Your blog as a place to lodge ideas - an idea repository

From Awareness to Funding is the title of a report published recently by OCLC . The report is based on a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which looked at attitudes and perceptions about library funding and the potential of a large-scale marketing and advocacy campaign to increase public library funding in the U.S.

Some of the findings from the report:

• Library funding support is only marginally related to library visitation
• Perceptions of librarians are an important predictor of library funding support

and

• Voters who see the library as a 'transformational' force as opposed to an 'informational' source are more likely to increase taxes in its support
  

Libraries of the future

Found in Dlib: "What is the future of academic and research libraries? A recently launched web site from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) entitled Libraries of the Future http://www.jisc.ac.uk/librariesofthefuture addresses that question and others concerning how the libraries of today may evolve to address the needs of future information users. With the site, JISC hopes to engender discussion through various means, including interactive Web 2.0 services, a blog, podcasts, an events calendar, various types of documents (such as slides from event presentations), and links to other, related sites"

Moving forward

Libraries should be “more and more a place to do stuff, not just to find stuff. We need to stop being a grocery store and [start] being a kitchen.”

- Joan Frye Williams at recent 2008 American Library Association Conference