, and logistical procedures undertaken at American University Library to relocate the entire bound journal collection to offsite storage in order to address severe physical space constraints and to support patron use of and preference for electronic journal content. In addition, the article presents preliminary data regarding the use of bound volumes sent to storage and an overall analysis of this transformational project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the Slavic and East European-related collections represented in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) at the Library of Congress Web site. The descriptions of search strategies and summaries of key collections will help researchers explore both the visual resources available online and the undigitized materials available through the physical reading room in Washington DC Related articles in this issue discuss specific Prints & Photographs Division holdings of Russian satirical and political periodicals, Bulgarian visual resources, and illustrated music cover designs in more depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on how the Learning Page of the Library of Congress (LC) was created. Detailed information on American Memory launched by LC; Year the program was launched; Listing of LC's five objectives; Design of the Learning Page; Information on the future of the Learning Page.

Focuses on the history of publishing at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Publishing programs of the library; Growing demands of its constituencies; Changes in publishing.

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than 10,000 collections with more than 40,000,000 manuscript items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. Collections containing labor-related material are considerable and constitute a major archive for labor history research. Some of the organizational records in the library includes the American Federation of Labor Letterbooks, American Friends Service Committee Work Camp Diary, Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Association of Railway Postal Clerks, National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Women's Trade Union League of America, and People's Legislative Service. Some of the personal papers included in the library are of Henry J. Allen, former governor of Kansas, Otto S. Beyer, a consulting engineer and labor-management relations specialist, Warren K. Billings, a labor militant, William E. Borah, a former U.S. Senator from Idaho, and Andrew Carnegie, a labor activist in the late 19th century.

Presents the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Broad collection of films dating back to 1894; Copyright collection; American Film Institute collections; Radio collections; Television; Other collections.

The Standards Committee of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section was appointed in May 2000 and charged to create standards for the ideal academic veterinary medical library, written from the perspective of veterinary medical librarians. The resulting Standards for the Academic Veterinary Medical Library were approved by members of the Veterinary Medical Libraries Section during MLA '03 in San Diego, California. The standards were approved by Section Council in April 2005 and received final approval from the Board of Directors of the Medical Library Association during MLA '04 in Washington, DC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Bayesian chemical mass balance (CMB) model was used to identify the sources of heavy metals in a highly urbanized area at the vicinity of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. This method uses the elemental profiles of potential sources and the storm water runoff samples at two outfalls into the Anacostia River to infer the contribution of each source by providing the joint probability densities of the contribution of each source and the credible intervals of the inference. For this purpose, the potential sources of heavy metals in the urban catchment were identified and multiple samples of each were collected and analyzed by using an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry technique to determine their elemental profiles. Next, a Bayesian CMB method was employed to infer the contribution of various sources to the storm water runoff. The results of the analysis revealed that paved surfaces that accommodate traffic (i.e., street, bridge, and parking lot) are the major contributors to both dissolved and particulate metals in storm water. It was also found that for both dissolved fraction and total pollutants, the wet deposition source has a small contribution to all elements and that the runoff originating from roofs can be responsible for up to 50% of the Pb in the storm water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]