Americans believe libraries are important community institutions and profess interest in libraries offering a range of new program possibilities. Yet, even as the public expresses interest in additional library services, there are signs that the share of Americans visiting libraries has edged downward over the past three years.

The following is a guest post from Samantha Thomason,  web developer at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and chair of the Virginia Library Association’s Local History, Genealogy and Oral History Forum.  Because personal digital archiving covers so much territory — from scanning to cloud storage to estate planning — it is easy to […]

Public libraries have been publishers before, largely of annual reports, bulletins, and printed catalogs of special collections–items that are now integrated into the catalog itself or available online. More recently, libraries have facilitated the self-publishing efforts of their communities, such as Sacramento Public Library’s iStreet Press and Temecula Public Library’s Flash Books! And academic libraries have entered the scholarly publishing business in increasing numbers. But what might a publishing imprint run by a local library look like? Over the past two years, two public libraries have begun to explore that question.

Given the popularity of 71 Digital Portals to State History from last month–we got many comments with great additions to that list–I thought it would be useful to extend the conversation to the local level. Unlike for the earlier post, we did not have the services of an intern to do the research, so the starting […]