Lisa Peet

In the first step of a now-familiar process, the Trump administration’s preliminary FY21 budget , submitted on February 10, calls for drastic cuts and eliminations of cultural and educational agencies, including—for the fourth year in a row—zeroing out the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), among others “as part of the Administration's plan to move the Nation towards fiscal responsibility and to redefine the proper role of the Federal Government.”

Cleveland Public Library (CPL) management and its library workers’ union have narrowly averted a 400-person strike that would have temporarily closed some of its 27 branches and reduced services across the system. As negotiations extended past the union’s contract expiration, the library was also criticized by union members and their supporters for its social media messaging around the labor dispute.

The design for Ontario’s Ottawa Public Library and Library and Archives Canada is unveiled, Babson College’s Horn Library gets a new Commons, St. Charles Public Library District will join three sections of the library, and the unBound Library Branch of Meridian Library District, ID, is scheduled to reopen in a new location this fall.

Keith Kesler, social media librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library, was looking for a way for the library to commemorate the late Kobe Bryant and his legacy. The result was Kobe’s Bookshelf, a list of books that inspired Bryant, as well as works he wrote or created. LJ caught up with Kesler to find out more about compiling the list, and what he learned about Bryant in the process.

On February 3, representatives of Macmillan and its imprint Flatiron Books met with leaders of Latinx advocacy movements #DignidadLiteraria and Presente.org to discuss issues of inequity within the publishing industry that have come to the fore with the publication of American Dirt.

This year’s Public Library Association (PLA) Conference will be held in Nashville, from February 25–29—the first time PLA has been held in the Southeast in 20 years. Nashville Public Library (NPL) was LJ’s 2017 Library of the Year; the library—and city—have continued to grow and evolve.

Cornell University Library has put together a suite of privacy services for students and faculty. These include digital literacy workshops, confidential privacy risk consultations, public computers configured to ensure anonymity, and pro-privacy advocacy that will potentially feature a dataset of vendor policies.