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The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world. Founded on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the mission of ALA is "to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all."

ProgrammingLibrarian.org provides the resources, connections and opportunities libraries need to fill their role as centers of cultural and civic life. It is a place for library professionals to share, learn and be inspired to present excellent programming for their communities. Through resources, ideas and professional development opportunities, we seek to help libraries fill their role as cultural and civic hubs in their communities.

Development in the 21st century demands access to information. At a time of tight budgets, libraries offer a more efficient, smarter way of doing development. Most countries around the world, regardless of their size or level of development have public libraries. Beyond Access is starting a movement to make them all hubs for economic and social change. We believe that libraries power development.

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.

Everyone, everywhere should have access to the information they need to improve their lives. In the 21st century, cost-effective and successful development efforts rely on access to information. However, many donors and governments overlook the potential of public libraries. We believe that libraries power development.

Congress.gov is in an initial beta phase with plans to transform the Library of Congress's existing congressional information system into a modern, durable and user-friendly resource. Eventually, it will incorporate all of the information available on THOMAS.gov. (To compare the scope of legislative information on THOMAS.gov versus the scope of legislative information on the beta site, see Coverage Dates for Legislative Information.)

Federal-aid Simplified. Understanding the Essentials. More and more, transportation agencies must pursue better, faster and smarter ways of doing business. Federal-aid Essentials offers a central online library of informational videos and resources, designed specifically for local public agencies. Each video addresses a single topic-condensing the complex regulations and requirements of the Federal-aid Highway Program into easy-to-understand concepts and illustrated examples.

HOW IT WORKS MUNICIPALITIES SUBMIT PROJECTS TO CITIZINVESTOR.COM. These are projects that have already been scored, department-approved and only lack one thing - funding. Projects range from building a new park to installing speed bumps or adding a few parking spaces to your neighborhood library. The list of these projects for any city is nearly endless. Currently, these projects sit on a long-list behind other budget priorities, especially now when local government budgets are tighter than ever before. CITIZENS INVEST IN THE PROJECTS THEY CARE ABOUT MOST. For the first time ever, we are giving citizens the opportunity to tell government exactly where they want their dollars spent. Citizens can find projects that their local government has posted on Citizinvestor.com and pledge to invest any amount they wish towards the project. Not only can citizens invest in projects from their local governments, but Citizinvestor also gives citizens the opportunity to petition for new projects that local government either hasn't thought of or hasn't approved. ONCE A PROJECT IS 100% FUNDED, THE PROJECT IS BUILT!

This beta version of the site is only the start. Over time, its functionality will be steadily enhanced. The cluster organization database will be enriched with additional information about those organizations who want to share their profiles and activities. Geographical mapping capabilities will be dramatically enhanced. A broad range of comparative data about regional business environments will be added. And the site will provide a growing library of resources and tools to enable practitioners to make the most out of the data available.

Resilience.org aims to support building community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. We like to think of the site as a community library with space to read and think, but also as a vibrant café in which to meet people, discuss ideas and projects, and pick up and share tips on how to build the resilience of your community, your household, or yourself.

Welcome to The Edge, a free social platform committed to finding, sharing, curating and creating the boldest and most innovative new ideas in health & care. We've created an explorable library of content designed to incite and inspire fresh thought: new ways of solving old problems; news ways of realising potential; new ways of making change happen.

National Issues Forums (NIF) is a network of civic, educational, and other organizations, and individuals, whose common interest is to promote public deliberation in America. It includes civic clubs, religious organizations, libraries, schools, and many other groups that meet to discuss critical public issues. Forum participants range from teenagers to retirees, prison inmates to community leaders, and literacy students to university students.

This one-stop-shop toolkit features guidance and best practices for rural downtowns and urban neighborhood commercial districts through three platforms: a downloadable handbook, a multi-part webinar series, and this online resource library, which includes a variety of new tools and links to transportation- and streets-focused resources, best practices, and research from across the country.

It is often assumed that the public have to rely on professionals to deliver public services because in the economic jargon there is an information asymmetry: the doctor or teacher knows more than the patient or pupil. Yet the families of these children have fine grained knowledge about what they really need: when they need two carers to support them and when only one will do; what risks to take on a trip out to the zoo and so on. The In Control initiative draws out this latent, tacit knowledge of users that is largely kept dormant and suppressed by the traditional delivery approach to services in which professionals are largely in control, assumed to have all the knowledge and so consumers are largely passive because they are assumed to lack the capability of taking charge of their own care, health, learning or tax.

There is, however, one small problem with this. Governments cannot create community, no matter how hard they try, and they cannot build social capital. At best they can create policy environments which assist individuals and institutions in civil society to do these things, or at least, do not stifle their efforts or make their task more difficult. To acknowledge this is not to suggest that governments should simply sit back and hope social capital will grow before them. On the contrary, it is to advocate a radical re-invention of government and a wholesale move away from the old service delivery paradigm in the human services so as to remove some of the key governmental obstacles to civic engagement, responsibility and reciprocity at grass-roots levels of our society.

P2PU is a grassroots network of individuals who seek to create an equitable, empowering, and liberating alternative to mainstream higher education. We work towards this vision by creating and sustaining learning communities in public spaces around the world. As librarians and community organizers, we bring neighborhoods together to learn with one another. As educators, we train facilitators to organize their own networks and we develop/curate open educational resources. As developers and designers, we build open source software tools that support flourishing learning communities. And as learners, we work together to improve upon and disseminate methods and practices for peer learning to flourish.

This webinar features Max Hardy, a Citizen Engagement expert from Australia, and profiles some new thinking that reimagines our understanding of democracy in action and offers approaches that honour the wisdom and practicality of ordinary people. Listen as Max and Sylvia reimagine how ordinary citizens are invited and engaged as co-creators of the community's shared vision of its future.

"Limits to Growth, a study of the patterns and dynamics of human presence on earth, pointed toward environmental and economic collapse within a century if "business as usual" continued. In 1972, the book's findings sparked a worldwide controversy about the earth's capacity to withstand constant human and economic expansion. More than 40 years later, with more than 10 million copies sold in 28 languages, this "little book with powerful ideas" endures as a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the complex relationships underlying today's global environmental and economic trends. "