The main goal of the Foundation’s higher education program in South Africa is to develop capacity in higher education by providing opportunities for individuals who were previously disadvantaged and individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the previously disadvantaged.

Grants from the Foundation have supported regional library collaborations of universities and technikons (now universities of technology). All 21 higher education institutions and the National Library of South Africa have benefited from our support of five regional consortia. The Foundation also made grants to the South African Bibliographic Network (SABINET) to support library collaboration at the national level and to promote access to JSTOR, a scholarly journal archive (www.jstor.org). In addition, the Foundation has worked to improve access to the Internet for all of South African higher education through the Tertiary Education Network (www.tenet.ac.za).

Deadline: January 30, 2009 The Coming Up Taller Awards recognize and support outstanding community arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America's young people, provide them learning opportunities and chances to contribute to their communities. These awards focus national attention on exemplary programs currently fostering the creative and intellectual development of America's children and youth through education and practical experience in the arts and the humanities. Accompanied by a cash award, the Coming Up Taller Awards not only reward these projects with recognition, but also contribute significant support to their continued work.

Deadline: December 15

This program supports projects to develop faculty and library leaders, to recruit and educate the next generation of librarians, to conduct research on the library profession, and to support early career research on any area of library and information science by tenure-track, untenured faculty in graduate schools of library and information science. It also supports projects to attract high school and college students to consider careers in libraries, to build institutional capacity in graduate schools of library and information science, and to assist in the professional development of librarians and library staff.

They are just lines on a graph, but for many subway riders they will provide unique insight into one of the great aggravations of life underground: why trains on some lines are so often both crowded and late, while on other lines the trains seem to cruise along on schedule with almost no one on board.

In an unusually candid effort at self-examination for a habitually insular agency, New York City Transit yesterday presented what could be called an index of straphanger frustration. It made an analysis of each subway line that shows at a glance how often trains run late, how crowded they are and whether more trains could be added to ease the problems.

What is revealed is both predictable and eye-opening. Many subway lines are simply maxed out, meaning there is no room on the tracks they use to add trains that could carry the swelling numbers of riders. And that has implications that range from day-to-day decisions about how trains travel through the system to long-term planning on how to best move people around a growing city.

"From my point of view, this is scary," said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board. "This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we're several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We're constrained."