| Dear Reader, As life in the pandemic settles into an unsettling new normal, libraries and librarians of all types continue stepping up to serve their communities even though their buildings are closed. In addition to beefing up and promoting their digital collections and resources, they are donating their existing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to frontline healthcare workers, using their Maker spaces to produce more, ramping up remote reference, fighting misinformation about COVID-19, curating information for the World Health Organization, continuing their Census work in a new forum, running Folding@Home on their on-site computers to help fight the virus, boosting the wifi from closed branches to fight the digital divide, and offering free reservable virtual meeting rooms via Zoom. (speaking of Zoom, if you don’t want your colleagues or patrons to see your messy desk, may we suggest using these 8 great libraries as virtual backdrops?) Stepping up to help them in this work is the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) which has moved with great speed to distribute the first $30 million of the $50 million allocated for libraries under the CARES Act. IMLS also announced new grant flexibility for existing recipients, and teamed up with the CDC and other federal agencies on a webinar to address the risks of working with library materials. Paper is low risk, they concluded…but on Twitter, many staffers were concerned that this focus failed to take into account the full picture of risks incurred by requiring staffers to carry out curbside or drive thru service. In the face of an increasing number of furloughs, the library world is rallying round to take care of its own: EveryLibrary launched the HALO fund, to support library workers facing financial hardship as a result of COVID-19. In the book world, news is moving fast, with print sales down but ebooks rising to absorb at least some of the blow. Many pub dates are shifting later in the year, but plenty of new books continue to come out. For collection development librarians missing the usual book tours and launches to guide their debut buying, we offer this collection of more than 70 titles debuting this spring. And in a glimpse of a perhaps-hopeful future, Italy has reopened its bookstores. In the meantime, to serve patrons while they #StayHome, LJ and its sister publication School Library Journal have launched the Your Home Librarian e-newsletter, which librarians can pass along to their patrons, full of everything from helpful tips on how to organize their own books to just-launching ebooks they can get this week to fun productive library crowdsourcing projects. For those suddenly having to feed themselves at home and from scratch, we offered a booklist—all available digitally, of course—on bread baking and one on cooking with pantry staples. While things simmer is a great time to dig into these books for foodies. However hard it is to focus on anything besides the coronavirus right now, library leaders are still planning for the long haul. How to articulate the library’s impact and get what you need will likely be more important than ever in the recession to come. Last year’s periodicals prices, already outstripping library budgets, are likely to face even more scrutiny as a result. Aspiring librarians will still enter library school—perhaps even in greater numbers, as going back to grad school is often a response to high unemployment—and What You Need to Know Before Library School will help them pick the right program. For those who already have an MLIS, time at home can be a good opportunity to pursue professional development. Don’t forget, LJ and its sister publications have made all their content free to access, so you can get the news you need from wherever you are. And that coverage continues—if your library is providing innovative distance service, let us know on Twitter or Facebook or email me at mschwartz@mediasourceinc.com. Stay safe and be well,
Meredith Schwartz
Editor-in-Chief
Library Journal | 