On Thursday, June 27, at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego, CA, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced the launch of its nationwide Information Literacy Initiative. The multipartner project provides a website, InformationLiteracy.gov, that offers a wide range of ready-to-use tools and resources for library and museum professionals—trusted educators—to engage their communities to find, understand, evaluate, and share accurate information.
Anyone who is attending this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Annual Convention in San Diego hoping to hear more about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on libraries has not been disappointed. “Breaking Boundaries: Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT to Transform Library Services,” one of the earliest panels on Saturday morning, was presented to a full house—five conjoined rooms with every seat taken.
“Everything breaks–or ends up breaking something else,” says Carissa Carter, stating the basic premise of Assembling Tomorrow. “But by thinking about the world differently—the way designers do—we still have a chance to design for healing and to transform the future.”
Executive leadership development is imperative for the future of any organization, and this was especially pertinent to Columbus Metropolitan Library as my retirement announcement grew closer. I decided to strategically tap the expertise of our library board of trustees because of their external organizational perspectives on talent management.
A Minnesota bill with a section prohibiting book bans in public libraries, and libraries or media centers in public postsecondary institutions and schools, was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz on May 17. Senate File 3567, an omnibus education reform bill—which also includes rulings on cell phone use in schools, student performance data, and student journalism, among other items—went into effect immediately.
Calls for Nominations: Upcoming Award Submission Deadlines
*The next Kline Community Impact Prize winner will be announced in Library Journal's February 2025 issue, so the deadline for nominations has been extended to July 31, 2024.
“What I think we’re seeing is some compression. People who might have had plans to retire during what turned out to be the height of the pandemic postponed their retirement to help their organizations through that. Now that we’re past it, there is a reset with directors asking themselves, ‘Okay, now am I going to retire?’”
Frankly, I should have seen it coming, but personal growth and change can be so subtle that you sometimes don’t realize you’re doing it until you’ve done it. In my case, things started small: snapping a photo of a wildflower while on a walk, admiring my friend’s summer crop of vegetables.
On November 2, 1929, at Curtiss Airfield in Valley Stream, NY, 26 female licensed pilots, mostly from the East Coast, gathered to form the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to support and advance women in aviation. Famed aviator Amelia Earhart, the first president of the Ninety-Nines, came up with the name in honor of the 99 charter members. Almost 95 years since its founding, the Ninety-Nines has about 7,000 members in 44 countries.
Resource sharing between libraries is nothing new, of course — but what is new is the ease with which potential resource-sharing partners can find each other. We spoke with three librarians who play leading roles in the Rapido/RapidILL resource-sharing community.
Hisham Matar’s My Friends and Matthew Longo’s The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain win Orwell Prizes. Poets & Writers publishes its 24th annual roundup of the summer’s best debut fiction. South Carolina censorship law goes into effect. Plus, Page to Screen.
Call for Info: Library Renovation/Construction Projects Completed Since Last July
Library Journal is collecting information about library projects completed over the last year for our annual Year in Architecture feature. If your institution completed a library construction or renovation project between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, please tell us about it! The links below will direct you to download a pdf of the form before filling out your responses online. We have separate links for public and college/university library projects. The deadline for submissions is Friday, July 26. If you are unsure of the specifics for the form, please ask your architect. They will receive free inclusion in our architect listing. Submission of high-resolution images of your completed project is encouraged and you will find digital specs and instructions in the gray box on the form.
The Colorado Book Award winners and RSL Christopher Bland Prize shortlist are announced. Lambda Literary announces new fellows for the 2024 Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Chris Whitaker’s buzzy book All the Colors of the Dark. Adaptations are forthcoming for Emily Henry’s Happy Place and Lindy Ryan’s Bless Your Heart, plus a long-awaited Green Lantern series. The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, turns 20 this week.
Arundhati Roy wins the PEN Pinter Prize amid prosecution threat over Kashmir comments. The longlist for the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime novel and the shortlist for the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir and autobiography are announced. Authors Against Book Bans officially launches. Plus, new title bestsellers.
The Big Sourcebook of Free and Low-Cost Library Programming: 300+ Resources, Ideas, and Tools, by Ellyssa Kroski, director of information technology and marketing at the New York Law Institute, is a starred pro media selection. "A time-saving and relevant programming sourcebook; highly recommended for any library seeking to revitalize its programs and services." In political science, Lies That Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation is a starred title. "Librarians and educators will find this thorough and outstanding resource about misinformation highly useful for community activists and students." And award-winning librarian Amanda Jones's That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America is a starred memoir. "Jones’s deeply personal account of her battle to regain her reputation and combat intolerance in libraries is essential reading and ultimately a clarion call for others to help defend intellectual freedom and democracy."
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