Local governments around the world are exploring different strategies to become smarter: more efficient, sustainable, and highly interconnected. However, many actors outside government need to be involved too. For instance, public libraries have the potential to play a very important role in the development of smart and connected communities, due to their strong legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and the types of services and programs they are already providing, which in many cases go well beyond what could be considered traditional library services. This paper analyzes innovative practices in public libraries and argue that they already show the potential of public libraries to become catalysts for smart and connected communities. Together, these innovations represent an opportunity for governments and communities to engage and a new way to think about public libraries as very important actors in smart community initiatives.

Advances in grid technology in the past two decades have enabled some organizations to harness enormous computational power on demand. However, the prediction of widespread adoption of grid technology has not materialized, while cloud technology is increasingly gaining acceptance. Using the online survey engine - Survey Monkey, data were collected from individuals (242 respondents) in schools, businesses and government in USA to determine the influential factors in the adoption process of grid and cloud technology. The multiple regression technique was used to determine the relationship between the intent to adopt grids and the behavioral factors: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude (competition from alternative technology- clouds) and trust (security). The research established a valuable model to predict acceptance or rejection of grids or clouds. Implications for professionals in business, information technology, and computer science are discussed.

The growth in data traffic within higher institutions has always been accompanied with the adoption of a more scalable IT infrastructure. With the increasing budgetary constraints, cloud computing (a disruptive technology) presents an attractive means to address the scalability challenges while realizing the potential of ubiquitous IT services. The on-demand business proposition of the cloud provides virtualized resources (software, platform, and infrastructure) with far-reaching efficiencies that have lowered the initial and operating IT costs for both small and large organizations. In migrating to the cloud environments, various organizations encounter challenges and experiences which are worthy of considerations by new entrants and established users. In this paper, we present the experiences of Sullivan University in transitioning to the complex cloud environment, in which a mixture of pilot and phased conversion steps were deployed in the migration process.

This paper describes the approach used to teach the database course to undergraduate majors. The curriculum is structured to provide two courses in sequence to teach the database technology to both the computer science (CS) and information systems (IS) majors in an integration-driven Oracle environment. In a team-oriented approach, a comprehensive project is tackled by beginning with part project at the introductory database level, which culminates in the integration of the whole project at the advanced database level. There is strong evidence, especially from the student evaluation, that the approach has resulted in better acquisition of database concepts and practice.

Energy conservation and its efficient utilization especially in cloud data centers has been a subject of discourse amongst numerous stakeholders. Advancement in information technology tools provides a solution to automating the process of electricity metering as well as remote load control alternatives. This paper presents an energy meter reader implemented with a microcontroller based logic methodology fused with a building automation system to implement remote load control by home owners using SMS from a GSM phone. A password based relay circuit was incorporated to ensure secure switching by the user. The system when deployed can enable users query and set energy consumption rates remotely so as to reduce the cost on final consumers as well as conserve energy. This is could be a useful system in the green-based design of cloud data centers.