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Phil Morehart writes: “Welcome to the 2024 Library Design Showcase, American Libraries’ annual celebration of new and renovated libraries throughout North America. Like the profession itself, library facilities are in a constant state of rebirth and reimagination. Libraries have evolved from places devoted strictly to scholarship and materials collection to true third spaces, where diverse communities come together to congregate, learn, and grow while also honoring local history and the environment. This year’s showcase selections deserve to be celebrated as prime examples of this progress.”...
American Libraries feature, Sept./Oct.
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Cindy Hohl writes: “Everyone belongs in libraries and deserves equal access to information to help them live their best lives. This is why I created my ‘We All Belong’ library tour—a virtual and in-person tour to visit public, academic, school, special, and tribal libraries in urban and rural areas—to highlight the work of library workers in these communities and create bridges within the Association. Witnessing fearless leadership in action is an honor, and I am grateful for the inspiration. I look forward to spending time with everyone on the tour, which will take me across the continent.”...
American Libraries column, Sept./Oct.
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Vincent Hyland and Melissa Jacobs write: “Bearing in mind the steep decline in US standardized test scores, education departments around the country are reevaluating the methods that have been used to teach literacy. As a result, many librarians are asking how they can help foster kids’ literacy as well as their love of reading. The science of reading, a phrase that has become almost ubiquitous in conversations about literacy, refers to the massive corpus of scholarship that investigates the different factors influencing a person’s ability to read. School librarians are well positioned to support the science of reading in their schools.”...
AL: The Scoop, Aug. 28
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ALA will present a
free webinar for library workers about Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on October 2. The webinar will explain how to obtain student loan relief from the PSLF program, which is administered by the US Department of Education. PSLF will forgive the federal student loan balances with qualifying employment history at a government or non-profit organization, such as many school, academic, public, and special libraries. To date, nearly 1 million public servants—including qualifying library workers—have received more than $69 billion in loan forgiveness under PSLF....
ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, Aug. 29; American Libraries feature, June 2022
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ALA’s Nominating Committee is soliciting nominees to run for the offices of ALA president-elect, treasurer, and councilor-at-large in the 2025 spring election. The committee will select candidates to run for these three-year positions. For the councilor-at-large positions, the committee is seeking no fewer than 18 candidates for 12 at-large council seats. The president-elect will serve as president-elect in 2025–2026, president in 2026–2027, and immediate past president in 2027–2028. The treasurer and councilor-at-large terms will begin after ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and end at the adjournment of ALA’s 2028 Annual Conference. For more information or to nominate a candidate, visit the
ALA Election Information page. Nominations and biographical candidate forms must be received by September 16....
ALA Communications, Marketing, and Media Relations Office, Aug. 27
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“We have been grappling with questions about the impact of library public programs since 2014. That is when we and other colleagues at ALA and Knology (a social science research organization) launched the
National Impact of Library Public Programs Assessment (NILPPA). Phase 1 (2017–2019) yielded a conceptual framework for
categorizing public programs offered by US libraries and the first-ever
competency framework for designing and running public programs at libraries.” Phase 2 (2021–present) focuses on assessing work with partner organizations and generating sets of behaviors and events that could serve as indicators of impact....
Programming Librarian, Aug. 22
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Louise Hoffman Broach writes: “Moms for Liberty and the Rev. Jacob Marchitell asked New York State Supreme Court in Wayne County August 23 for an injunction that would remove five books from the Clyde-Savannah (N.Y.) Junior-Senior High School library. The school board followed its policy and convened a committee to review the books when Marchitell first brought his complaint in the spring of 2023. After a review, the committee unanimously determined the material was not pornographic.” Following another complaint from Maritchell, the board removed the books in August 2023, but returned them the following month, and denied an appeal in April 2024....
Finger Lakes Times (Geneva, N.Y.), Aug. 27
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Rick Anderson writes: “‘Are libraries neutral?’ This is the question that was posed at the
ALA Midwinter President’s
Program in Denver a few years ago. A diverse panel of librarians was asked to take turns responding to that question, with results that were sometimes very interesting and sometimes fairly predictable. There was a very big problem, though, and it lay in the organizing question itself. One can’t really answer it meaningfully without first asking a clarifying question: ‘neutral’ about what? In some ways neutrality in the library is clearly a very bad idea—and yet in some important ways, it’s absolutely essential.”...
The Scholarly Kitchen, Sept. 3
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Ian Hodgson writes: “A coalition of the nation’s largest book publishers filed a lawsuit August 29 against Florida education officials alleging that a
2023 Florida law that increased scrutiny of school library books unconstitutionally limits free speech. The law requires school librarians to remove books that contain ‘sexual conduct,’ with no consideration of the work’s educational or artistic merit, according to the complaint. Once a parent or resident of the county objects to the book, it must be removed within five days and remain unavailable until the objection is resolved.”...
Tampa Bay Times, Aug. 29
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Yana Kunichoff writes: “Joel D. Valdez Main Library in Tucson, Arizona, could close for downsizing renovations in December, with a proposed plan to reopen in a different location at a future date. The change, along with the closure of more branches and the transition of one to a library administrative building, are part of a series of proposals for the Pima County Public Library system. The proposed changes are necessary because of chronic staffing shortages and the financial weight of some of the library locations, as well as strains faced by the system in responding to community needs like health care, shelter, and food,
a draft report said.”...
Arizona Luminaria, Aug. 27
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Alvin Wanjala writes: “A small language model (SLM) is a type of artificial intelligence model with fewer parameters. Like [the large language models that power applications like ChatGPT], SLMs can generate text and perform other tasks. However, SLMs use fewer datasets for training, have fewer parameters, and require less computational power to train and run. For most use cases, SLMs are better positioned to become the mainstream models used by companies and consumers to perform a wide variety of tasks.”...
MakeUseOf, Sept. 2
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“The way people view disability is far from reality. Sports have always been a unifying force, while also being at the forefront of societal change. Sports make us more—more determined, more powerful, more ourselves. And they show the world what is possible. Through sports, athletes with disabilities show people what they are capable of so that it’s no longer a surprise, so that they’re not always an inspiration. These books shed light into the individual and unique journeys of the authors as well as provide you with insights into questions that you may have wanted to ask, but didn’t.”...
Move United, Aug. 25
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