If the resort city of Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland and its "imagineers," marked a departure from the urban reality of the typical American Library Association (ALA) annual conference, it was impossible, at this 2008 meeting, to avoid urgent library issues. How do libraries maintain their value and cultural presence as users…

Parents, professional educators, boards of education, legislators, and the general public are justifiably questioning the monies spent on education, school efficiency, what schools are actually accomplishing, and who controls the results of schooling. However, accountability, as envisioned by its major supporters, will address none of these…

This paper examines the family vacation as a common leisure experience, with emphasis on the rise of the theme park. Theme parks, designed to enable parents to entertain everyone in the family with minimal frustration in organization and application, provide a single-price, inside-the-gate, complete experience. In 1955, Disneyland opened in…