Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

Midwestern gardeners are legendary for enduring and outwitting winter, with its heavy snowpack and recurring freezes and thaws. Most of them also reckon with a relatively short growing period. All of them find their horticultural plans complicated by hot, humid summers. In fact, the Midwest deals with four seasons dictating special considerations…

It's been over a year since Blu-ray defeated HD-DVD in the battle of high-definition discs. Despite the economic crunch, Blu-ray is continuing to gain momentum in the consumer and library markets. It is seeing broader adoption owing to several factors. According to an April 2009 Harris Interactive poll, 12 percent of public libraries and 11…

The lyrics from the Ervin Drake song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year," kept coming to mind in 2010, despite the economy. While the quantity of works produced declined, and publishers suffered along with everyone else, there was no diminution in quality. With reduced budgets for collections, librarians were forced to make…

Self-service is a hit. From gas stations to banks to grocery stores--it has become table stakes for retailers who aim to satisfy an increasingly independent consumer. Libraries are no exception, and, in fact, with their card catalog past, they may well have been in the vanguard in enabling customers to find what they want on their own. Card…

User experience (UX) is about arranging the elements of a product or service to optimize how people will interact with it. In this article, the author talks about the importance of user experience and discusses the design of user experiences in libraries. He first looks at what UX is. Then he describes three kinds of user experience design: (1)…

This article focuses on resources for building successful stepfamilies and parenting children in stepfamily scenarios. While remarriage after divorce is the basis of most stepfamilies, divorced parenting differs from stepfamily parenting and is covered only peripherally in this article. Worthy stepparenting titles emphasize the singularity of…

According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, it is estimated that 93 million adults in the United States have basic or below basic literacy skills. Those individuals found most lacking in literacy skills were adults living in poverty, adults lacking a high school diploma, seniors and the elderly aged 65 and older, the more than one…

Since ancient times, the supernatural has captivated storytellers and their audiences. Some of the earliest surviving literary forms--myths and folktales--feature such preternatural beings as gods, ghosts, fairies, witches, or vampires living among humans. Today, this fascination exists in the current boom in urban fantasy, a genre defined by John…

Soccer, or football as it is called in the rest of the world, is the most popular and fastest-growing global sport, with an estimated 240 million people regularly playing what Brazilian star Pele called "the beautiful game." Millions, worldwide, watch it on television. In 2006, the average viewership for each match of the month-long World Cup was…

As higher education confronts shortages in hungry times, will officials who previously viewed the library as a sacred cow think it's time for a barbecue? Don't light the charcoal yet. Interviews with chief academic officers and an online survey taken by over 130 leaders in academic affairs yield surprising results. It's no secret that academic…

Each new school year, academic librarians are given a fresh crop of students and faculty to entice through the doors, both physical and virtual. Librarians create clever marketing that appeals to their students' intelligence. They devise games to highlight services. They foster a sense of ownership, offer exemplary service that makes their users'…

This article reports on "LJ"'s annual book-buying survey of public libraries in which circulation took the biggest leap recorded since the survey was launched in 1999. This year's whopping 5.16 percent increase overall suggests just how many people are saving pennies by borrowing materials instead of buying them. In fact, libraries are being…

This article features the University of Liverpool's arts and humanities library, which applies a new search tool to improve the user experience. In nearly every way imaginable, the Sydney Jones Library and the Harold Cohen Library--the university's two libraries that serve science, engineering, and medical students--support the lives of their…

In 1790, Congress passed the first act governing naturalization, which provided that any free, white, male or female adult alien who had resided within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States for a period of two years was eligible for citizenship. From this humble beginning the current system of granting naturalized citizenship developed,…