A local team assembles the journalists who will cover a community, then Main Street Connect provides the framework for everything else, including the technical setup (and ongoing support), plus an underlying business strategy. In the long run, Main Street Connect hopes the network of independent local sites across the country will reach a sizable audience in the aggregate (comprised, [founder Carll] Tucker hopes, of suburban moms who make household spending decisions), making the sites attractive to national brands. In the short term, publishers of local sites get the infrastructure help, plus the ongoing benefit from the collective insight of many sites working side by side.

The question of what is to be done regarding learning in cultural institutions comes at a time when fundamental questions are being asked about the ways in which we organise our social learning systems more broadly. I have tried to outline some of the many research papers, books and documents that attempt to offer alternatives, or at least explore the current problems within educational practice needing to be addressed. It is clear, whichever way one looks at learning, that practice is changing, and more value is being given to participative, collaborative learning methods that also enable more flexible methods of generating and applying new knowledge.

This study provides an overview of a broad range of existing measures that go beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to offer a more complete and accurate picture of how a society and its economy are faring. Based on a review of the literature and an analysis of major arguments and rationales for moving beyond GDP as a measure of national well-being, this report identifies 14 categories of national well-being. It synthesizes hundreds of indicators found in 28 reports that present alternative indices and systems of well-being into 79 indicators organized under these categories.