All Stories

Digital-native users want library resources in digital form. Vendors who furnish those resources are expecting the library to share content responsibly. Using a digital delivery platform, University of Tennessee Libraries are making both groups happy—and enjoying streamlined workflows as a bonus.

“Everything breaks–or ends up breaking something else,” says Carissa Carter, stating the basic premise of Assembling Tomorrow. “But by thinking about the world differently—the way designers do—we still have a chance to design for healing and to transform the future.”

This year’s American Library Association Annual Conference will be held June 27 – July 2 in San Diego, CA, where Pacific Ocean breezes and dry air will likely keep daytime temperatures in the low ’70s and nights 10 degrees cooler. Add in the San Diego Convention Center’s bayfront setting and nearby attractions that include Balboa Park, home to the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Museum of Art, and Mission Beach a 15-minute car trip away, and this year’s Annual is one to look forward to.

Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood leads holds this week. Also getting buzz are titles by Elin Hilderbrand, Katherine Center, Freida McFadden, and Rufi Thorpe. The James Beard Media Award winners are announced. Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors wins the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Nine LibraryReads and nine Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is All Friends Are Necessary by Tomas Moniz. Plus, Costco announced its plan to no longer sell books year-round.

In recent years, the scholarly nonprofit Ithaka has prioritized advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), both within the organization and in its outward-facing work. As that process evolved, Kate Wittenberg, managing director of Ithaka’s digital preservation service, Portico, saw that its archival conservation mission aligned in many ways with social justice ideals. In summer 2021, she began to identify underrepresented community collections that might be at risk without a preservation strategy, and in 2023 Portico launched a pilot project connecting the curators of those archives to its expertise and resources.

Homer Aridjis’s Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, tr. by George McWhirter, wins the Griffin Poetry Prize. Kevin Sinfield wins the top Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Award for The Extra Mile. Alicia Elliott wins the Amazon Canada First Novel Award for And Then She Fell. Louise Penny wins the International Thriller Writers’ Silver Bullet Award for public service. A new “Hunger Games” book and movie are announced. Cengage, Elsevier, Macmillan Learning, and McGraw Hill have sued Google for allowing ads to run on sites that pirate textbooks.

In a divided three-judge panel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a majority decision largely upholding a preliminary injunction ordering Llano County Library System to reshelve several titles that were previously removed.

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead wins the Gotham Book Prize for the best book set in or about New York City. Nick Bradley and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo are among the 10 writers selected for the ILX 10 list by Britain’s National Centre for Writing. The Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlist has been revealed. Imbalances still remain when it comes to Black authors in the bestsellers lists, The Bookseller reports. Plus, interviews with Morgan Talty, Griffin Dunne, Jacqueline Winspear, and Judi Dench and new title bestsellers.

A wide swath of the past is covered in these titles, from a ninth-century battle in Europe to harrowing and heroic tales of women during World War II and a story of diamonds and murder in the Amazon.