In 2009, a bipartisan Knight Commission found that while the broadband age is enabling an info. and commun. renaissance, local communities in particular are being unevenly served with critical info. about local issues. Soon after the Knight Commission delivered its findings, the FCC initiated a working group to identify crosscurrent and trend, and make recommendations on how the info. needs of communities can be met in a broadband world. This report by the FCC Working Group on the Info. Needs of Communities addresses the rapidly changing media landscape in a broadband age. Contents: Media Landscape; The Policy and Regulatory Landscape; Recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.

Librarians must know how to provide essential programs and services that make a difference for the people they serve if libraries are going to survive. It is no longer realistic for librarians to rely on the idea that “people love libraries, so they will fund them” in this economic climate. Librarians must be able to prove that their programs and services are making a difference if they want to compete for funding in their municipalities, schools, corporations, colleges, institutions and organizations. Meeting Community Needs: A Practical Guide for Librarians presents a process that librarians of all kinds can use to provide effective programs and services. This requires being in close touch with your community, whether it is a city, town, or village; college or university; public or private school; or corporation, hospital, or business. Understanding what information people need, how they access it, how they use it, how it benefits them, and how they share it is paramount. The process in this book covers community assessment, designing programs and services to meet needs, implementing and evaluating programs and services, and funding options. Providing library programs and services for your entire population - not just library users - is more important than ever. Librarians working in libraries of all types must provide programs and services that meet community needs if libraries are to stay relevant and survive in the long run. Librarians must be able to measure their success and demonstrate the library’s worth with verifiable proof if they are going to be competitive for available funds in the future. Meeting Community Needs will make you take a serious look at how well your library programs and services are meeting your community’s needs, and it will show you the way to success.

"This Guide presents comprehensive, step-by-step guidance on assessing hazardous materials emergency response needs at state, regional, and local levels; matching state, regional, and local capabilities with potential emergencies involving different types of hazardous materials; and assessing how quickly resources can be brought to bear in an emergency. The methodology described in the Guide is designed to be scalable, allowing the implementation results to be aggregated at the local level up through regional, state, and national levels. Also, the Guide is designed to connect as many components as possible to already-established standards, guidelines, regulations, and laws, so that the Guide will remain current as these underlying components are updated. In addition, the Guide discusses appropriate means for maintaining currency of the information over time. The Guide and accompanying spreadsheet tool (on the attached CD-ROM), which leads planners through the assessment process, will be most useful for local jurisdictions that have limited resources and expertise in hazardous materials emergency response planning."--Publisher's description.

First published in 1986, Matching Resources to Needs describes the PSSRU’s community care approach and analyses the first of the community care projects, a seminal set of experiments in the care of the elderly at high risk of institutional long-term care. The experiments create field structures which provide incentives to improve efficiency, decentralised power over resources being balanced by enhanced accountability. The first part explains the approach, analyses the causes of inefficiency in ~British social care, and reviews British and American evidence about the relationships between resources, recipient characteristics and outcomes. The approach is compared with some two dozen American experiments hitherto unknown in the UK. It describes the design of the project and its evaluation. The authors then examine the experimental results. They show that cost and welfare effects are better and the costs of outcomes are lower for recipients of community car. The third part of the book uses observational and other data to explore the relationships between structures, assumptive worlds, causal processes and outcomes and their costs. It also analyses the performance of the core tasks of entrepreneurial case management for types of case. The book concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this approach to community care.

Enhanced transparency, accountability, and government or donor responsiveness to people needs are imperative to achieve better and more sustainable development results on the ground. The rapid spread of new technologies is transforming the daily lives of millions of poor people around the world and has the potential to be a real game changer for development. Improved accountability and responsiveness are critical for reaching the goals of eliminating extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity with a focus on improving the well-being of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. Within the broader political economy context, many questions remain unanswered about the role that new technologies can play to act as an accelerator for closing the accountability gap. Within this context, this report brings together new evidence from leading academics and practitioners on the effects of technology-enabled citizen engagement. The report aims to address the following four main questions: how do new technologies empower communities through participation, transparency, and accountability?; are technologies an accelerator for closing the accountability gap - the space between supply (governments, service providers) and demand (citizens, communities,civil society organizations) that must be bridged for open and collaborative governance?; under what conditions does this occur?; and what are the experiences and lessons learned from existing grassroots innovators and donor-supported citizen engagement and crowdsourcing programs, and how can these programs be replicated or scaled up?. The report presents a theoretical framework about the linkages between new technologies, participation, empowerment, and the improvement of poor people's human well-being based on Amartya Sen's capability approach. The book provides rich case studies about the different factors that influence whether or not information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled citizen engagement programs can improve the delivery and quality of public services to poor communities. The report analyzes in depth both the factors and process of using new technologies to enhance the delivery of primary health services to pregnant women in Karnataka, India, and of several community mapping and crowdsourcing programs in Guinea, Haiti, Kenya, Libya, Sudan, and other countries.

Caring for the Child with Complex Needs in Community Settingsprovides a valuable overview of the key factors relating to caringfor children with complex and continuing care needs. Despite itsfrequent and increasing use, complex care needs is a term withoutan agreed definition. This shortfall of knowledge is addressed inthis book through critical discussion of evidence-based researchand current health, social and education policy. It brings togetherthe latest knowledge into one text providing practitioners with thecrucial information needed when working with this diverse and broadgroup of children. Caring for the Child with Complex Needs in Community Settingsexplores caring for technology-dependent children who requirerespiratory assistance; caring for children who require homeenteral tube feeds; and caring for children with complexdisabilities. It looks at multi-agency care, respite care forfamilies, social service support and educational support ofchildren with complex needs. Practitioners from health, socialservices and education backgrounds have contributed to the chaptersusing case studies, while a parent of a child with complex needshas provided a personal view of caring. This accessible andpractical text provides core knowledge and vital insight requiredfor successful delivery of community care for children with complexand continuing care needs.

Cloud Computing and Digital Media: Fundamentals, Techniques, and Applications presents the fundamentals of cloud and media infrastructure, novel technologies that integrate digital media with cloud computing, and real-world applications that exemplify the potential of cloud computing for next-generation digital media. It brings together technologies for media/data communication, elastic media/data storage, security, authentication, cross-network media/data fusion, interdevice media interaction/reaction, data centers, PaaS, SaaS, and more. The book covers resource optimization for multimedia cloud computing—a key technical challenge in adopting cloud computing for various digital media applications. It describes several important new technologies in cloud computing and digital media, including query processing, semantic classification, music retrieval, mobile multimedia, and video transcoding. The book also illustrates the profound impact of emerging health-care and educational applications of cloud computing. Covering an array of state-of-the-art research topics, this book will help you understand the techniques and applications of cloud computing, the interaction/reaction of mobile devices, and digital media/data processing and communication.