Every local government faces the question of how best to provide council members, the local government staff, and the public with information about the agenda items for the council’s next meeting. This e-book examines the “paperless council,” defined as a council that uses information technology (IT) to facilitate and enrich the process of preparing information for council meetings and making the information available to everyone involved. The Paperless Council describes various approaches that local governments have taken after considering such factors as the size, availability, and sophistication of the IT infrastructure and staffing, and the interest expressed by council members, the manager, the staff, or the public.

An examination of why paper continues to fill our offices and a proposal for better coordination of the paper and digital worlds. Over the past thirty years, many people have proclaimed the imminent arrival of the paperless office. Yet even the World Wide Web, which allows almost any computer to read and display another computer's documents, has increased the amount of printing done. The use of e-mail in an organization causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption. In The Myth of the Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper use the study of paper as a way to understand the work that people do and the reasons they do it the way they do. Using the tools of ethnography and cognitive psychology, they look at paper use from the level of the individual up to that of organizational culture. Central to Sellen and Harper's investigation is the concept of "affordances"—the activities that an object allows, or affords. The physical properties of paper (its being thin, light, porous, opaque, and flexible) afford the human actions of grasping, carrying, folding, writing, and so on. The concept of affordance allows them to compare the affordances of paper with those of existing digital devices. They can then ask what kinds of devices or systems would make new kinds of activities possible or better support current activities. The authors argue that paper will continue to play an important role in office life. Rather than pursue the ideal of the paperless office, we should work toward a future in which paper and electronic document tools work in concert and organizational processes make optimal use of both.

One woman’s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-World War II Europe, and an exploration into family identity, myth, and memory. Years after her grandfather’s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients A–G.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel. Her grandfather’s lover who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Valy’s name wasn’t unknown to her—Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. “She was your grandfather’s true love,” her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy’s story. They revealed a woman desperate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Obsessed with Valy’s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entire world of other people searching for the same woman. On in the course of discovering Valy’s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.

The Effective Local Government Manager, 3rd Edition, reflects the rich history and modern reinvention of a profession that sprang up at the beginning of the twentieth century. What does it mean to be a local government manager in today’s world? What can a manager accomplish? What internal as well as external resources must the manager harness? What motivates the manager’s employers, colleagues, and employees? For the student contemplating a career as a manager in public service, The Effective Local Government Manager is almost obligatory reading. Many instructors have built introductory courses on local government management around The Effective Local Government Manager. For the young assistant in a city or county, or for the mid-career manager assessing new challenges, The Effective Local Government Manager offers insights on your role and how you can best serve your community. It explores the manager’s many roles and responsibilities—interacting with the community, the governing body, local government employees, and other governments. It offers the most up-to-date theory and practice of local government as well as tools of management. This book is used as a text in ICMA University's Emerging Leaders Development Program.

A good working relationship with members of the governing board is crucial for every local government manager. New Council Member Orientation: Instilling the Spirit of High Performance outlines how a well-organized, informative, and appropriate orientation program ensures that the newly elected council members’ first impression of their new partners in government is a good one. The orientation should reflect the circumstances of the community, the needs of the new council members, and the manager’s style. This e-book singles out the necessary components of a good orientation, discusses practices that seem to work well in any situation, leads the reader through the planning process, and provides case examples.