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Nearly 40 percent of Americans, often those with lower incomes and lower levels of education, still don’t have high-speed Internet access at home. In most communities (70 percent), the public library is the only provider of free Internet access available to residents.

This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognizing that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.

Five steps to a happy patron 1. Welcome the patron (no scripts). 2. Get some background info. 3. Let them know how long this will be.4. Do not be afraid of smileys.5. Never leave them wanting more.

ALA reaffirms its past support for simplifying the application and disbursement processes, which are major deterrents to libraries in applying for E-rate discounts. Finally, the FCC should consider actions to require service providers to connect their networks to schools and libraries at speeds that support access to advanced services, as authorized under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since advanced services to schools and libraries are not universally available 12 years after enactment of the Act, ALA concludes that targeted, proactive actions should now be undertaken and included as an integral component of the National Broadband Plan.

Leading people: Foster a feedback-rich environment. Develop mentoring programs and train management in ways to give feedback effectively. Strategic planning: Share the strategy. Top management should communicate the strategy, as well as factors influencing the strategy, with management groups and others. Inspiring commitment: Clarifying the vision. Describe how it connects with employees’ roles and talk about the responsibility each person has for realizing the organization’s vision. Managing change: Accept employees’ resistance to change and help managers develop strategies to deal with it. Employee development: Develop a succession planning process that incorporates developmental events. Balancing personal life and work: Hold discussions on when, where, and how to say no. employees manage their time. Decisiveness:Help managers take calculated risks to demonstrate their orientation to action.

Nearly two-in-five workers (38%) say they feel there is departmental favoritism at work, and more than one-fourth (28%) of workers don’t think their department is important to senior leadership.

That problem will ease in time, Mr. Reilly believes, as researchers become more comfortable with the idea that they can get their hands on the material even if it isn't all on the campus-library shelves. "The solution is to get information out to the researchers about how these collections will be taken care of and how available they will be," Mr. Reilly says.

The findings from this research project identified the following seven leadership skills as most critical for success, now and in the future: 1. Leading people: directing and motivating people. 2. Strategic planning: translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives. 3. Managing change: using effective strategies to facilitate organizational change. 4. Inspiring commitment: recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements. 5. Resourcefulness: working effectively with top management. 6. Doing whatever it takes: persevering under adverse conditions. 7. Being a quick learner: quickly learning new technical or business knowledge.

The Federal Communications Commission's broadband task force has identified seven "gaps" or roadblocks along the path to the Holy Grail. 1. The Universal Service Fund. (inefficient way to distribute funds) 2. The broadband adoption gap. Only 35 percent of households with incomes of $20,000 or less subscribe to a high speed service. 3. The consumer information gap. 4. The spectrum gap. 5. The deployment gap. There's also a huge "middle mile" problem out there in backbone-land, the FCC warns: "Costs for transit and transport of Internet traffic can cost rural providers up to $150 per subscriber annually, almost three times as much as network operations, and can be a serious barrier to rural broadband." 6. The television set-top box innovation gap. Devices that merge TV and IP-video are critical for a "healthy broadband ecosystem," the Commission says. 7. The personal data gap. Users have "little control over their personal information,"