A Viable Future for Small and Rural Libraries

This document uses the issues and the findings of the 2008 national Summit on Rural and Small Libraries to introduce the two documents that follow this brief article. These reports mark efforts by librarians in the states of Delaware and Tennessee to deal with the issues—finances, staffing, training and what users want—that they see as imperative to solve to move their state's libraries forward. These three documents offer a convenient summary of the pressures that rural and small libraries are facing at the beginning of the 21st century.