On Thursday, January 14, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio released his preliminary FY22 budget, as well as outlining cuts to be enacted this year. All three of the city’s library systems—Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), New York Public Library (NYPL), and Queens Public Library (QPL)—will see cuts to their operating budgets, with subsequent reductions spread out through 2025.

Librarians Elaine R. Hicks, Stacy Brody, and Sara Loree have been named LJ's 2021 Librarians of the Year for their work with the Librarian Reserve Corps, helping the World Health Organization manage the flood of COVID-19 information.

In a year that many would call one of the worst in recent memory, we were still rewarded with great books. The LJ Best Books of 2020 gathers 144 titles across 15 categories to help get libraries and readers through to better days. Comfort reads mix with fresh new perspectives in this selection of outstanding titles published in 2020.

Lack of reliable broadband access has long posed challenges for many rural communities. As the pandemic ramps up the need, libraries continue to help with innovative solutions.

Whether librarians are providing services in-person or virtually, reference has changed with the pandemic.

Library Journal’s annual Placements & Salaries survey reports on the experiences of LIS students who graduated and sought their first librarian jobs in the previous year: in this case, 2019. Salaries and full-time employment are up, but so are unemployment and the gender gap; 2019 graduates faced a mixed job market even before the pandemic.

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg discuss the fourth and final analysis of their Academic Library Response to COVID-19 survey, “Indications of the New Normal,” looking at the current phases of academic library pandemic reactions.

From a California Dept. of Technology: The California State Library has launched a one-stop portal for all grant and loan opportunities offered on a competitive or first-come basis by California state agencies and departments.

From The Art Newspaper: A year after a fire broke out in its New York archive, prompting a herculean effort to salvage its historical artefacts, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) today launched a digital platform with Google Arts & Culture to make hundreds of digitised images of its treasures available online. The chief […]

From W3C News: The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) has published a First Public Working Draft of W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0. WCAG and supporting materials explain how to make web content, apps, and tools more accessible to people with disabilities. W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3 has several differences from Web Content Accessibility Guidelines […]

Broadband Price Report Finds Big Jump in Availability of Low-Cost Plans (via Telecompetitor) January 2021 Issue of HathiTrust Update Now Online Miriam Maus Appointed as IOP Publishing’s New Publishing Director (via IOP Publishing) Webinar Summary: “When More is More: A DORA Community Discussion on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication” (via DORA)

From the National Archives and Records Administration: With generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Archives will offer new grants aimed at expanding cultural diversity in American history. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) will manage the new grants program, funded at $2.35 million, for digital historical records projects. “Thanks to […]

Successfully facing COVID fatigue is important for our overall well-being, and health experts have identified a number of coping strategies that can help.

Whether librarians are providing services in-person or virtually, reference has changed with the pandemic.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of books on the subject has been increasing exponentially. This introductory list, which will be updated regularly, is meant to help collection development librarians get started on determining which books work best for their collections.

From the AP: ReedPop, which has managed BookExpo for a quarter century, announced Tuesday that effectively immediately it was “retiring” the event, along with the fan-based BookCon and merchandise-based UnBound.

The books most in demand by garden readers are about houseplants, cottage designs, native plants, and saving seeds.

HBO is working on a series adaptation of Tales of Dunk and Egg by George R. R. Martin, a prequel to Game of Thrones. The 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize longlist is out and includes Just Us by Claudia Rankine, The Actual by Inua Ellams, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, among others. The White Tiger, Penguin Bloom, and Resident Alien are some of the adaptations premiering this week. In more adaptation news, Bridgerton, based on the series by Julia Quinn, is getting a second season.

When Baltimore County Public Libraries (BCPL) implemented its successful Lawyers in the Library program at its Essex branch in 2016, it was a way to offer legal help to those in need who didn’t have the means to hire a lawyer on their own. However, library staff began to realize that there was more that could be done. So the library and Maryland Legal Aid decided to create the Mobile Library Law Center.

Natalie Baszile discusses We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy.