With The Book of Magic, Alice Hoffman's sequel to Practical Magic, coming out in October, now is the perfect time to round up some witchy fiction to get readers in the Halloween mood. Read on for both adult fiction and young adult works with crossover appeal.

By using new learning strategies, language learning can be interesting and fun. We feature a series of options that can give you fluency in no time.

The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill administration announced on October 1 that, as part of major budget-tightening initiatives across the institution, the UNC Libraries’ funding will be cut by $5 million over two years. During the current academic year, close to $2 million will come from the collections budget.

A launch date has not yet been announced, but OverDrive has been recruiting librarian advisors from public, academic, and K–12 libraries to offer input and refine Readtelligence—an upcoming suite of tools for ebook selection and curation developed by the company using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning tools to analyze every ebook in the OverDrive Marketplace.

COVID shifts drove falling print circ and rising ebooks. But will it last? LJ's 2021 Materials Survey looks at some of the last year's trends.

This is the 13th year of the LJ Index of Public Library Service and Star Library ratings. The 2020 scores and ratings are based on FY18 data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Public Library Survey (PLS). Because of that delay, they don’t reflect the impact of the coronavirus; that won’t be reflected in the data until 2022. The big news in this year’s edition is that successful retrievals of electronic information (e-retrievals)—measuring usage of online content, such as databases, other than by title checkout—joins the six other measures that determine the LJ Index.

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.

From the University of Minnesota Libraries: The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) names the Government Publications Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities as the 2021 Federal Depository Library of the Year. The library is a Regional Depository Library and supports dozens of other libraries in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Michigan. It was selected […]

From The Internet Archive Blog: Community Webs, the Internet Archive’s community history web and digital archiving program, is welcoming over 60 new members from across the US, Canada, and internationally. This new cohort is the first expansion of the Community Webs program outside of the United States and we are thrilled to be supporting the […]

From Wikimedia’s “Diff” Blog: The Learn Wikidata course aspires to teach librarians, library staff members, and other information professionals how to edit bibliographic information on Wikidata. While library professionals are experts in bibliographic data, the data model and editing environment of Wikidata may feel unfamiliar. In this peer-led course, library professionals at Vanderbilt University provide […]

From Springer Nature: Springer Nature is now offering researchers the opportunity to have their books and manuscripts auto-translated free of charge. Following a successful pilot, Springer Nature has now deployed DeepL AI to fill a critical gap and seamlessly integrated auto-translation into its book publishing process.  This service will be available for book authors across […]

When the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines began to roll out in mid-December 2020, their distribution was immediately complicated by a shortage of doses and widespread uncertainty about who would be given priority. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued suggested guidelines for phased allocation. When it was not yet clear who would be next, many library workers, leaders, and associations began advocating for public facing library workers to be vaccinated as soon as feasible.

In the messy middle of the pandemic, library leaders share how things have changed since March 2020, their takeways, and continuing challenges.

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.

The Judge's List by John Grisham leads holds this week. Author and statesman Colin Powell dies at 84 of Covid-19. The shortlist is announced for The Baillie Gifford Prize. Female thriller writer Carmen Mola, is revealed to be three men, as they accept the €1m Planeta Prize, sparking controversy. Four LibraryReads and five Indie Next picks publish this week. The November LibraryReads list arrives, as does the November issue of Entertainment Weekly. People's book of the week is The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, and the cover feature highlights Katie Couric and her new memoir, Going There. 

Body horror has been a staple of the horror genre starting as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The fear of damage to one’s body and the transformation or destruction of one’s wholeness or identity are features of this subgenre, where the focus is the violation of the human body. It can range from beautiful and haunting to an absolute gore fest. Many contemporary titles incorporate aspects of body horror so readily that sometimes it is taken for granted, but these selections put those elements of the storytelling front and center.

Awards are announced for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards finalists and the 2021 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers shortlist. Publishing news on the separation of Pantheon and Schocken Books from Alfred A. Knopf. Penguin Classics will publish special editions of Marvel Comics. Interviews explore the experiences of Doma Mahmoud of Cairo Circles, Fritjof Capra of Patterns of Connection, Keith Boykin of Race Against Time: The Politics of a Darkening America, Jocelyn Nicole of My Monticello, Greg Miller of The Apprentice: Trump, Russia And The Subversion Of American Democracy, and Jonathan Franzen of Crossroads. Gary Paulsen, author of Hatchet, has died at the age of 82.

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is named the 2021 PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage for The Greedy Barbarian. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen, The Butler by Danielle Steel, The Storyteller by Dave Grohl, Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, and I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House by Stephanie Grisham top the best sellers lists for the week. New releases announced for a story collection collaboration between Keke Palmer and Jasmine Guillory called Southern Belle Insults, Trisha Yearwood’s new cookbook, Trisha's Kitchen: Easy Comfort Food for Friends and Family, and a possible unnamed Britney Spears memoir. Netflix launches a book club for adaptations, hosted by Uzo Aduba, starting with November pick Passing by Nella Larsen.