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Given the issue of massive state aid cuts, this library aims to address the issue of how to handle poor or non‐existent government funding for public libraries. This situation has led many librarians over the years to explore the possibility of raising additional funds from alternative sources of income.

The author takes this dramatic situation and spins this as a way to productively work with whatever givens still exist, be they staff, resources, technology, etc. On identifying needs and shortcomings, others can find where they can still provide information services, yet in new and innovative ways.

Revenue streams may gain and reduce, but library users can remain a constant vibrancy in a community. This increasingly sophisticated demand for services and programs demands a parallel creativity of the library profession to develop programs and services, and find funding for them.

The author provides four practical points of how to deal with state financial losses, both in narrative examples and a checklist form. The findings are illustrative and can be replicated in a variety of public, special and academic library settings.

The diversity of social forms both regionally and historically calls for a paradigmatic reassessment of concepts used to map human societies comparatively. By differentiating “social analytics” from “explanatory narratives,” we can distinguish concept and generic model development from causal analyses of actual empirical phenomena. In so doing, we show how five heuristic models of “modes of social practices” enable such paradigmatic formation in sociology. This reinforces Max Weber’s emphasis on the irreducible historicity of explanations in the social sciences.

Explanatory narrative.

A paradigmatic consolidation of generalizing concepts, modes of social practices, ideal-type concepts, and generic models presents a range of “theoretical tools” capable of facilitating empirical analysis as flexibly as possible, rather than cramping their range with overly narrow conceptual strictures.

To render social theory as flexible for practical field research as possible.

Develops a way of synthesizing diverse theoretical and methodological approaches in a highly pragmatic fashion.

Current library literature offers little advice for the selection of science books for the general public. Most articles and books concern the primary scientific literature, produced by scientists for their peers, information most useful to managers of sci‐tech libraries. The popular or general‐interest science book has apparently been overlooked by both science and general librarians. Yet this category of books is interesting and important in its own right,andopportunitiesabound for investigation into their selection and use.

States that numerous commentators have contended that we live in degenerate, degraded, decadent and soon‐to‐be discontinued times. Arguably a manifestation of “pre‐millennial tension”, this eschatological world‐view seems to be shared by many marketing theorists, for whom the end of marketing is nigh. Describes the background to the Marketing Eschatology Retreat and outlines six different ways in which marketing and eschatology can be related.

This paper addresses the social forces, such as cultural traditions, economic structures, and legal systems, affecting animal (human and nonhuman) rights. Also considered are the cross‐cultural degrees of societal advancement on rights, as illustrated by cultures that are stagnant on rights, progressive on rights, and regressive on rights. The definition of “advanced” versus “primitive” cultures is somewhat complicated with the argument being that technologically and materially advanced cultures can be primitive on rights issues, as found in the present‐day US. The right‐wing Bush administration, greatly aided by the “war on terrorism”, has devolved human rights by reducing civil liberties, freedom of assembly, educational opportunities, and economic equality. This repression of human rights has repercussions for environmental protection and nonhuman rights, as demonstrated herein.