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The article reports on the development of an online catalog by the Slater Public Library in Slater, Iowa. The library used machine-readable cataloging (MARC) subject fields to create an online catalog which would be useful to patrons looking for accessible materials for early elementary children. Cataloging materials involves various factors including publisher-provided information and experience of cataloging librarian.

The article offers advice for library directors in the U.S. on protecting customer records. The author notes that library directors need to educate themselves on the laws protecting the confidentiality of library and customers. Library staff members must be trained so that they know what procedures to follow if the police should request confidential library records from them. This training should include some background information about the Bill of Rights, the Patriot Act and state privacy protection.

This article discusses the protection of user privacy in the age of digital libraries in the U.S. The topic of privacy regulations is complex at best, but research yielded three key insights. First, there is a host of legislation at both the federal and state level that applies to the users' privacy issues. At the federal level, the Privacy Act of 1974, Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and Children's On-line Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) are of interest to libraries. The Privacy Act of 1974 was passed in order to control the federal government's collection, use, and dissemination of sensitive personal information. FERPA is a law that requires educational institutions to protect students' privacy with regard to educational records, while COPPA prohibits Web sites from collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 without the consent of their parents. However, research suggested that this legislation is most pertinent to libraries. Second, the Library Bill of Rights and the American Library Association (ALA) Code of Ethics both have strong statements regarding libraries and a librarian's responsibilities to user privacy. The Library Bill of Rights implies that privacy needs to be protected by libraries. This is because users lose their freedom of inquiry if their privacy is not guaranteed. Furthermore, the ALA Code of Ethics makes a more direct statement regarding libraries and privacy: We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted. Third, beyond the legislative realm, libraries need to pay attention to privacy issues because they are part of the greater landscape of the Internet, and most commercial Web sites have some sort of privacy statement and policies.

The residents of King Country, Washington, who turn to the justice system for help face many challenges. They must overcome barriers linked to information and legal literacy, economic limits, and access to computers and the Internet. There's been an explosion of available resources on the Web, but many come to the King County Law Library for help because they do not have Internet access at home. In Washington, county law libraries derive their authority from the state Legislature and operate as special districts. As a public law library, we provide access to legal information to judges, government officials, attorneys, and members of the general public.We believed that opening a training center would accomplish a number of goals and objectives, including fulfilling goals in the library's strategic and technological plans to enhance the role of the library's staff as teachers and trainers, to provide a setting for formal and informal learning opportunities geared to the needs of self-represented litigants, and to make the resources of the library's Web site available for patrons to use in-house as well as from remote locations.

The Shuter Library in Angel Fire, N.M., has always taken pride in its volunteers and in getting the job done on its own terms. While working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's U.S. Library Program as a traveling trainer, I initially visited the Shuter Library to install its first computer, get it on the Internet, and help train the eager volunteers. As longtime board member Martha Lassetter tells it, the library was begun in June 1978 by a group of friends at the Angel Fire Resort Country Club, waiting for the State Library bookmobile to arrive. Ask library board director Debby Clanton, and she'll tell you that the impetus for this small library to make major plans for a new building, computers, an automation system, and to seek grant funding and other methods of fundraising all resulted from its first compute from the Gates Foundation in 1999. In 1999, Shuter Library's volunteers established a fundraising campaign, the Love Your Library Fund, with the goal to raise $200,000 and build a new library extension.

Focuses on the creation of the S.A.I.L.S. Library Network, a private non-profit corporation which is an automatic library network in Massachusetts. Services of S.A.I.L.S. to its member libraries; Computer network which is shared by libraries; Installation of the WebCat catalog; Limitations of services to library users.

The article focuses on the emergence of the one-stop, do-it-yourself shopping trend in the U.S. and how the trend affects libraries. According to the author, she noticed two contradictory trends in retail: self-service and individual customer service. For those who have been in the library profession since the days of the card catalog, the integrated library system appeared to be the ultimate in convenience for both the profession and their patrons. The appeal of one-stop searching is obvious, but it seems that it is not an easy goal to achieve. The profession should continue discussing and search solutions and reference services to make sure their patrons always find what they are seeking.

This article explains the use of anonymous cards in libraries in the U.S., as a way to protect libraries from legal actions. Anonymous cash cards, better known of gift cards, are already in existence. Using the same principle, libraries can issue a borrower card that uses cash, rather than personal ID information, as collateral. Because the library knows how to contact the owner of a card associated with a photo ID, it is willing to loan hundreds of dollars worth of material. If the user does not promptly return the material in good condition, the library can involve a collection agency or alert the police. With an anonymous library card, the library is willing to loan materials to anyone because it knows it cannot really lose anything. Since the library would never loan more than it could re-coup from a cash deposit, it would be able to loan controversial items without storing personally sensitive information. If the user does not return the material promptly, the fines would be deducted when it is finally checked in. With this system in place, libraries could also welcome tourists who want to borrow books about the local community, travelers who want to watch DVD on their laptops in their hotels, and library users from neighboring areas. Anonymous lending opens the door to new kinds of users, protects the library from loss of materials, protects the borrower from loss of privacy, and protects both from the repercussions of a privacy breach. And law enforcement could still investigate suspects in a criminal case: Having searched the suspect's belongings with a legitimate warrant, police officers could ask the library for information about the use of the anonymous library card they seized.

The article discusses the management of public access computers in libraries. Many of the problems that have risen with the use of technology in the library are actually not new problems. The twist in public access computer management is that computers are capable of doing so much that it is difficult to restrict their use to only library-related functions. A computer that can access the library's online catalog on the Web can also be used to access personal e-mail, download music for a user's private collection, or play games. The struggle of library employees in the U.S. to allocate their computer resources fairly has not gone unnoticed by the general public. Librarians who were early pioneers in bringing information technology to the end user shared their experiences and frustrations through the Public Access Computer System mailing list. While there are some technological solutions to help libraries manage public access computers, the larger problem will remain. There will always be irate patrons unhappy with library computer access policies and procedures. At the end of the day, the best solution may be some library humor. A comprehensive source of library-related humor is the Laugh'n'Links section of the Laughing Librarian Web site.

Every library where I have worked has held fundraisers, mostly book sales that were sometimes combined with bake sales. In Monroeville, we are lucky to have an active Friends of the Library group that takes care of the annual used book sale, which brings people to us in droves during that weekend. Both of these events raise money, but if we depended entirely on them, our budget would be very small. Perhaps even greater than the amount of money they raise is the value of bringing people into the library. The Library Support Staff.com Web site has a section titled "See what others have done," which offers links to some interesting ideas for library fundraisers. I found that some of the links were not working, but I did successfully follow the link to the Nova Scotia Provincial Library to learn of its fund-raising activities and to see an article in Urban Parks online that discussed "affinity groups" that worked to raise funds for the San Francisco Public Library.

Comments on a meeting of the board of trustees of the Kitsap Regional Library System in Bremerton, Washington. Expectation of the author that the meeting would be a venue for heated debate about the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA); Opinion that CIPA, which mandates that federally funded libraries implement Internet filters for public access computers, amounts to censorship; Events of the meeting, at which attendees were polite and generally supportive of the library's position on CIPA.

Discusses the evolution and pervasiveness of the Internet in the United States. Percentage of the U.S. population that has access to the Internet as of September 2000; The origin on the Internet; Forecast for the future of the Web; Opinion that most computers in libraries and corporations in the U.S. are underutilized; How computer users can assist the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI); Critiques of other Internet developments.

The article reports on a new pilot program by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that would help libraries in seven U.S. states bring their Internet connections up-to-speed. It is aimed at ensuring that low-income individuals have access to online job applications and other opportunities. According to T. J. Bucholz, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, they want to ensure that low-income people, who use the library as their primary source of the Internet, have access to high-speed Internet.

The author comments on the redesigning of libraries by librarians to better accommodate the way groups of people are working with electronic information. Several pieces of advice are presented for librarians who are planning to redesign their physical areas. The author argues that the digital evolution has changed libraries so much that even the U.S. Congress wants to know about it as evidenced by a testimony made by librarian of congress James H. Billington on the topic.

This section reports on several library products in the U.S. as of May 2004. Sirsi Corp. announced the launch of an original certification program for the National Information Standards Organization Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP). This product will enable third-party vendors to ensure that their NCIP-compliant products integrate with Sirsi systems. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced the completion of an independent audit of IEEE Xplore usage statistics. The controls-based audit, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, reviewed the accuracy of the count of portable document-format documents downloaded from IEEE Xplore. In a legislative session in 2004, the Utah state legislature amended Utah's existing Online Access of Public Libraries Act to make Utah libraries' state funding contingent on their installation of filters that block certain images on all public access computers. Those filters may be disabled, at the request of a library patron who is not a minor, to allow access for research or other lawful purposes. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, announced that 51 members of the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries have become institutional members of the Public Library of Science.