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In Trinidad and Tobago, there is significant reliance on the traditional and centralized police service to engage in crime response and suppression in urban and rural areas. In this regard, policing scholarship has largely focused on the impact of policing within urban areas, producing a gap in knowledge on what policing rural spaces entails. Despite this, there is some understanding that policing rural spaces can engender diverse challenges and calls for variability in policing strategies. The current study examines the lived experiences of police officers stationed in rural communities in Trinidad and Tobago.

Using the descriptive phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven police officers stationed in rural communities throughout the country.

Interviewees narrated the importance of community dynamics and community-specific needs in shaping their roles and functions when operating in and serving these communities. Three major themes were identified: (1) network activity in policing; (2) engagement in localistic and service-oriented approaches and (3) community-specific challenges.

The findings suggest that while there is an emphasis on traditional law enforcement responsibilities, in the rural context, police responsibilities and duties are constantly being redefined, reframed and broadened to meet the contextual community and geographic-specific diversities and demands.

To provide library service to users of all ages has been one of the primary missions of county libraries since 1908 when the first branch of the first county library system was born in Sacramento as a proud milestone in the history of California public library. It has been a constant challenge to local governments and library staff members alike, especially when there are economic downturns or many priority programs to balance with. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper introduces an innovative methodology in collection development to promote the concept that library collections, traditional or digital, can serve users of all ages as long as they can be adaptable to meet the changing needs of users, and compatible with changing information technologies.

By examining the process of an audio collection integrated as part of library collections and deeply rooted in users’ lives, the author reports the findings in the following areas: developing a robust audio collection catering to all users at Santa Cruz Public Libraries, despite technological changes and limited budget; getting involved in the whole organization’s programs and projects by collaborations; offering innovative promotion approaches; providing comprehensive subject coverage and always keeping the local community in mind; and evolving constantly to make technologies your friends, not foes.

The paper analyzes a successful collection development experience in audio collections to strive to realize the original county library’s ideal to serve users of all ages in California.

The successful collection development experience is useful not only for acquisition librarians, but a much broader audience such as library managers in charge of library material budgets.

The findings point out a number of social implications confronting library professionals worldwide. They include conflicts between users’ real needs vs our assumptions, limited budget vs expanding coverage, and library services vs the nature of technology.

The paper helps library professionals to develop, maintain, and succeed in their short- and long-term goals in collection development.