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Over the past thirty years, significant shifts in technology, political ideologies, and policy goals have resulted in an environment in which public libraries face the highest expectations to serve community needs against unprecedented political, economic, and policy challenges. Drawing on two decades of original research conducted by the authors, this book provides a data-driven examination of the interrelated impacts of political discourse and public policy processes on public libraries and the ways in which they are able to serve their communities, explaining the complex current circumstances and offering strategies for effectively creating a better future for public libraries.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
List of Figures and Tables
Preface
Chapter 1: Politics, Policies, and Public Libraries
Chapter 2: The Development of Public Libraries as a Public Good in the United States
Chapter 3: The Evolution of Policies Affecting Public Libraries in the Unites States
Chapter 4: Prevailing Governance and Economic Ideologies
Chapter 5: Changes in Public Libraries and Changes in Communities
Chapter 6: Engagement and Valuation of the Public Good
Chapter 7: Demonstrating Library Value and Advocating for Support
Chapter 8: The Public Library in the Local Political Process
References
About the Authors
About the author
Paul T. Jaeger is associate professor and diversity officer of the College of Information Studies and Co-Director of the Information Policy and Access Center at the University of Maryland. Dr. Jaeger’s research focuses on the ways in which law and public policy shape information behavior, particularly for underserved populations. He is the author of more than one hundred and fifty journal articles and book chapters. This is his ninth book. His other recent books are Information Worlds: Social Context, Technology, & Information Behavior in the Age of the Internet (Routledge, 2010) with Gary Burnett; and Public Libraries and the Internet: Roles, Perspectives, and Implications (Libraries Unlimited, 2011) with John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure; Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide (Lynne Rienner, 2012); Public Libraries, Public Policies, and Political Processes: Serving and Transforming Communities in Times of Economic and Political Constraint (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) withUrsula Gorham is senior lecturer in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (the iSchool). She currently serves as the director of the Master of Library and Information Science Program in the iSchool. She is admitted to practice law in Maryland and previously served as a law clerk in Maryland appellate and federal bankruptcy courts. Elizabeth (Beth) Bonsignore is an assistant research scientist at the College of Information Studies (the iSchool) and the University of Maryland’s (UMD) Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). As the director of KidsTeam, an intergenerational, participatory design team at Maryland’s iSchool, her research efforts involve codesign partnerships and meaningful play with youth. She has also served as an associate chair for the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), CHI-PLAY, and Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conferences since 2016.
