March 2010

Features & Trends

How to Celebrate Women’s History @ Your Library

By Kay Ann Cassell and Kathleen Weibel

“Writing Women Back into History” is the theme for National Women’s History Month, March 2010, the annual celebration of women in the United States. For years women’s contributions were routinely underestimated or ignored even in the history of our own profession. While this still remains the case for much of history, the second wave of … Continue reading How to Celebrate Women’s History @ Your Library →

Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore on the Environment and the Eternal Role of Libraries

Nobel Prize and Oscar winner, former vice president and, in his own words, the man who “used to be the next president of the United States,” Al Gore delivered the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture January 16 at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Boston. His message: The environmental threat facing the planet as a … Continue reading Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore on the Environment and the Eternal Role of Libraries →

Coaching in the Library

By Ruth Metz

The greatest challenge to library organizations is to continuously adapt in an ever-changing, ever-more-complex environment. Library leaders need to direct the continuous redevelopment of libraries. The ability to tackle this and other institutional challenges effectively is fundamental to the success of leaders and the survival of libraries. One way to achieve this is through the … Continue reading Coaching in the Library →

A History of Women’s History Month
10 Technology Ideas Your Library Can Implement Next Week
By Ellyssa Kroski

Columnists

The Case for Textbooks
by Krista McDonald and John Burke
Discoveries
By Bill Ott
Cataloging Horizons
By Karen Coyle
Change at American University
by Brian Mathews

Latest Library Links

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Amy Hardin writes: “Library renovations can feel overwhelming—especially when you’re juggling tight budgets, big community expectations, and a building that’s showing its age. The good news is you don’t have to choose between ‘do nothing’ and ‘tear it down.’ Most successful library upgrades live somewhere in the middle: a smart, phased plan that protects your long-term vision while making meaningful improvements right now. Here are a few practical ways to think about approaching a library renovation.”

American Libraries Online, Sept. 15
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Violet Fox writes: “In March 2025, I wrote about anticipatory obedience at the Library of Congress (LC), describing how LC fast tracked changes to the Library of Congress Subject Headings relating to the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali. When Trump issued an executive order on August 27 directing federal agencies to change Lake Ontario to Lake America, catalogers around the world waited to see how LC would handle the changes. On September 3, LC scheduled a proposal to change the subject heading, and on September 11, the change was approved. The speed with which this happened is astounding.”

ACRLog, Sept. 12; Mar. 28, 2025
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In the 15 years since Fayetteville (N.Y.) Free Library opened the first recognized public library makerspace, similar creative hubs have spread to libraries throughout the country. In our By the Numbers feature, learn more makerspace facts, including details about DC Public Library’s Dance Studio, how University of Utah’s Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library used its makerspace to contribute to pandemic relief, and how Paul Smith Elementary School in Franklin, New Hampshire, taught students to make pillows perfect to lounge on while reading.

American Libraries Trend, Fall
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Ann Medaille writes: “With the advent of new technologies and rapid social and economic shifts, library workers’ jobs are being transformed. Compared with a decade ago, library workers now spend more time consulting on complex research tools, teaching digital literacy classes, supporting virtual learning environments, helping users troubleshoot devices, and codesigning projects with community partners. The pace at which library staffers are called upon to learn new skills is accelerating, and workers may struggle to keep up. While corporations may embrace upskilling to stay competitive, libraries will have to support upskilling to remain relevant.”

American Libraries feature, Fall
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Nicky Martin and Tracee Haupt Fugate write: “Preserving a website is complicated. Even a simple webpage can depend on dozens of images, videos, scripts, style sheets, and other resources scattered across the web. If some of those pieces are missed, the archived version may look or behave differently than the original. That is why quality assurance (QA) is an important part of web archiving.” They report on a project to evaluate an automated QA tool for website archiving.

Library of Congress: The Signal, Sept. 8
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Daly Barnett writes: “Doxxing is the deliberate disclosure of personal information to bully, harass, intimidate, or instigate a chain of harms against someone. The responsibility is on each of us to protect ourselves, but the good news is that there’s a lot you can do to reduce your digital footprint and take control of your data. In this two-part series, the first part focuses on prevention and ways to reduce your overall footprint, while the second focuses on incident response.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation, Aug. 31
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Kari Kivinen writes: “Finland’s Faktabaari EDU digital information literacy project has published a draft English version of a total of 286 task cards for teaching artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, covering early education through higher education. The cards are organized by level of education and, within each level, by subject. Each card is based on the principle of AI as supporting tool in which AI can be used to support human thinking, learning, and action, not as a source of information or a substitute for decision making.”

Kivinen, Sept. 2

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