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Bell Atlantic of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and the town of Blacksburg have joined to create the Blacks‐burg Electronic Village. Blacksburg, located in a rural area of southcentral Virginia, is a town of 34,000. Located in the town is Virginia Tech, with a student population of around 22,000. This combination of support from the university community and the compact size of the community has allowed for the communication infrastructure to be self‐contained and easily made available to a large percentage of the population.

Topography is a problem in West Virginia. “If you took all the mountains of West Virginia and made them flat, West Virginia would be larger than Texas” is our boast and our network curse. Those mountains provide spectacular views, and stunning areas for our citizens who wish to maintain their independence. Those mountains and that remoteness also create difficulties in information equity, which we are just beginning to address.

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech have participated in each iteration of LibQUAL+™ beginning in 1999. This report focuses on the Virginia Tech experience, the results from the 2001 survey, and what was done with the findings. While most examinations of the survey data centered on determining results associated with feedback from three major constituent groups – undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty – an interesting gender difference across all types of users in the assignment of satisfaction scores was discernible.

Since 1995, the Library of Virginia’s Digital Library Program (DLP) has created digital images of more than 700,000 original document pages, 1,100 maps, 36,000 photographs, and 1.6 million catalog card images, and has created 32 bibliographic databases with more than 330,000 MARC records, 50 electronic card indexes, and numerous electronic finding aids. The bulk of the DLP’s funding comes from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) federal program, but in 1997 the Library received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to catalog and digitize the Virginia Historical Inventory Project (VHI). After an introduction to the DLP and VHI, this article will discuss the costs and benefits of creating the online version and will compare the one‐time development cost and subsequent delivery of the digital resource to the long‐term costs and benefits of providing access to these materials via traditional means.

As many of the next generation leaders are currently on college campuses, endorsing green buildings can foster environmental stewardship among the student body. However, marshalling in the social sphere of sustainability is also critical to cultivate more supportive and inclusive communities. With this in mind, a chief component of the social sphere within sustainability is equal opportunity. Relating equal opportunity to green campus buildings, the question presents itself: Do all campus users have accessibility to and within these green campus buildings from a social equity perspective?

To begin to answer this question, student team project deliverables were analyzed for building accessibility among a sample of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) buildings on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech.

While findings suggest the vast majority of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements are being met overall within the sample of LEED buildings at Virginia Tech and in some cases exceeded, recommendations are put forward to foster an even more inclusive campus environment.

While the literature shows that ecological sustainability and accessibility can be considered together, no studies were found focusing on accessibility of green certified campus buildings. This is an important area of study, as all members of the campus community deserve full access to campus buildings, especially LEED buildings that have been shown to have increased occupant benefits. This study begins to fill the gap by examining LEED certified buildings at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, VA through a student lens.

Small and rural communities face severe fiscal constraints. Many factors affect governance in these localities. Because of this, a vital concern are the relationships between “Fiscal Stress” and other factors. Multivariate analysis techniques are utilized to examine these relationships based on data collected from a survey of West Virginia local public officials. The analysis showed that “Public Finance” and “Financial Management” factors affect Fiscal Stress while external factors, such as professionalism, population, and metropolitan status, have little to no impact on Fiscal Stress. Additionally, Public Finance and Financial Management issues are critical to explaining Fiscal Stress in small and rural governments and Fiscal Stress is critical in explaining Public Finance and Financial Management issues. However, the relationships are not of equal strength; Fiscal Stress and Public Finance influence each other more strongly than Financial Management factors.

The paper investigates the determinants of municipal bond ratings in Virginia using an ordered‐probit analysis. We find that economic factors are the key determinants of municipal bond ratings in the State. Our ordered‐probit model correctly predicts approximately 70% of the actual sample which is not subject to sample selection bias.

We determined access and satisfaction of 2,598 recipients of Virginia’s Medicaid program, comparing its health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to its primary care case management (PCCM) program. Positive responses were summed as sub‐domains either of access, satisfaction, or of utilization, and adjusted odds ratios were calculated for HMO (vs. PCCM) sub‐domain scores. The response rate was 47 per cent. We found few significant differences in perceived access, satisfaction, and utilization. Both HMO adults and children more often perceived good geographic access (adults, OR, [CI] = 1.50, [1.04‐2.16]; children, OR, [CI] = 1.773 [1.158, 2.716]). But HMO patients less often reported good after‐hours access (adults, OR, [CI] = 0.527 [0.335, 0.830]; children, OR, [CI] = 0.583 [0.380, 0.894]). Among all patients reporting poorer function, HMO patients more often reported good general and preventive care (OR, [CI] = 2.735 [1.138, 6.575]). We found some differences between Medicaid HMO versus PCCM recipients’ reported access, satisfaction, and utilization, but were unable to validate concerns about access and quality under more restrictive forms of Medicaid managed care.

Today, VTLS is a comprehensive, integrated solution to the automation requirements of academic, public, and special libraries around the world. No two libraries are alike; no two regions are alike. VTLS recognizes these differences and offers libraries the flexibility of numerous options to configure the system that best meets their functional and financial needs.