To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Oceanś Eleven. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu...

The Counting on Results (COR) goals were to develop and demonstrate the potential utility of new tools for outcome-based evaluation of public library services. The project developed these tools and demonstrated their use by 45 public libraries representing 20 states and all four major regions of the United States (i.e., Northeast, South, Midwest, West). In addition to reporting data on conventional library service outputs, the project generated data...

Describes basic library functions and how library resources can help prisoners and ex-offenders alike.

E-book content, devices, and services have created challenges for libraries-- as well as opportunities. Because the e-book playing field is constantly changing, any predictions are, at best, tenuous. Librarians must be resilient in order to manage-- and not be managed by-- e-books and their progenies.