To combat the digital divide, reduce barriers to service, and add even more ways to engage with the library outside our walls, Pioneer Library System took action to install solar benches in all the communities we serve.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) this month received a $750,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to fund a multi-year effort to connect the digital collections of libraries, museums, universities, and other American cultural heritage institutions with Wikipedia.

As the publishing industry makes greater concerted efforts to represent the rich diversity of the world in which we live, small presses and imprints under larger houses are taking the lead.

At LJ, we consider best books on many fronts, but mostly we are searching for titles that stop us in our tracks for more reasons than we could possibly articulate. Because that is what great reads do. They overwhelm any criteria we can list and reduce us to “Yes, that, and that too, and even more.” Listed here are books we stayed up all night reading and started the day wanting to discuss. Books we read and re-read, together and apart, books that some of us are already re-reading again. We hope you find treasures among these lists and that they make you, and the readers you help every day, stop and say, “Yes, that.”

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 Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts… Direct to Full Text See Also: More “Not Real News” […]

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Authors, illustrators, and editors will be compensated for e-book and audiobook library borrowings for the first time, in a move by the federal government to bring lenders’ rights into the 21st century. A $12.9 million expansion of the annual lending rights scheme over four years will be announced at Monday’s […]

From the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): A draft Customer Research Agenda was open for public review and comment in October 2022. “We’re grateful for the feedback we received during the public review and comment period. The information our customers and stakeholders shared helped better focus and finalize the agenda. The document truly reflects […]

From MIT Technology Review: Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a human or not. These “watermarks” are invisible to the human eye but let computers detect that the text probably comes from an AI system. If […]

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.

New Harbinger—celebrating 50 years in business this year—specializes in evidence-based self-help books and pioneering workbooks to help readers make positive changes in their mental health.

Carolina De Robertis wins the  John Dos Passos Prize. The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize longlist is out. The Authors Guild is supporting an antitrust action against Google. Interviews feature Hua Hsu, Pamela Anderson, Davon Loeb, Eleanor Shearer, Rebecca Rukeyser, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Vauhini Vara, Angie Cruz, Aubrey Gordon, Margaret Heffernan, and Zachary Shore. There is adaptation news for Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us and Stephen King’s short story “Children of the Corn.”

Punk rock music has lived many lives, but its spirit has always meant the freedom to question everything, and to create or think for yourself. So how does one take the heart of this movement and archive it? That’s a question curator John Davis and Ben Jackson, manager of the University of Maryland’s Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, had to ask themselves while creating their online exhibit, Persistent Vision: The D.C. Punk Collections at the University of Maryland.

There are awards announcements for the 2023 AJL Jewish Fiction Award, with Omer Friedlander winning for his book, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land; also honored are Rachel Barenbaum for Atomic Anna and GennaRose Nethercott for Thistlefoot. Beginning their debuts on the best-seller lists are The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, How To Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes by Stephen A. Smith, and Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo. There are author interviews with George McCalman, Frank Vogl, Jeff Guinn, Sam Lipsyte, and Kevin Maloney.