Library vendors had lots of news to share at this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits in Denver. Here are a few of the announcements LJ had the opportunity to learn about in person. ALA is accepting submissions for the annual John Cotton Dana Awards, honoring outstanding library public relations efforts and campaigns. Managed by ALA's Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) and the H.W. Wilson Foundation, and sponsored by ALA and EBSCO Information Services, up to eight $10,000 awards will be presented to winners during a ceremony at the ALA Annual conference in New Orleans this summer. The deadline for submissions is March 16. Submissions were opened for the 2018 EBSCO Solar Grants, given annually by EBSCO Information Services to help libraries defray the costs of installing solar arrays at their institutions. Three $100,000 grants will be awarded this year. Submissions are due by April 30, and finalists will be announced on June 23. ByWater Solutions, the largest U.S. service provider for the Koha Open Source Library System, announced plans to provide implementation and support services for the FOLIO Library Services Platform (LSP), with hosting technology provided by EBSCO Information Services. The companies expect libraries to begin going live with the new open source LSP beginning in 2019. Digital movie, ebook, and music streaming service hoopla announced an agreement with Candlewick Press to add hundreds of new ebook titles to the platform, including bestsellers such as The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson, What The Dickens by Gregory Maguire, Courage Has No Color by Tanya Lee Stone, and 20 titles from the “Judy Moody” series by Megan McDonald. Several of the titles will be available on hoopla’s new ereader, which displays picture book graphics as they were designed to appear in physical books. Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company, announced the development of a new research services platform, Ex Libris Esploro, in partnership with Lancaster University, the University of Iowa, the University of Miami, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Sheffield. Leveraging the company’s Alma library services platform (LSP), Esploro aims to help libraries and their institutions better correlate research output and funding and ensure compliance with regulations and policies (such as open access publication requirements). ProQuest announced the ProQuest SAFE (Secure Archives ForEver) initiative, which aims to ensure the preservation of the company’s digital content and access to that content for libraries. SAFE will launch using Amazon Glacier, the cloud-based archive solution from Amazon Web Services. ProQuest will initially populate SAFE with ebooks in 2018, and ultimately expects to upload 600 terabytes of content spanning six centuries of digitized books, newspapers, magazines, government documents, video, and audio. Alexander Street, a ProQuest company, in partnership with Royal Shakespeare Company and distribution label Opus Arte, now offers streaming access to high-definition, surround sound recordings of live performances of Shakespeare’s plays, filmed at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Stratford-Upon-Avon theater. Thirteen performances, including Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest, are currently available with Academic Video Online or via the newly launched Theatre & Drama Premium database, and more content will be added in the future. The recordings also include interviews, production images, teacher packs, and study notes. SAGE Publishing last month announced the expansion of its data offering with the purchase of statistical multidisciplinary data repository Data-Planet. Data-Planet Statistical Datasets cover 16 major subject categories including education, health and vital statistics, and international relations and trade, and bring to SAGE 35 billion data points from over 450 databases sourced from 70 public and private organizations, according to a company announcement. Lyngsoe Systems showcased its new Tote Check-in Server, designed to work with the company's Sort Mate automated materials handling system to reduce labor and simplify the transfer of items to branches. The Sort Mate generates a piece-by-piece manifest of all items placed in a specific tote. When the tote is received by a branch, a single scan will trigger the automatic check in of all items in the tote, confirm the delivery, and generate an itemized list, often eliminating 30 or more scans by staff. Koios, a digital marketing company focused on libraries, showcased its new Libre Ads service. Google offers nonprofit organizations a free monthly allowance of up to $10,000 for use with Google AdWords—the pay-per-click advertising service that brands use to get their sites to appear at the top of search results when users input relevant terms. With Libre Ads, Koios facilitates the effective deployment of AdWords for libraries, boosting awareness of resources, services, and events—such as databases or ESL classes, for example—and creating custom landing pages that explain those resources to visitors who click on the ads. SirsiDynix announced the general availability of its BLUEcloud Mobile app for iOS and Android devices. The app features a digital library card, and offers patrons full access to a library’s catalog, enabling comprehensive management of library accounts including placing and renewing holds, accessing a library’s digital resources via eResource Central, viewing fines, checking branch locations and operating hours, receiving push notifications for upcoming events, and more. The Library Corporation (TLC) announced a partnership with The Turing Tumble, a marble-powered, mechanical computer designed to teach fundamental coding concepts to kids. TLC will make Turing Tumbles available to libraries through its TLC•SmartTECH product line beginning in May. Gale offered attendees a sneak preview of Digital Scholar Lab, an upcoming cloud-based research platform that will enable students and researchers to apply natural language processing tools to optical character recognition (OCR) text from Gale’s primary source collection. Separately, the company announced an expansion of its partnership with the California State Library, signing a three-year agreement that will triple the size of Gale’s Career Online High School program in the state. More than 1,000 Californians are currently enrolled, and more than 400 have graduated from the program since 2015, earning an accredited high school diploma and workforce certificate in one of eight trade areas. This new agreement will enable California libraries to provide scholarships to an additional 2,603 students. Ingram Library Services announced a partnership with digital content provider ODILO to expand the selection of multilingual ebooks and audiobooks available through ODILO’s library ebook platform. This content, which will be available to libraries through Ingram’s iPage ordering tool in the coming months, includes 1.4 million ebooks and audiobooks in 240 languages, along with 60 Spanish magazines and 35 Spanish newspapers. OCLC Research and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) awarded research grants to three projects at the ALISE 2018 Annual Conference Awards Luncheon. Rachel Ivy Clarke, associate professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, NY, will investigate systematic approaches to promoting diverse reading materials in libraries. Violeta Trkulja, academic assistant, and Juliane Stiller, research assistant for the Institut für Bibliotheks und Informationswissenschaft, Berlin, will examine the information-seeking behavior of refugee migrants in Germany. And Alexander Voss, lecturer, and Anna Clements, assistant director of library services for the University of St. Andrews, UK, will perform a study to characterize the adoption of ORCID iDs and the perceptions of the system among researchers in different communities. If we missed your news, please contact me or add a note in the comments below!