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The world of sports has long been a contested playing field for social change. When Althea Gibson became the first Black athlete to win a major title in 1956, she shocked the tennis world and reshaped the world of athletics as well as the possibilities that exist for women everywhere.

Many academic librarians believe context matters when artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT are used by students and faculty to assist with their work, according to “AI in Higher Education: The Librarians’ Perspectives,” a recent survey of 125 librarians published this month by Helper Systems. While only eight percent of respondents said that they believe it is cheating when students use AI products for research—compared with 49 percent who said it was not—42 percent said that it was “somewhat” cheating.

When Stacy Collins was named a 2021 LJ Mover & Shaker, she was the research and instruction librarian for Boston’s Simmons University Library, where she developed the highly regarded Anti-Oppression Guide. LJ reached out to her to learn more about what she’s been doing since 2021, which includes a new position at a boarding school.

This in-depth examination of the history, politics, economics, and social movements in Eastern Europe after World War II through the Cold War is an excellent resource for users interested in the post-Stalin era.

Bloomsbury Video Library’s newly launched streaming-video platform hosts more than 2,000 film titles, which makes it a strong new contender for academic libraries’ streaming-video budgets.

With principal investigators facing work, life, mental health and career challenges, time is often a limiting factor. But creating a healthy environment helps all achieve and feel well. 

LJ’s top 10 picks for Best Reference Databases 2022 range in scope from architecture to history to women trailblazers. 

From a quirky book on geology to a collection of maps, these reference works expand the possibilities of research for students, general readers, and scholars.  

From broadcasting sites to legislative documents, maps, and more, LJ’s 2022 Best Free Resources covers a vast array of topics. 

The Vermont State College System will be combined into one larger umbrella organization as Vermont State University, effective July 1. As part of the reorganization, all books, newspapers or periodicals, and historic pamphlets in libraries throughout the new system will be provided in digital format only—a decision that has met with widespread disapproval among the system’s students, faculty, and staff.

Our initial goals were to create a unique outreach event for our communities; give students, faculty, and staff an outlet for creativity and civic engagement; and provide student internship opportunities grounded in experiential learning. We felt that a live concert would be a great format, as music is an accessible art form and allows diverse voices to be heard.

In January, Arizona State University (ASU) announced that its Labriola National American Indian Data Center received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to enable the center to better help Tribal nations that want to establish archival collections. The project is called “Firekeepers: Building Archival Data Sovereignty through Indigenous Memory Keeping.”

The world is navigating a troubling economic situation. Inflation has become a global issue, concerning policy makers and private citizens equally. Energy and supply chains woes are continuous. Interest rates, consumer prices, and cost-of-living have soared, with many economists positing that the current trajectory is indicative of a coming recession.

The Globe to Globe Festival collection is sure to inspire scholars, performers, and students of Shakespeare, as well as anyone who values or teaches intercultural theater. Recommended for any schools with drama programs or courses on Shakespeare.

Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War is an excellent compilation of primary documents. The collection of 12,000 documents explores British government secret intelligence files on four key 20th-century conflicts: the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the early years of the Cold War, and the Korean War.

Callan Bignoli, library director at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA, was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2021 for her work advocating for the health and safety of library workers during the pandemic. Much has changed since the early days of COVID’s arrival and spread, including the development of vaccines and boosters, but the need to speak up for library workers remains. LJ recently spoke with Bignoli to learn what’s changed—and what hasn’t—since then.

The need for increased accessibility is an ever-growing priority, as is understanding the scope and nuance of the concept. At North Carolina State University (NC State) Libraries, Raleigh, staff from a range of functional areas are working together to address and increase accessibility in their physical spaces, collections, and offerings. In May 2021 they formed an Accessibility Committee to coordinate and implement practices and changes throughout the system.

Not sure which social media platform is the one you want to dedicate your time to? Use our “social media at a glance” guides for each of the main social media platforms to help you decide.

Professors and librarians at academic institutions sometimes describe certain students—or groups of students—as “not ready for college,” or assume that they “don’t know how to study” or are “at risk of dropping out.” These negative labels are most often given to students who are first-generation, low-income, and/or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color). These views are called “Deficit Thinking”—blaming students for any failure to excel in a new, unfamiliar academic environment, rather than examining how an institution may be failing those students.

In “Uprooting Racial Health Disparities: Genealogy as a Community Health Library Service,” Lynette Hammond Gerido, University of Michigan School of Public Health, studies the outcomes and affordances of genealogical and family health history research.

I’m not the first queer person to say that I was really into Matilda (1996) when I was a child. I loved the scenes of Matilda in awe of her public library, enchanted by the escape it offered from her home life. The library was her safe place. My research is mine.

The Robert L. Parkinson Library & Research Center at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, WI, and the Archives at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, have extensive circus collections, from posters and programs to performers’ scrapbooks and diaries.

Are you searching for inspiration to help further your goals this new year? Reading books offers an easy yet effective way to help navigate life, so who better to turn to than authors of some well-loved Oxford World’s Classics! 

In May 2022, Elizabeth Szkirpan was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her advocacy work promoting technical services professionals within libraries. LJ recently reached out to Szkirpan, director of bibliographic services and federal depository coordinator for the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, to learn more about why this work is important and needs more institutional support.

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.

Despite its science based and mission-driven underpinnings, U.S. healthcare is subject to great racial disparities. With a $10,000 grant from the Northern New York Library Network, faculty at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, are undertaking a new program called “Reckoning with Race and Racism in Healthcare and Medicine” to help local healthcare practitioners and students better understand the ways that racial biases determine health outcomes.

Best sellers in physics, December 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Virginia Cononie, assistant librarian/coordinator of reference and research at the University of South Carolina Upstate Spartanburg Library, was named one of Library Journal’s 2022 Movers & Shakers for her library advocacy work. LJ recently reached out to Cononie to learn more about her Share Your Story campaign, a collection of success stories from libraries in South Carolina that were compiled into a book and sent to South Carolina lawmakers.

Discover Bloomsbury Applied Visual Arts which combines visual inspiration with practical advice on everything from idea generation and research techniques to portfolio development – making this the ultimate guide to a visual arts education.

In “Spanish-speakers Preferred: How Libraries Can Make Their Workforce Better Reflect Their Communities,” Andrew A. Wakeleea (Fresno City College) and Kim M. Thompson (University of South Carolina) study library employment trends and offer suggestions for how to better foster a more inclusive workforce.

Explore this digital resource for the study of architecture, urbanism, and interior design. Its dynamic digital platform offers access to wide-ranging collections of text and image content, from architectural history to cutting-edge design guidance.

We are weaving our way through the topic of knitwear in this new Featured Content, stitching together the patterns of its history, fibers and fabrics, and its colorful future. Unravel global definitions, trends and technological developments, and the cultural relevance of knitwear as it continues to be one of the most diverse and purposeful sectors in today's fashion and beyond.

Part of HeinOnline’s suite of legal-reference databases, Water Rights & Resources provides access to a concentrated collection of resources on the interplay of state and federal laws governing all aspects of water in U.S. society. It is an excellent resource for legal and environmental studies, as well as political science, U.S. history, and related subjects.

Statista is an outstanding resource offering wide-ranging and robust content, a plethora of ways to find the content, sensible links to key reports, and engaging visuals. Added features and the timely addition of relevant subject matter make it a significant source of consumer and market data. 

Best sellers in botany and zoology, November 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The 2022 Charleston Conference took a somewhat different form from recent gatherings: not only hybrid, but asynchronous. At both the in-person and virtual conferences, issues of the day largely centered on access: open access and open educational resources, access to data, the need for more equitable access to research and materials, and questions of access—period—in the wake of constrained budgets and renegotiated agreements.

As a cataloging librarian, I decide how a resource is described in its catalog record by assigning subject headings and a call number and determining whether notes or a summary is necessary. All of these decisions impact the findability of a resource and how a catalog user will perceive its content. So I am especially concerned with how a library resource is represented when it contains prejudicial content.

Patrons have begun to expect 24/7 library services. With Ex Libris Library Mobile, the University of Liège is empowering patrons to access digital services and resources at any time and on any device.

With two different, disconnected systems tracking different aspects of the university’s research activities, the staff of the Mario Rostoni Library at LIUC saw an opportunity with Ex Libris Esploro to streamline workflows to comply with Italian laws, and to provide a better service to the university’s community of researchers.

Barbara Alvarez is a PhD student in Information Science at the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison and adjunct faculty at multiple universities. Her work using information science to study the pandemic’s effect on abortion services in Wisconsin won her a 2022 Movers & Shakers Award. Library Journal recently reached out to learn more about her other work in this area.

In the United States, 2.3 million people are imprisoned inside of jails, prisons, or detention facilities with little to no access to information services of any kind. Some public libraries meet this need through Reference by Mail. 

Julie Kirsch, senior vice president and publisher of Rowman & Littlefield, shines a light on notable titles, both past and upcoming, and shares the changes and challenges that this independent publisher has seen over the past few years.

Barbara Olson, ProQuest’s director of product marketing for historical collections and primary sources, spoke with LJ about new content that ProQuest has added to its offerings.

More than 700 recent and forthcoming reference titles, organized by category. 

More than 70 new and forthcoming databases and online products to consider adding to collections.

More than 100 additions and changes to reference databases and online products highlight new reasons to consider updating library online reference offerings. 

Best sellers in environmental science, November 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Bloomsbury Applied Visual Arts’s collection of modern and practical ebook content is a solid investment for educational and organizational institutions that support fine arts studies, media, film, marketing, and other visual arts, as well as practical aspects of the field and professional development.

The American Antiquarian Society has partnered with Gale to offer its American Historical Collections, featuring over six million documents of primary materials from the American Colonial period to the early 20th century. The quality and quantity of the documents in Part VII, the user-friendly features, and the flawless searchability on the Gale platform make this a winner.

Monitoring the World collections are essential primary documents for researchers of 20th-century British intelligence and excellent resources for anyone with an interest in World War I, World War II, or early Cold War strategy.

Do you know your Austen from your Orwell? Consider yourself a literature whiz? Or do you just love a compelling story opening? Try out this quiz 

The data for new academic library buildings and renovations featured in LJ's Year in Architecture 2022.

In 2020, partner schools Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Penn State University in the United States decided that a friendly baking competition involving the two universities would hit all the outreach notes they wanted, spotlighting cookbooks from both schools’ collections and fostering worldwide connections during a stressful time. Now in its third year, the Great Rare Books Bake Off is a hit worldwide.

The Mütter Museum’s less famous upstairs is equally fascinating—and it’s now open to non–medical professionals without an appointment. The library, an independent collection of books and ephemera related to the “history of medicine and medical humanities,” according to its mission statement, recently announced that it is now open to the public on weekends, included in the price of admission for the Mütter.

What do accessible spaces/programs/services look like in libraries? Ongoing engagement with disabled patrons and staff is key.

Best sellers in language, October 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Looking for some new bookish destinations to tick off your bucket list? Are you a lover of libraries or just looking for somewhere new to explore? Or do you simply want a bit of literary escapism? 

November 3, 2022, is World Digital Preservation Day - an opportunity to raise awareness to the important cause of digital preservation and to thank all digital preservation experts, advocates, implementers and leaders around the world for their efforts in preserving our cultural heritage.

LJ is piloting a new column called Research Briefs, which will summarize in plain language some key takeaways of recent research on librarianship, and point to the full paper for those who want to know more. In “The Effects of Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors on Academic LIS Professionals’ Health and Well-Being,” Christy Fic (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) and Maggie Albro (University of Tennessee Knoxville) study how counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWB)—which include theft, sabotage, interpersonal aggression, wasted time or resources, and workplace rumors—lead to professional burnout in academic librarians and archivists.

Elisandro Cabada has worn many hats during his career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Assistant professor for the university library, interim head of the Mathematics Library, and 3-D printing project coordinator, among others. His commitment to developing and using technology for library service and outreach won him a 2022 Movers & Shakers award. Library Journal recently reached out to learn more about his innovative work.

Best sellers in chemistry, October 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global is a searchable collection of more than five million dissertations and theses from universities worldwide. Now a breakthrough new feature makes it even easier for users to find high-quality information about the topic they’re studying.

The open access landscape is fast evolving—and for good reason. Following the global outbreak of COVID-19 in which research and knowledge lay at the heart of hope, we have seen a renewed focus in the industry for open access (OA) publishing. 

Library patrons and staff have differing abilities, goals and environments when using online research services, systems and learning resources. How do digital product designers balance these differing needs to ensure students, faculty, librarians and researchers can all accomplish what they set out to do?

At a time when the cost of higher education is rising and so are questions about its value, libraries can lead the way in enabling student success and helping students get the most out of college. To do this, college and university libraries must continue their transformation from places to access information to places to also create, connect, and grow.

Best sellers in literary criticism, October 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Best sellers in microbiology, October 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Bloomsbury Architecture Library’s exceptional navigation tools, options for access, and enhanced features make the database an outstanding research tool for anyone interested in historical and modern architecture.

Dr. N.S. ‘Ilaheva Tua’one, assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous studies in the Women’s and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS), has been named the inaugural Storytelling Professor at the Kraemer Family Library. The three-year rotating endowed professorship will give Tua’one the opportunity to celebrate and diffuse storytelling into the culture of Colorado Springs through an interdisciplinary lens. LJ spoke with Tua’one and Seth Porter, dean of the Kraemer Family Library and lead of online education for academic affairs, to hear more about what the new professorship will involve, why storytelling is important in an academic setting, and how to catch an octopus with a rat.

Best sellers in geography, October 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Alma Analytics help highlight the value of the library’s collections

Lorisia MacLeod, currently learning services librarian at the Alberta Library, Canada, previously worked as an instruction librarian at NorQuest College, Edmonton. A member of the James Smith Cree Nation, MacLeod realized early in her career that there was a major problem with properly citing Native and Indigenous sources in academic papers. The work she set in motion to correct this issue led to her being named a Library Journal 2022 Mover & Shaker. LJ recently caught up with her to learn more about her efforts.

Best sellers in music and art, September 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Rather than offering a subset of in-person programs live streamed to the at-home audience, concurrent schedules of separate virtual and in-person sessions, or both, this year's Charleston Conference is offering its in-person and virtual conferences two weeks apart.

475 libraries across Switzerland joined together to provide more efficient, consistent and coherent services in a single powerful platform.

Best sellers in education, September 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Historians, political scientists, and advanced students will benefit from this collection’s significant and distinctive content as well as the platform’s powerful search and functional design.

Recently I became acquainted with the creative works of a colleague, Jessy Randall, and I am impressed by the reciprocity between her archival work as the Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College and her poetry. Her latest book, Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science, published by Goldsmiths Press and distributed by MIT Press, is a union of research and creativity.

Best sellers in the topic "History of Science," September 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Best sellers in politics and law, September 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Higher ed nonprofit ITHAKA announced on August 18 that it has invested $2.5 million in Hypothesis, an open annotation service. Hypothesis, developed with funding from the Sloan, Mellon, and other foundations, enables users to make searchable annotations on text across all platforms and interfaces, at a private or public level—from notes and comments to corrections and addenda. And parent corporation Annotation Unlimited (Anno) envisions a time when this capability will be built into all browsers as a native feature, much like search engines.

Best sellers in biology, August 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Institutions of higher education are being tasked with demonstrating ROI from the first point of contact with prospective students. The campusM mobile app can help them do that.

Many technological trends in library management were evident before the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic significantly accelerated the pace of those changes. To boost agility, libraries are turning to SaaS solutions, analytics, digital transformation, open applications and their community of peers.

Best sellers in business and economics, August 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The Hartford Public Library, CT, recently received a $14,000 grant from the Aurora Foundation for Women and Girls toward a new program, Barriers Can’t Stop Us: Building Immigrant Women’s Success. The program will help 30 young women who immigrated to the United States while they were in high school access the resources they need to stay in school and complete their college degrees. The program is open to cisgender and transgender women alike.

Best sellers in engineering and technology, July 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

The Mass Observation Project remains one of the most unique and intriguing collections offered to patrons. The niche aspect of it being a British project should not stop one’s decision to purchase it; this is an impressive collection of observational, primary source data regarding world events and life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Responding to user feedback, this updated version of Bloomsbury Fashion Central brings together a rich collection of resources to provide one-stop access to interdisciplinary materials on fashion and dress. It is a strong collection for institutions that support art, design, and fashion, as well as business studies with an emphasis on the fashion industry.

#NoTechforICE was started by the national Latinx and Chicanx social justice advocacy group Mijente in 2018, when it became clear that government agencies such as ICE and CBP were purchasing public, private, and commercial data to gather information to aid in the sweeps and deportations of undocumented immigrants. Two companies that have entered into contracts with ICE, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters—which owns LexisNexis competitor Westlaw—are staples of college and university database subscriptions, and the campaign has caught the attention of academic librarians nationwide.

Best sellers in social sciences, July 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

Library system analytics can be applied to a wide range of use cases. The integration of a research information management system (RIMS) expands those options. The Weizmann Institution of Science Library transformed analytics results and narratives into faculty-facing communication, integrating context and metadata and supporting scientists in complying with their research grant open access requirements.

Librarians are feeling the squeeze. As they seek to meet changing patron expectations and a dynamic technological environment, they are often simultaneously faced with budget cuts and leadership looking over their shoulder for evidence of institutional value. 

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) recently commissioned Ithaka S+R to examine how academic research libraries in Canada and the United States help their institutions achieve strategic priorities, what can be done to advance this work, and how university leaders gauge expectations of their libraries.

Best sellers in geology, July 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.

An educational resource comprised of 100-plus exclusive articles by scholars from 25 countries, a four-volume collection of critical readings on historiography, and 60+ scholarly books from Bloomsbury’s catalog. Also included are essays on key concepts and thinkers, learning aides on using primary sources, and in-depth studies of influential classics. Teachers of historical theories and methods will welcome this resource, while researchers at all levels will appreciate the powerful search, user-friendly design, and robust scholarly content.

Gale's new addition to the Archives and Sexuality of Gender introduces the “Hell” segment of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, an infamous private collection of “forbidden books” established in the 1830s. The collection, which includes literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs with erotic and illicit themes (e.g., the Flagellation Collection), is perfect for research on sexuality and gender, cultural studies, literature, French cultural history, and more. However, most of the sources are in French, which might this harder to use for non-Francophone researchers.

Vendors offer a variety of training options and practical tips to ensure librarians and patrons get the most out of their databases.

The use and visibility of open access (OA) content collections and open educational resources (OER) appear to be changing at colleges and universities, according to the results of LJ’s 2022 Open Access/Open Educational Resources Survey, sponsored by SirsiDynix. Many institutions and their libraries are placing more emphasis on helping students and faculty find those resources, but survey participants feel they are not fully satisfied with how well their search interfaces direct students to these collections, or with their frequency of use.

Best sellers in Latin American history, June 2021 to date, as identified by GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO.