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Henrick Hudson Free Library in Montrose, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, and Saratoga Springs Public Library this year became the first libraries to complete the New York Library Association's Sustainable Libraries Certification Program, demonstrating their commitment to environmental stewardship, economic feasibility, and social equity.
On October 29, writer Meghan Murphy spoke at a rented theater space in Canada’s Toronto Public Library (TPL) Palmerston branch. The discussion—“Gender Identity: What Does It Mean for Society, the Law and Women?"—was booked by an outside group, Radical Feminists Unite, and was not part of library programming. The appearance sparked protests against the library’s decision to rent the space to Murphy, particularly from the transgender and broader LGBTQ communities, as well as a barrage of criticism on social media.
Politics spurred a library budget and spending decision in Citrus County, FL, in October, when the Citrus County Commission withdrew a motion for the Citrus County Library’s request to purchase a digital New York Times subscription. While library acquisitions are often scrutinized from a budget perspective, this refusal raised attention when county commissioners went on record with non-financial reasons for voting against the electronic subscription.
Library trustees are charged with evaluating the director’s performance—and, often, securing a director when the position opens up. Trustees need to act efficiently, in these moments of pending vacancy, to secure leadership for their library. There are many considerations that arise when a director submits that dreaded resignation letter. Here are a few.
From open outdoor areas to fantastic and functional fixtures, sustainable systems to to study spaces, LJ's 2019 Year in Architecture roundup celebrates the best new construction and renovation in public and academic libraries across the country.
The Norman Public Library East branch of the Pioneer Library System, OK; Temple University’s Charles Library; Westport Library, CT; and Brambleton Library, Loudon County, VA.
The Centennial Branch of the Anoka County Library, MN; the South Branch of Cleveland Public Library; Auglaize County Library’s Wapakoneta Branch, OH; and Baldwin Borough Public Library, Pittsburgh.
Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Mott branch, OH; Thornhill Branch, St. Louis County Library, MO; Michigan Road Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library, IN; and Lenexa City Center Library, KS.
Sanibel Public Library, FL; Borrego Springs Library of San Diego County Library, CA; Gutekunst Public Library, IA; Mission Branch Library of the City of Santa Clara Library System, CA; and the Dublin Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH.
Galaxie Library, Dakota County Library, Apple Valley, MN; Keene Public Library, NH; Chicago Public Library’s Northtown Branch; Half Moon Bay Library, CA; and the Missouri City Branch Library, Fort Bend County Libraries, TX.
If you’re looking for drama, you’ll find it in some of the stunning design on display in the 2019 Year in Architecture roundup.
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.
The Summer Scares Reading Program, which provides libraries and schools with an annual list of recommended horror titles for adult, young adult, and middle grade readers and encourages a national conversation about the horror genre, will continue throughout 2020, with new titles announced in February.
Sacramento Public Library enriches its community in a way that’s vital locally and imperative in today’s divided times. The winner of the inaugural Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize, developed in partnership with the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation, exemplifies the singular power of the public library to be a fully integrated and critically valuable community asset.
Following years of declining investment, the United Kingdom’s public libraries will receive a significant boost, with over £125 million ($160,466,000) in new funding for regional museums and libraries throughout the country.
When Clyde Scoles, longtime director of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library (TLCPL), OH, died unexpectedly in February, Deputy Director Jason Kucsma stepped up as acting director for the 21-branch system. Scoles had announced his retirement only a few weeks before, and Kucsma was already considering his next steps. On August 1, the TLCPL board of trustees voted to appoint Kucsma as executive director and chief financial officer.
To pass an essential funding measure, Palatine Public Library District’s marketing team made the case with transparency, community feedback, and streamlined messaging—earning it LJ's 2019 Marketer of the Year Award.
When the St. Paul Public Library, MN, went fine-free, the marketing and communication team's successful campaign to get the word out helped earn it an Honorable Mention for LJ's 2019 Marketer of the Year Award.
In early September, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies released a statement about the next phase of Measures that Matter. It will focus on the “potential relationships between public library activities and community outcomes.” In this next phase of the project, the initiative decided to explore job development in public libraries.
The publishing and book retailing ecosystem is changing rapidly, but public libraries continue to offer substantial opportunities to promote authors and books, and it is vital that publishers recognize libraries as important partners, a panel of library leaders said to an audience of publishing executives during Baker & Taylor’s Publisher Summit 2019, held September 24 in White Plains, NY.
The people of Queens can stop waiting and start using their brand new Hunters Point Community Library. And they should. The 22,000 square foot building, which opened September 24 after long delays and a cost of over $40 million, is a major investment that is likely to be intensely used and long enjoyed.
In times of tight budgets and fewer staff members, passive programming—temporary, self-directed activities or exhibits that users interact with in their own time—can answer a library’s need to engage patrons with less funding and fewer human resources. Many libraries have taken the idea a step further, creating initiatives that don’t require active staff interaction or dedicated program hours, but still interest and challenge patrons, address specific community needs, and even contribute to a library’s greater mission.
Taking strategic advantage of an eclectic community mix to deliver innovative library service where it’s most needed helped the Copper Queen Library in Bisbee, AZ, win LJ’s 2019 Best Small Library in America, sponsored by Baker & Taylor.
Honey Grove Library & Learning Center, TX, is one of the two finalists for LJ's Best Small Library in America. The library has been named a finalist before, in 2014; a lot has changed since then.
Whitehall Public Library is one of the two finalists for LJ's Best Small Library in America. When social service agencies began to resettle refugees in Whitehall, in the Pittsburgh, PA, suburbs, the library started building bridges between refugees and long-term residents.
The 2020 United States Census officially launches on April 1 of next year. Because it will be the first conducted primarily online, and the number of regional and area census offices has halved since 2010, libraries stand to play a major role in helping assure an equitable and accurate count. But even before households receive their invitation to participate next spring, there are many opportunities for libraries to get involved—and a strong need for them to do so.
While it has long been clear to library practitioners that public programming positively impacts their communities, there has been little existing research on the effects of such programs, or on how best to equip library staff. In response to this need, ALA has released the “National Impact of Library Public Programs Assessment [NILPPA]: Phase 1: A White Paper on the Dimensions of Library Programs and the Skills and Training for Library Program Professionals,” the first stage of a multiyear, multiphasic foundational study.
What can a marketing firm offer library boards, Friends, or foundations, and can your average library support organization—which may not have deep pockets or a large existing donor base—afford one?
On August 14, staff members of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP) voted 173–106 to form a union for more than 300 full- and part-time workers. Library staff, who organized as the United Library Workers Committee (ULW) in summer 2018, will now become part of Allegheny County–based United Steelworkers, and will negotiate a collected bargaining agreement with CLP management.
Washington State has made great strides in helping its citizens exercise their right to vote, but gaps in service and information remain. Public libraries have stepped in to ensure that all voters have access to the ballot box on Election Day.
Cynthia Landrum joined the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as the new Deputy Director of Library Services in May. LJ caught up with her in July to find out more about the transition from public library to federal agency, and what IMLS’s work has looked like from both sides.
After months of back-and-forth with state officials over Alaska’s FY20 operating budget, Gov. Mike Dunleavy relented on a plan to cut funds for the University of Alaska (UA) by 41 percent. Rather than a one-year, $135 million cut, the university will see state funding cut by $70 million over the next three years—$25 million this year and $45 across the following two.
The role of public libraries in public health is large and expanding: from helping community members sign up for Affordable Healthcare Act insurance to hosting educational programming on physical, mental, and behavioral health issues to becoming a second home to public health nurses who can help more directly. In recent years, they have also served an additional public health role: as a cooling or warming center when their regions are struck with extreme and dangerous temperatures, something that’s happening more and more often as climate warming’s impacts accelerate.
When it comes to spreading library love, the Library Land Project raises the bar. Greg Peverill-Conti and Adam Zand have visited over 200 public libraries—celebrating them, sharing images of them, writing stories about them, and rating them. It's something to learn from.
The newly created Fund for the Boston Public Library has raised a total of $6.1 million to date in only a few weeks, since Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced its creation on May 29. Library Director David Leonard hopes that the Fund may raise as much as $10 million annually, in addition to the BPL’s annual budget of approximately $49 million.
Held on Friday, May 3, LJ’s Design Institute: Columbia, SC, was infused with Southern hospitality from start to finish. The host, Columbia’s Richland Library, went the extra mile—from holding over an art exhibit at the Main Library for those touring the branches on May 2 to bringing attendees out to the citywide First Thursday party on Main Street.
Breakout sessions at LJ's Design Institute in Columbia, SC, featured on-the-ground brainstorming for real-life library design challenges.
The Leander Public Library (LPL), TX, has drawn criticism for proposed changes to meeting room and speaker policies—instituted not by the library, but by city government of this suburb north of Austin. LPL has been run by private library administrators Library Systems and Services since it was established as a city department in 2005. In the wake of several recent instances of programming deemed “controversial” by city leadership, amendments to library policy have drawn the attention of residents, city council members, and library and civil rights associations.
By bringing books, programs, and services to community members in places they already go—expanding the concept of what libraries do in the process—libraries are redefining outreach.
The 2020 Census is upon us, with preparation already underway to count how many people live in the United States, and where. Our public libraries—connected to their communities and relatively ubiquitous—can and will be critical partners in getting this important work done well, and fairly.
LJ’s 2019 Diverse Materials Survey reveals where efforts to build more representative and inclusive library collections are widespread, and where there are gaps.
On Sunday, June 23, Library Ideas will debut Immersive Reality Books, a new line of children’s nonfiction titles featuring integrated virtual reality and augmented reality content.
On June 14, Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City Council reached an early agreement on the FY20 executive budget that included $33 million in additional funds for the city’s three library systems—Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Queens Public Library—after they joined forces on a citywide advocacy campaign pushing back against more than $11 million in proposed cuts.
Libraries across the country are finding new ways to support patrons experiencing mental health challenges—as well as the staff who serve them.
Brian Bannon, commissioner of the Chicago Public Library (CPL) system since 2012, was recently named the Merryl and James Tisch Director of the New York Public Library (NYPL). LJ caught up with Bannon during his last month in Chicago to hear about the inspiration for his move to NYPL and his strategies for leaving a thriving CPL.
LJ has launched a new award to promote community advancement through public libraries, the Jerry Kline Community Impact Prize. Developed in partnership with the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation, this award was created to recognize the public library as a community asset. One winning library will receive $250,000 from the Gerald M. Kline Family Foundation and will be showcased in LJ’s November 2019 issue and online.
Connecting directly with customers to find out what they want and need; training staff to focus on equity and to recognize and eliminate hidden biases; developing programs and services for underserved and marginalized populations; and seeking out public sector and private partners made LA County Library a model for the future of libraries and the Gale/LJ Library of the Year.
There is no such thing as a totally independent library board when the library’s funding stream is controlled by another entity. Libraries will never achieve consistently satisfactory funding levels as long as they are one of many agencies governed and/or solely funded by a larger political unit. When public libraries compete for funds with police, fire, sewers, schools, planning, and assessor’s offices, they lose. The tremendous cuts and closings weathered by public libraries in the UK over the past decade provide a cautionary tale.
Kitchener Public Library, Ont., serves a city of about 252,000 people. One of our missions in the community is to ignite conversations. Our premier 85 Queen series, which takes place at and is named for our flagship Central Library location, features in-depth events: not just a reading from a big-name author but an interview conducted by an experienced journalist; not just a screening of a controversial film but a panel of experts to discuss it; and not just an appearance from famous musician but full concert-style performances with storytelling.
A 50 percent cut to Ontario library services’ budget has already triggered the suspension of provincial government–sponsored interlibrary loan service in the south. Now the northern service has cut half of its unionized staff, which will mean a rollback in the support it provides to municipal libraries.
Sari Feldman, executive director of Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL), OH, since 2003, is retiring effective August 2. LJ caught up with Feldman as she was winding up her tenure at CCPL to find out more about what she’s proud and what she’s looking forward to next.
This spring, the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library took the term “Maker space” to a different level—more specifically, out of this world—when an unmanned spacecraft flew parts of a project created at its Madison branch to the International Space Station.
In the same way that fitness trackers offer reality checks for sedentary lifestyles, diversity audits cast light on the homogeneity embedded within library collections, providing data that identifies gaps in representations of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and other traditionally marginalized perspectives.
As America’s opioid crisis becomes a tragic new normal, libraries have stepped up in a variety of ways. While the role of library workers—as first responders, training staff to save lives by administering Narcan to patrons who overdose in the library—has understandably received the most mainstream media attention, library responses are deeper and more proactive than that emergency intervention.
Last month, I had the pleasure of digging into just how they are also key engines of a book-rich society and, as such, a critical part of the book market—active, engaged builders of excitement about connecting the information, ideas, or perspectives readers need to thrive.
A March 8 conference at Skokie Public Library, IL, “Defeating Bullies and Trolls in the Library: Developing Strategies to Protect our Rights and Personhood,” took on the issue of harassment of scholars doing work around equity and social justice, and the lack of support on the part of their institutions.
On April 4 the American Institute of Architects (AIA), in partnership with the American Library Association (ALA), announced the winners of the 2019 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards, spotlighting public and academic library construction, renovation, and restoration projects completed no earlier than 2014. The six featured libraries range from Toronto to Kentucky, from the 22,000 square foot Half Moon Bay Library in California’s San Mateo County to the Calgary Public Library’s 240,000 square foot Central Library.
As part of its broader information literacy efforts, Toledo Lucas County Public Library recently installed NewsGuard, a free web extension, in the Firefox, Chrome, and Edge browsers on all of the library’s 750+ public and staff computers.
Emilio Estevez’s new film The Public, which puts the challenges and ideals of a large urban public library in the spotlight, held its premiere April 1 at the New York Public Library. Fans from both the film and library worlds packed the Celeste Bartos Forum, where NYPL president and CEO Anthony Marx introduced Estevez and members of The Public ’s cast, many of whom had a shout-out or two for libraries.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC, nears completion; Chicago Public Library's new West Loop branch opens; the Pinson Library, AL, reopens; and more new construction and renovation news from the March 2019 issue of Library Journal.
Spending two days learning more about the process of cocreation and how it applies in libraries was inspiring and mind-shifting as the possibilities multiplied.
On March 9, Baltimore County Public Library (BCPL) and Baltimore City’s Enoch Pratt Free Library (EPFL) joined forces to launch Entrepreneur Academy, a free series of classes offering a wide range of topics for people who have an entrepreneurial streak. According to EPFL director Heidi Daniel, the program’s creation was both the outcome of the two library systems investigating ways to collaborate and the result of community feedback.
OCLC has selected 15 public libraries to participate in its “Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces” project. This will be the second cohort to participate in the initiative, led in partnership with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL). “Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces” was funded by a $223,120 award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to create a second iteration of the original 2016 National Leadership Grant project .
Library Journal ’s latest round of the New Landmark Library series, which celebrates projects that set new standards for library design, is now accepting submissions. The award is open to any public library in the United States (including U.S. territories) and Canada that completed new construction, expansion, or significant renovations between January 2016 and March 1, 2019.
On Wednesday, February 20, the Center for an Urban Future held its latest symposium, Where Do Public Libraries Fit in NYC’s Tech Skills–Building Ecosystem? Funded by the Charles H. Revson Foundation and hosted at the Manhattan campus of technology educator General Assembly, the meeting convened library innovators, tech trainers, educators, city officials, and partners from a range of other fields to explore the role of libraries as a critical part of the pipeline to the technology job market.
LJ ’s 2019 Budgets and Funding survey shows less lending but more programming, patron amenities, and outreach.
Since its inception in 1998, LJ’s annual materials survey has tracked budget and circulation statistics in public libraries nationwide. This year, owing to the increasing complexity of the materials libraries collect, we’ve moved the focus to circulation alone, leaving financial matters to the annual budget survey. It proved a particularly timely decision. In 2018, for the first time since 1999, circulation stumbled.
Voters spoke, and to a large extent, libraries continued to find support at the ballot box in 2018. After a striking level of wins in 2017, libraries on the ballot in 2018 have reset back to average historical pass/fail levels for a midterm election year—with a nonetheless healthy 79% passing overall.
The most meaningful library programming comes out of community collaboration. This was certainly the case with Genderful!, a series that kicked off on October 14, 2017, at the Brooklyn Public Library as an event for children and caregivers to explore gender through art and creativity.
Grand Prairie Library System recently launched Epic Reads, a new library vending unit in the city's massive new recreation center, The Epic.
As director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries initiative from 2008 until the program came to a close at the end of 2018, Deborah Jacobs was responsible for overseeing the distribution of millions of dollars to libraries in more than 50 countries and the United States. LJ caught up with Jacobs at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in her hometown of Seattle to share a look back—as well as a look forward.
How can a community have brave, challenging conversations? That was the question St. Paul, MN Mayor Melvin Carter III posed to Catherine Penkert, director of the St. Paul Public Library. Her response was to launch the citywide reading initiative, Read Brave St. Paul, in January and February.
