This article examines some of the reasons why community workers get involved with neighborhood information centers, and shows how unrealistic expectations of these workers can limit and disguise the achievements of these centers. (SK)

Advocates development of libraries through statewide approach, using as an example the West Virginia library system where a conference on libraries was sponsored to increase citizen awareness and involvement. Workshops, outreach programs, open access, and library sharing are tools mentioned to make the library more useful to the individual. (SW)

Traces the path of library revolution in Information and Referral (I&R) Services from 1969 to the present. (Author/MBR)

The work involved in planning and implementing a community information center in partnership with the community requires professionalism of the highest order and provides the opportunity for many more librarians to work as true professionals. (Author)

Includes lists of machine-readable data bases (publicly available bibliographic data bases as well as machine-readable files associated with information and referral centers), a discussion of information and referral services, lists of major information sources for coping, a selective bibliography of coping literature, and a discussion of trends…

The Community Learning Centers are adult education centers deliberately placed in the more remote areas. Using video as a medium, they offer people the opportunity to communicate among themselves and with the larger centers of decision making. (Author/BD)

Discusses the practice and perspectives of free access for the public of Uzbekistan to legal resources, including distant and disadvantaged communities. Explains the legal database system and presents results of a project at the Open Library for Legal Information to organize legal information by regional libraries and public centers for legal…

Describes digital community information systems (CIS) and the need for improvements in system design. Proposes a layered evaluation framework to guide the evaluation of digital CIS from the perspective of information retrieval, following a selective review of digital CIS and evaluation approaches. Contains 59 references. (Author/LRW)

Describes the background of and the concept, and purpose of a local file in the Pikes Peak Library District's community resource and information system. The year established, scope and function, and sample records are reviewed for the nine files that currently comprise the system. (two references) (MES)

Community information (CI) isn't a new concept for libraries. In some communities it's as old as library service itself. When librarians began collecting, maintaining, and delivering CI to patrons, they worked with a variety of nonprofits and other governmental agencies to develop card- or notebook-based systems to connect people with information.…

The authors report the results of an evaluation of services provided by 54 Illinois domestic violence agencies. In collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago evaluation team, domestic violence advocates identified services to be evaluated, specified desired outcomes of those services, and participated in developing measures of those…

This paper presents the activities of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for 2009. The past year was one of accomplishment for USAC. USAC implemented a host of advances in operations, infrastructure, and outreach in an effort to continue to improve collection and disbursement of the Universal Service Fund (USF) support and to…

A total of 2,611 calls to 14 helplines were monitored to observe helper behaviors and caller characteristics and changes during the calls. The relationship between intervention characteristics and call outcomes are reported for 1,431 crisis calls. Empathy and respect, as well as factor-analytically derived scales of supportive approach and good…

In this study we evaluated the effectiveness of telephone crisis services/hotlines, examining proximal outcomes as measured by changes in callers' suicide state from the beginning to the end of their calls to eight centers in the U.S. and again within 3 weeks of their calls. Between March 2003 and July 2004, 1,085 suicide callers were assessed…