Community Libraries in Ghana: The Struggle,Survival, and Collapse

There are many community libraries in Ghana. Most of these libraries are established by non-governmental agencies, district assemblies, affluent or well-to-do individuals, and individuals with higher educational credentials hailing from these rural areas as memorial. There are many benefits that can be derived from the establishment of these libraries. Notwithstanding the numerous potential benefits of community libraries, many of these community libraries in Ghana have collapsed. The ones which are operating are fighting a battle of survival, struggling with numerous challenges. This article shines more light on the problems and challenges facing community libraries in Ghana and makes recommendations based on review of literature on the various challenges facing rural or community libraries elsewhere, and their proposed solutions.     

Victor C. Strasburger and Barbara Jan Wilson. Children,Adolescents, & the Media. Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage, 2002, 560 pp., ISBN 9780761921257 (paperback)

Recent research shows parents manifest parental third-person perceptions on behalf of their children; that is, they believe their children are less affected by media sex and violence than other children. This study (N = 171) found parental third-person perceptions for materialism effects of television and parental first-person perceptions for advanced educational effects of public television. Perceptions of materialism effects on one's own and other children predicted parental mediation, whereas perceptions of education effects predicted support for regulations requiring more educational television.     

Regulation Before Regulation: The Local-National Struggle for Control of Radio Regulation in the 1920s

The standard narrative of U.S. radio policy history before 1927 focuses almost exclusively on the federal level, ignoring the vibrant and far-reaching policymaking that was occurring at a wide range of sites below the federal level during this era, especially municipalities. Such local regulation became an important structuring “other” of federal policy, resulting in political, legal, and cultural struggles over not just the narrow question of the reach of federal jurisdiction over radio, but the larger question of the place of local autonomy in an age of national economic and political consolidation.