The Cleveland Public Library is teaming up with the Pro Football Hall of Fame for student programming, gaming, and educational activities during football season. In September, 200 Cleveland Metropolitan School District students from select middle and high schools attended the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic at the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton and participated in educational activities such as the Classic College Fair.

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Director Crosby Kemper signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur M. Jaddou on November 19 at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Since the original MOU was signed in 2013, IMLS has been helping museums and libraries to provide accurate and useful information for lawful permanent residents interested in becoming U.S. citizens. USCIS supports this partnership by designing trainings and content tailored to librarians and museum educators on topics including citizenship education programming, electronic filing of immigration benefits, and the expansion of digital tools and resources.

IMLS also recently released its Annual Financial Report for FY21. The report details the health of the agency’s finances from October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021, as required by the Office of Management and Budget, and showcases key financial impacts of the agency’s grant programs.

The Library of Congress has acquired the M.C. Migel Memorial Rare Book Collection from the American Foundation for the Blind, comprising over 750 items dating from 1617 to the present, including books by and about Hellen Keller and other blind authors. The collection also includes books on blindness, maps, rare pamphlets, and many volumes of poetry, biographies, and autobiographies.

In September, LYRASIS announced the expansion of the Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP). Following a successful pilot program, LYRASIS is opening a new round of funding opportunities to support Open Access (OA) publishing by scholarly journals; those seeking investments in OACIP’s second phase includeAlgebraic Combinatorics, History of Media Studies, and Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

On November 9, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press announced the launch of the Grant Program for Diverse Voices, an initiative to expand funding for new work by authors whose voices have been excluded and chronically underrepresented across the arts, humanities, and sciences. The grant program will be supported by the Press’s existing Fund for Diverse Voices.

The Miami-Dade Public Library System (MDPLS) has been recognized as an Autism Friendly Partner by the University of Miami–Nova Southeastern University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, as part of a Miami-Dade County Autism and Neurodiverse Inclusion Program. MDPLS is the first county department to receive this designation.

On September 20, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced the receipt of a $125,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of a consensus framework for implementing controlled digital lending of book content by libraries, which has been approved by NISO members as a new initiative.

At a November 5 ceremony in Washington, DC, the U.S. Department of Commerce presented the 2021 President’s “E” Award for Exports to OverDrive for its sustained global growth and demonstrated excellence in exporting for at least four years to a wide range of international markets.

The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill Libraries have received a $500,000 capstone grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help enable archivists and digitization specialists to investigate new methods for preserving audio and video records of the American South at a large scale.