All library staff are named 2022 Librarian of the Year winners for taking care of themselves, patrons, and one another through tough times.

No matter how audience behaviors ultimately swing in the future, hybrid events will be a pillar of our new normal. We must continue to refine our capability of being anywhere and everywhere for anybody.

The field needs to support innovation to meet our changing communities’ needs—but focus on invention can lead to taking essential duties, and the people who do them, for granted.

Adriana Herrera is well known in the romance world for her contemporaries (“Dreamers” series), but this year, she’s launching a historical series, “Las Leonas,” featuring three Dominican women in Paris for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The first book in the series, A Caribbean Heiress in Paris (HQN, Jun.), features Luz Alana Heith-Benzan, who enters into a marriage of convenience with James Evanston Sinclair, Earl of Darnick, to help her expand her family’s rum business.

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 VCU: VCU Libraries has acquired a treasure trove of thousands of rare medical books, manuscripts, silhouettes and prints, providing researchers with the opportunity to explore the history and evolution of medicine in its earliest printed form. The collection of Joseph Lyons Miller (1875-1957) — who practiced medicine in Thomas, West Virginia, while serving as medical […]

From EFF: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched Tracking Global Online Censorship, a website project that provides comprehensive, in-depth information about how and why social media platforms remove users’ posts, how users can appeal these take down decisions, and how the practice affects freedom of expression across the globe. Tracking Global Online Censorship is […]

From the National Endowment For the Arts: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced it has recommended American Rescue Plan (ARP) awards totaling $57,750,000 to 567 arts organizations to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic. The organizations may use this funding to save jobs, and to fund operations and […]

From Getty Images: , in partnership with the Getty Family and Stand Together, a philanthropic community tackling some of the biggest challenges of our times, today announced the recipients of the inaugural Getty Images Photo Archive Grant for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The $500,000 grant will support the photo digitization of up to […]

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.

Machine learning (ML) tools can potentially help patrons discover relevant content and services as they search a library’s catalog. However, ML tools need to be trained with a lot of good data to generate good recommendations, and initially, contextual recommendations generated with high-quality library metadata may be more effective at achieving the same goal. In addition, some patrons may express privacy concerns regarding ML projects that leverage catalog search data. These were a few of the topics discussed during the “Personalization in the Catalog with Machine Learning and Linked Data” online session at the American Library Association’s LibLearnX virtual conference.

The first iteration of the American Library Association’s new LibLearnX conference more than met its attendance goals despite having to debut virtually rather than, as originally intended, in person. Just shy of 2,183 people attended, 109 percent of the goal of 2,000. 

The 2022 PEN American Literary Award finalists are announced. The best seller lists feature Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover, One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner, Enough Already by Valerie Bertinelli, and The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan. Interviews explore conversations from Daphne Palasi Andreades of Brown Girls, Imani Perry of South to America, David Sanchez of All Day Is a Long Time, and Dolly Parton co-author of Run, Rose, Run. Adaptation news abounds for Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, Moses McKenzie’s An Olive Grove in Ends, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s The Personal Librarian, and a graphic novel of The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Environmental concerns past, present, and future.