Centering genuine relationships, along with an emphasis on community service and creative partnerships, has earned Kent District Library, MI, the 2023 Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize. Honorable mentions go to Henrico County Public Library, VA, and Kenosha Public Library, WI.

From the first known caricature of Abraham Lincoln to a Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoon satirizing the Tammany Hall political machine, the Michael and Susan Kahn Political Cartoon Collection, now at UCLA, contains thousands of individual images, periodicals, books, and ephemera dating back to the late 17th century.

It’s easy, as librarian-educators, to be overwhelmed and intimidated by the pace of technological change, as well as dismissive of the need for educating students and patrons about privacy on the assumption that they have fully embraced these technologies and likely don’t care. But the reality is that students do care about privacy, and want to be able to make informed, intentional choices about how they are known by and accessible to others.

Magic tricks may be momentary, but the annals of performance magic leave a record, commenting on and reflecting the political, cultural, social attitudes of their day. Two collections, the University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom Center’s Magic and Illusion collection and the American Museum of Magic’s Archives and Library, hold a wealth of information about magic and performers, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries.

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 Article See Also: More “Not Real […]

From The Hartford Courant: At a panel discussion in Hartford Tuesday, librarians called on state lawmakers to reignite efforts to regulate and improve licensing agreements between libraries and publishers. [Clip] “This has been an issue facing librarians for more than a decade, and quite frankly, it gets worse every year,” said Ellen Paul, the executive […]

From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Librarians have historically taken a strong stand on protecting the privacy of their patrons. But how well they accomplish this varies widely with the size of a library, and technology has made it more difficult, according to the first study of privacy practices and challenges in public libraries. University of […]

The article (preprint) linked below was recently share on arXiv. Title Data Stewardship: Case Studies From North-American, Dutch, And Finnish Universities Authors Antti M. Rousi Aalto University, Finland Reid I. Boehm Purdue University Yan Wang Delft Technical University, Netherlands Source via arXiv (December 7, 2023) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2312.04092 Abstract Purpose – As national legislation, federated national […]

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.

Time lists the 10 best nonfiction books of the year. Vulture highlights the best comedy books of 2023. NYT profiles Nobel Prize-winning author Jon Fosse. Andy Cohen relaunches a new book imprint with Crown. Poet Benjamin Zephaniah has died at the age of 65. Plus, page to screen.

We asked Laura Lippman for her favorite book of the year, and this is what she suggests to readers.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has understandably been a key concern over the past few years, architects and librarians haven’t neglected other important factors in the continuing evolution of libraries in their communities. 

Simon & Schuster announces a new board of directors. More Best of the Year lists arrive, including crime novels and memoirs. The Penguin Random House Winter Book & Author Festival 2023 is today. A California book club finishes Finnegans Wake 28 years after it starts. Megan Follows directs an all-star Canadian cast in a new audio edition of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Influential writer, director, and producer Norman Lear dies at 101. Plus, new title bestsellers.