I participated on a dissertation defense for Valeda Dent, who has been one of a handful of researchers interested over the years in rural libraries in Africa.  She nicely defended her dissertation today: “An Exploratory Study of the Impact of the Rural Ugandan Village Library on the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students.”  It has a terrific literature review and a great qualitative analysis of some focus groups with secondary school students.  The quantitative analysis of certain key effects/impact of library on reading turned out to be largely insignificant, not surprising given the small sample size.  The qualitative analysis of her focus group interviews was very interesting, as she “generated” some useful constructs for thinking about (and in future measuring) some of the non-academic impacts of libraries.  Congratulations Valeda!