Lisa Peet

Philadelphia’s Temple University unveils its state-of-the-art Charles Library; Long Beach Public Library, CA, opens its newest branch, the Billie Jean King Main Library; Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning completes the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library; and more new construction and renovation news from the November 2019 issue of Library Journal.

At least 50 libraries had referenda on the ballots on November 5. While results are still coming in, returns are in on some notable measures.

In the weeks following the opening of the Queens Public Library's new Hunters Point branch, a number of visitors pointed out that many areas are not accessible to people with mobility issues that would interfere with their ability to climb stairs.

Patience and Fortitude, the iconic New York Public Library lions, have been taking a couple of spa months. Today they emerged from their plywood scaffolding after being cleaned, repaired, and conserved.

Bill Ptacek, former head of the Calgary Public Library, Alta., Canada, died on October 15 of cancer, at age 69.

Ithaka S+R recently released the third phase of its multi-part Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project, which examines student goals and challenges, and how community colleges and their libraries can work together to serve them. The resulting report, “Student Needs Are Academic Needs,” affirms that while libraries can—and do—play a critical role in student success initiatives, they are not always the partners that come to mind first.

Simmons University School of Library and Information Science has partnered with seven academic health sciences and research libraries and science publisher Elsevier to establish the Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA), a free online professional development program. RDMLA launched on October 7.

This year’s National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities was delivered on October 7 by Father Columba Stewart, OSB—a Benedictine monk, scholar of early religions, and executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN. Stewart has spent the past 15 years working to digitize documents at risk of theft, damage, and destruction due to war, regime change, or climate instability in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and South Asia.