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A university’s research output is only beneficial when others can easily find it. This is where libraries can add tremendous value to the research process: By leveraging their expertise in collecting, organizing, and making information easily discoverable, academic libraries can help raise the profile of their institution’s research

Best sellers in geology, January 2020 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Librarians Elaine R. Hicks, Stacy Brody, and Sara Loree have been named LJ's 2021 Librarians of the Year for their work with the Librarian Reserve Corps, helping the World Health Organization manage the flood of COVID-19 information.

Carnegie Mellon University Libraries has developed CAMPI, a new web application that uses computer vision to assist librarians processing digital photograph collections.

Best sellers in medicine, December 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Academic librarians are seeing more interest in open access (OA) content and open educational resources (OER) during the COVID-19 pandemic, survey respondents reported, due in part to a lack of access to physical materials and a desire to keep textbook costs low. Those are some of the findings from the Library Journal Open Access Content/Open Educational Resources in Academic Libraries Survey, released this month.

How will COVID-19 change how libraries offer their collections and services in the long term? How will it change the nature of our work? This article provides a vision of the future in which libraries become true connectors of people and catalysts for discovery.

Libraries and archives nationwide have launched initiatives to diversify their collections, institute antiracist descriptive practices, and conduct outreach to marginalized communities. We knew that our collections lacked all these things, but questioned how we could authentically start this work. What can libraries and archives do when confronted with limited resources, material, and community engagement to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work?

Best sellers in United States history, December 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Best sellers in computer science, November 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Despite precautionary measures against the coronavirus, such as regular testing and social distancing rules, as a second pandemic wave picks up across the country some schools are opting for an early shut-down of in-person learning. With classes pivoting to all online and residential students being sent home ahead of their Thanksgiving break—or being instructed not to return to campus afterward—academic libraries are once again adjusting to support their communities’ needs.

Covering topics such as Black studies, business, history, nature, statistics, and technology, the following databases will help academic and public libraries meet the research needs of patrons—a task that's become even more difficult now that access to physical materials is more limited owing to the pandemic.

The German Centre for Accessible Reading, dzb lesen, unites tradition with the modern world. Founded on 12 November 1894 as the German Central Library for the Blind, it has been a library for blind and visually impaired people for more than 125 years and is thus the oldest specialist library of its kind in Germany.

From open outdoor areas to fantastic and functional fixtures, sustainable systems to to study spaces, LJ's 2020 Year in Architecture roundup celebrates the best new construction and renovation in public and academic libraries across the country.

Library distributor Baker & Taylor announced on October 28 that it would be returning to the academic market as a full-service vendor.

Publishers and librarians offer their perspective on what makes for a great reference collection, and how to maintain it to serve all information seekers.

Often when we talk about open access (OA), we talk about research articles in journals, but for over a decade there has been a growing movement in OA monograph publishing. To date, Oxford University Press (OUP) has published 115 OA books and that number increases year on year, partly through an increasing range of funder initiatives and partly through opportunities to experiment.

Best sellers in Asian history, November 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Whether librarians are providing services in-person or virtually, reference has changed with the pandemic.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year the Charleston Conference took place virtually from November 2–6. Appropriately, many of the sessions focused on the changes in and around academic libraries wrought by the pandemic. A panel titled “Getting Back to Business,” sponsored by the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Scholarly Kitchen blog, offered opinions from a range of scholarly publishing stakeholders, including representatives from a university library, research society, nonprofit, and publishing consultant.

Carl Grant, former president of Ex Libris North America and interim dean of the University of Oklahoma Libraries, this summer became managing director of The Revs Institute, a Naples, FL–based not-for-profit dedicated to the research and historical study of automobiles.

Best sellers in mathematics, October 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The concept of a socially distanced library would be considered the ultimate antithesis of the modern-day library. The past two decades have witnessed the evolution of the library from a mostly traditional space of quiet study and research into a bustling collaborative, social space and technology center.

There are many ways that public libraries have helped during the West coast’s wildfire seasons: providing Wi-Fi and charging stations, helping residents file insurance and FEMA claims, offering parking lots as food and supply drop-offs, and even opening their doors as cooling centers. In a more dramatic turn, the University of California–Merced Libraries stepped up to safeguard the archives and records of the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in a last-minute evacuation.

Michigan State University will migrate to the open source FOLIO Library Services Platform, and will fully implement FOLIO in 2021, it announced today. EBSCO Information Services will provide hosting, implementation, training, and development support, and will leverage integrations with EBSCO Discovery Service and OpenAthens access management.

Best sellers in European history, October 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg discuss the fourth and final analysis of their Academic Library Response to COVID-19 survey, “Indications of the New Normal,” looking at the current phases of academic library pandemic reactions.

It was once accepted practice to call married women by their husbands’ names, with the honorific “Mrs.” attached—for example, “Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” During the library shutdown, archivists at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library began to remedy that issue in their finding aids.

Best sellers in religion, October 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The Charleston Conference, taking place virtually November 2–6, responsibly balances up-to-the-minute issues with the evergreen matter of scholarly library work. Below are a smattering of sessions selected by LJ editors.

Best sellers in physics, October 2019 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Wayne State University College of Education and the Walter P. Reuther Library Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs were recently awarded a joint $83,100 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to support the ongoing project, “Bridging the Gap: Archives in the Classroom and Community.”

This year’s winner talks about creating community and The Seclusion.

Best sellers in philosophy, September 2020 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

As colleges and universities pivot to remote and hybrid models, their libraries must find new ways to welcome and orient new students.

Notre Dame Library curators and conservators have collaborated on Compendium Animalium, a facsimile of an early modern book combining images from several volumes featured in a recent exhibition, complete with engravings, wooden boards, and leather bindings, that students can hold and investigate.

Could librarian-curated Little Free Libraries be the next great outreach tool to help improve youth reading scores and strengthen community connections to libraries? University of North Carolina (UNC)–Greensboro Library and Information Science Associate Professor Anthony Chow thinks so.

Best sellers in environmental sciences, August 2020 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

COVID-19 is accelerating the move to digital amid budget pressures; library vendors share what they hear from customers and how they're meeting rapidly evolving needs.

When the university moved to virtual instruction in March, Cornell University Library's Virtual Reference Response Team focused on building capacity in the ways we already connected with our remote users. Leveraging our Ask a Librarian suite of email, chat, and in-depth research consultations options became our primary concern.

The focus of this user-friendly tool on women’s voices provides an important perspective for research, while the emphasis on female authored works makes it stand out from the crowd. An important addition to academic libraries. 

In Iowa City, a group known as the Iowa Freedom Riders (IFR) demonstrated against systemic racism and police violence during the first week of June, by blocking traffic and spray-painting messages across the city, including on the walls of a number of University of Iowa (UI) buildings. UI archivists recognized that the messages were part of the school’s institutional memory.

As universities and colleges across the United States grapple with the best way to proceed with fall terms given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, American Library Association–accredited library science programs are providing a variety of options to their students. Some are going fully online while others are offering hybrid courses with online and in-person components.

Linked Data is only as useful as the metadata on which it depends, and poor quality metadata ultimately causes the challenges many librarians hope to address with Linked Data.

An enlightening and concise overview of the life and times of irony and sarcasm, an analysis of how state and non-state actors leverage digital rhetoric as a twenty-first-century weapon of war, and an examination of the evolution of emoji top the list of best-selling language books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Ry Moran is the founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, Canada. For the past five years Moran, a member of the Red River Métis, has led the creation of a permanent home of a national archive for all materials gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. LJ caught up with him recently to learn more about what it took to build an archive of such a critical chapter of Canada’s Indigenous history.

Ry Moran, founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba, Canada, will become the inaugural Associate University Librarian for Reconciliation at the University of Victoria (UVic), BC, this fall. LJ caught up with him recently to hear more about his plans and thoughts on helping create institutional equity.

A comprehensive guide to carbon inside Earth, an entry point to the growing journal literature on green oxidation in organic synthesis, and a useful tool for synthetic chemists top the list of best-selling chemistry books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

As the field increasingly expands to include work with a wide range of physical and electronic materials, resources, and data, the question “What is a librarian?” does not have an easy answer. Prerequisites for any librarian job include curiosity and a desire to help expand others’ knowledge. But a satisfying library career may take many forms.

A unique exploration of the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, an ambitious rethinking of H.G. Wells as both writer and thinker, and an earnest survey of how and why feminism has or has not been presented on the stage top the list of best-selling literary criticism books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

As they anticipate hits from lowered enrollment and decreased endowments, as well as declines in state funding for public universities and community colleges, and potential rollbacks of money that has already been authorized, academic institutions have begun hiring freezes and reductions, including furloughs, layoffs, and reduced hours for non-tenured faculty and staff. Many campus libraries are seeing reductions in workforce that threaten to affect their ability to serve students, faculty, and researchers.

Shifting instruction and campus services entirely online in a matter of days in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a near-Herculean feat for the nation’s colleges and universities. But for institutions that have developed robust and forward-looking library programs, the transition has proceeded more smoothly.

As calls for accountability are amplified across the country, many institutions are starting by addressing their racist history—many of which involved naming rights for funders or founders. Recently the Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University (LSU) unanimously voted to remove the name of former university president Troy H. Middleton, whose 1961 correspondence stated his wish to keep the school segregated, from the LSU Library.

A riveting insider's look at the race to find a cure for antibiotic-resistant infections; the fascinating story of the search for cancer viruses in the US; and an insight into contemporary, robust methodologies for studies into the pathogenicity and virulence of human and animal bacterial pathogens top the list of best-selling microbiology books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shuttered academic libraries across the United States in March, leaving library staff scrambling to continue some semblance of library services. As states have taken steps toward reopening, academic institutions are now looking toward the fall semester and considering how they might safely open their own facilities.

The last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, a treasure trove of cartographic delights, and collection of new insights about the relationships between networks and maps top the list of best-selling geography books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Technological advancements, accessibility needs, and study practices have and will continue to develop at a rapid pace. We find, use, and publish research completely differently than we did 25 years ago.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down campuses, libraries helped salvage spring semesters by supporting distance learning. Plans for fall remain in limbo, but academic librarians share what they’ve learned.

In my crisis teaching mode, I have come up with eight rules that have helped me to navigate through this new normal. There’s more than content and delivery to be discussed when this period is behind us. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is not about what or even how we taught during COVID-19. Perhaps this period is a lesson in why we teach. 

The American Library Association’s (ALA) recent survey on how U.S. public, academic, and K–12 libraries have responded to the coronavirus pandemic will not surprise anyone with an eye on the field, but serves as a snapshot of mid-May concerns and projections.

Kaetrena Davis Kendrick recently completed a new study examining low workplace morale among public librarians, and is working on a report analyzing responses to a November 2018 call for librarians who wished to talk about their experiences. What she discovered included a disturbing level of abuse coming from patrons, a lack of institutional support to help librarians resolve such issues, and a mindset in which librarians view surviving such abuses as “earning their stripes.”

A vibrant and inspiring introduction to feminist music history, an exploration of the Bauhaus school and its legacy, and a thoughtful account of how art and history inform each other top the list of best-selling music and art books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

There is no 100 percent protection against the risk of COVID-19 aside from self-isolation, but we hope that the plans we’ve developed for re-opening our academic libraries will help you figure out how to provide the best protection for your staff and patrons.

Online classes pose many challenges, from baseline access to computers and the internet to requiring proficiency with new technologies and platforms, as well as motivation issues.

At many of our institutions, student-parents—students with one or more dependent children—are a growing population. Research in higher education has long demonstrated that student-parents face a number of obstacles to completing degrees and participating in college experiences. Academic librarians, however, have done little work to study what student-parents uniquely need to succeed academically.

The remarkable story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic mission to reach the moon, a lively and innovative collection exploring the diverse conditions that shape how—and whether—scientific knowledge travels across borders, and a history of the space program through the eyes of its engineers and scientists top the list of best-selling History of Science books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Last week the OED was updated with some of the words and phrases which have become increasingly familiar in the context of the current global crisis, such as self-isolation, social distancing, and flatten the curve. OED editors are continually monitoring linguistic developments, and one of the ways of doing this is through analysis of language corpora.

Carnegie Mellon University librarians have initiated a new service, Remote Book Delivery, which allows them to order print materials from vendors and have them sent directly to students whose workflow has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and who may not be able to find the books they need online. The service will help students like Sofía Bosch Gómez, a CMU doctoral student in transition design, to get the resources she needs to finish her dissertation from her Mexico City home.

Barbara Rockenbach appointed Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian at Yale University, Julie Garrison elected as ACRL Vice-President/President-Elect, Brian Hart is the new Director of the Forsyth County Public Library, NC, and more library people news.

Librarians are bringing their information triage, vetting, and organization skills to bear on the current crisis in new ways. Among them, a group of volunteers are indexing vast volumes of information on COVID-19.

An astonishing behind-the-scenes chronicle of the New York Times’s bombshell Harvey Weinstein exposé; an important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America; and the first part of a sweeping two-volume history of the devastation brought to bear on Native American nations by U.S. expansion top the list of best-selling politics and law books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The University of Hawai’i at Mānoa campus was closed to the public but open to faculty and students on March 15. The library closed to all on March 17, but the computer lab remained open on the first floor of Hamilton Library, because the University had moved all classes online for the remainder of the semester, and not all students had access to computers or the internet.

For Nancy Liliana Godoy, archives that engage equitably with people and organizations in traditionally marginalized communities can aid in the building of collective memory, transform lives, and heal historical erasure and trauma. Godoy is the steward for the largest Chicano/a research collection and the largest LGBT collection in Arizona. She co-established the Arizona LGBT History Project to preserve local history and make archival material accessible to future generations, including working with a team to digitize parts of the Bj Bud Memorial Archives, Arizona’s largest LGBTQ collection.

When disability and accessibility advocate JJ Pionke arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014, he found the literal environment unwelcoming: he not only had difficulty finding a bathroom in the library building to accommodate a person of his size, but also encountered poor wayfinding and signage, a ramp without a handrail, etc.

“Electronic library content has become more crucial than ever before to universities. Thanks to remote access, databases like ProQuest One Literature help students and faculty continue to get access to important, relevant and timely content for their classes and their research.” – Caroline Gale, Library Liaison Manager, University of Exeter

"I was surrounded by data, the product of a decade of digitization" at Michigan State University, says Thomas Padilla, who was digital scholarship librarian there from 2014–16. He began to wonder how cultural heritage institutions could start to ethically engage with the data they generate and use it to begin to think about their collections as data. 

While earning her PhD in English, Emily Sherwood found herself drawn to "collaborative environments and interdisciplinary projects [rather than] to the solitary and focused scholarship more common in literary studies." This interest led to her current position at the Digital Scholarship Lab, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester (UR).

Social science research involves a lot of non-numerical data, including interviews, images, videos, and speech transcripts. But once results are published, these are often discarded. Nic Weber is working to change that by making such datasets easier to store, discover, and access.

When the University of Oklahoma (OU) welcomed a new data-driven president to campus, interim Dean of Libraries Carl Grant knew "we were going to need metrics that showed strong community engagement" for the library’s exhibit services. Tim Smith, OU’s head of web services and artificial intelligence, was just the curious expert to rethink the library’s exhibit engagement metrics.

Maggie Murphy is known for her expansive collaborative creativity when it comes to transforming information literacy instruction at the University of North Carolina Greensboro libraries and across the country. Says Murphy, "I really want students in all disciplines to think about art and visual media as sources of information alongside textual information sources," she says.

Both a librarian and a lawyer, Will Cross says he "work[s] at the intersection of copyright education and open culture" as director of copyright and digital scholarship at North Carolina State University (NCSU). His leadership at NCSU and across the region is building support and a model for adoption of open educational resources (OER), transforming pedagogy, and impacting scholarly communications, says nominator Greg Raschke, senior vice provost and director of libraries at NCSU.

A head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body; a critical insight into the scientific, ethical, and political implications of human genome editing; and an in-depth, wide-ranging, first-hand narrative on the world's tropical rainforests top the list of best-selling biology books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

On April 21 Mitchell Daniels, president of Indiana’s Purdue University, sent a letter to staff announcing his intent to reopen the campus this fall. Although his ideas about ensuring safety for a campus population of more than 50,000 people have met with some skepticism and pushback, individual campus leaders have their own ideas for a careful return. One of these is Beth McNeil, dean and Esther Ellis Norton Professor at Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, who believes that a measured reopening of the university’s eight libraries is possible. 

As digital scholarship librarian at Columbia University Libraries and codirector of its collaborative digital space Studio@Butler, Alex Gil works with faculty, students, and colleagues to create digital interpretations of their work, including interactive maps, visualizations, editions, and online exhibitions.

When Fobazi Ettarh became a librarian, the way her peers talked about work—"rhetoric about callings and spending your whole life dedicated to one thing"— sounded familiar. "I’m a pastor’s kid," she explains. At one conference, a panelist "point blank said that librarianship was their ‘sacred duty.’" Ettarh was uncomfortable with that extreme statement and how many agreed with it.

Dorothy Berry learned about her family’s history growing up on the farm in the Missouri Ozarks homesteaded by her ancestors post-emancipation. Later, her father shared their family archive from 2003–2013 at his storefront Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum. This formative experience taught her that the history of black people in the Ozarks had been largely erased. "The more we researched the topic, the clearer it became to me that history, and especially Black history, can be willfully forgotten, but also willfully remembered," Berry says.

As a majority of academic libraries have transitioned to remote work in the wake of coronavirus-closed campuses, a growing number of United States–based archival workers—many of whom are in part-time, hourly, term-limited, or contract positions—are facing financial challenges. To help address some immediate needs, a team of archives workers partnered with the Society of American Archivists Foundation to create the Archival Workers Emergency Fund.

The dramatic story of the Silicon Valley startup at the center of one of the great venture capital power struggles of our time; an in-depth, evidence-based examination of how unchecked corporate power harms workers, consumers, and the economy; and the fascinating untold history of digital cash and its creators top the list of best-selling business and economics books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

To maximize service—and to help safeguard the jobs of their colleagues from layoffs and furloughs—library and archives workers are crowdsourcing lists of work-from-home assignments. These lists continue to grow—as does the need for them.

An exploration of how energy has transformed societies of the past; a vivid and enthralling chronicle of one of the most thrilling, hopeful, and turbulent eras in the nation’s history; and a rich and wide-ranging volume on automatic processes top the list of best-selling engineering and technology books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

When the research team at Ithaka S+R closed their survey of academic library directors at the end of last year and began to examine the responses, they had no idea that within three months the academic library landscape would look entirely different.

An exposé on the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research, an intimate investigation of the true scope of domestic violence, and a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers (and why they often go wrong) top the list of best-selling social sciences books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Higher education continues to grapple with an uncertain future of flat or declining student enrollment and mounting financial pressures. Library budgets are for the most part flat or diminishing, leaving libraries to yet again battle the terrible twins of cost inflation and revenue stagnation. Many libraries are cutting continuing expenditures by cancelling or breaking up journal packages and buying only those titles for which use or demand justifies the price. Others are aggressively renegotiating contracts with publishers to reduce ongoing costs.

Consider these library (and library-adjacent) crowdsourcing projects as a fun way to connect to the community and make a difference during the COVID-19 outbreak.

With their on-site, physical work temporarily on hold during the coronavirus outbreak, conservators and other museum, library, and archive workers have started a grassroots movement to collect and donate their supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare workers on the front lines of their work with COVID-19 patients.

A detailed analysis of past environmental changes in the Nile Basin, the story of David A. Johnston's journey from a nature-loving Boy Scout to a United States Geological Survey (USGS) volcanologist, and a comprehensive overview of the hydromagmatic model for the origin of various features of layered intrusions top the list of best-selling geology books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

With colleges and universities across the country shutting down their campuses and moving to distance learning to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, academic librarians are being forced to up their reference game abruptly.

An exploration of Brazil’s status as an emerging global capitalist giant and its unique contributions and challenges in the social arena, a definitive analysis of the most successful tribute system in the Americas as applied to Afromexicans, and a new study of 1950s Latina activist Dolores Huerta top the list of best-selling Latin American studies books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

A fascinating examination of the past and present of women's healthcare, a century-spanning history of the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine, and an analysis of how middle-class Black women navigate the complexities of dealing with doctors top the list of best-selling medicine books, as compiled by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

On March 11, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, Ithaka S+R, deployed a survey, “Academic Library Response to COVID-19.” The survey garnered 213 responses the first day it was up.