With The Book of Magic, Alice Hoffman's sequel to Practical Magic, coming out in October, now is the perfect time to round up some witchy fiction to get readers in the Halloween mood. Read on for both adult fiction and young adult works with crossover appeal.

By using new learning strategies, language learning can be interesting and fun. We feature a series of options that can give you fluency in no time.

The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill administration announced on October 1 that, as part of major budget-tightening initiatives across the institution, the UNC Libraries’ funding will be cut by $5 million over two years. During the current academic year, close to $2 million will come from the collections budget.

A launch date has not yet been announced, but OverDrive has been recruiting librarian advisors from public, academic, and K–12 libraries to offer input and refine Readtelligence—an upcoming suite of tools for ebook selection and curation developed by the company using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning tools to analyze every ebook in the OverDrive Marketplace.

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 Delta Think: Each year, Delta Think’s OA Market Sizing analyzes the value of the open access journals market. This is the revenue generated by providers or the costs incurred by buyers of content. Our analysis this year shows that the open access market has had an exceptional year of growth in 2020. The effects […]

Elsevier, Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press and Copyright Clearance Center join Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative (via Kudos) Increasing Participation of Women in the Climate Change Debate, Including as Leaders, is Essential For a Carbon-Zero Future (via Int. Science Council) New Census Tool Provides Easy Access to Child Poverty Rates in Every U.S. School District (via […]

From STM: STM (the Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) has today published the latest edition of ‘The STM Report’, the organization’s comprehensive overview of the scientific and scholarly publishing market. The revised report, which adopts a new supplement format to be issued in regular thematic updates, reveals significant publisher-driven growth in Open Access […]

From UNC Libraries: In 2005, archivists at UNC-Chapel Hill developed “Slavery and the Making of the University.” The exhibition was one of the first systematic efforts on campus to examine the ways enslaved people enabled the University’s founding, growth and wealth. Sixteen years later, a new generation of archivists at the Wilson Special Collections Library […]

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.

The 2021 Aurora Awards are announced, with Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia winning the award for best fiction. Antje Rávik Strubel wins the 2021 German Book Prize. Rebecca Campbell Wins the 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for An Important Failure. A new Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction award will launch in 2022. Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit and Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout get reviewed. Billy Porter's memoir, Unprotected continues to generate buzz. 

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for patrons waiting to read The Judge’s List by John Grisham. 

A re-envisioned Hayden Library and courtyard at MIT, fresh film archives at Yale, Brooklyn PL unveils its first new branch in 40 years, Columbus Metropolitan Library cuts the ribbon on its HIlltop Branch, and more library construction news.

More than ever, it’s important for staff and patrons to know that they are in a safe and secure place. Quipu Group’s PITS®(Patron Incident Tracking System) allows library staff to record and track security incidents in real-time, as well as access information on previous activities and actions.