January/February 2018

Features & Trends

2018 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Denver. Illustration: Kimberly Sly/Albie Designs

2018 Midwinter Preview

By Greg Landgraf

Featured Speakers Opening Session Friday, February 9, 4–5:15 p.m. Marley Dias, who started the #1000blackgirlbooks campaign as a 6th grader, will have a conversation with Patrisse Cullors, artist and cofounder of the Black Lives Matter movement, to reveal the determining factors and mindsets that motivated each of them to take action and how different generations … Continue reading 2018 Midwinter Preview →

Diners chow down on Asian street food at Cho77.

Mile-High Bites

By Eric Peterson

The Mile High City has emerged as a hot spot for chef-driven, farm-to-table restaurants. Numerous standout eateries have hung a shingle and earned one rave review after another. As author of the Frommer’s EasyGuide to Colorado, I was lucky enough to take my taste buds on a tour of Denver’s rising restaurants and enjoy every … Continue reading Mile-High Bites →

2017 Year in Review

By the editors of American Libraries

Saving Federal Funding Thanks to extensive grassroots efforts by ALA members, in September the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an increase of $4 million in funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, all of which would go to the formula-based Grants to States program. The bill also included increased funding in FY2018 for a … Continue reading 2017 Year in Review →

Columnists

Free Reading Zones
By Mirela Roncevic
Small Business Support
By Carrie Smith
Tying Up the Lion
By Jim Neal
A Tough Environment
By Susan Hildreth
Creating Space for Agency
By Rachel Altobelli
Self-Directed Programming
By Abby Johnson
Leadership and Vision
By Joseph Janes
How We Lead
By Karen Muller
Learning to Teach
By Meredith Farkas

Latest Library Links

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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9
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Karen O’Grady writes: “I am the embedded librarian for the Hahn School of Nursing at the University of San Diego. I am surrounded by nursing faculty, staff, and students rather than by librarians. This has proven to be an incredible gamechanger for the way I see things. Every student in my school knows me by name. I am often stopped in the hallway to answer questions. Every correct answer I give increases my authority and builds trust. Through these casual mini-lessons, this foreign animal called ‘librarian’ slowly becomes an approachable, knowledgeable person.”

College & Research Libraries News, Dec.
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ALA has selected 46 participants for its 2025 class of Emerging Leaders (EL). The EL program allows library staff and information workers to participate in project planning work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity early in their careers. The group will take part in a day-long session during the 2025 LibLearnX conference in Phoenix this January and work for six months, culminating in a poster session at ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia in June, where they will highlight results of their project planning work.

ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment, Dec. 4
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On December 9, ALA announced a $25 million bequest by James W. Lewis, of Washington, D.C. The gift, the largest individual bequest in ALA’s history, will fund scholarships for aspiring librarians with demonstrated financial needs. Throughout Lewis’s career at Merrill Lynch, where he leads the Lewis Group as senior vice president and senior relationship manager, he has demonstrated his commitment to libraries and their communities by generously volunteering his time, including as a member of the Board of Visitors at the library of his alma mater, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He also served as a Library Trustee Board member at District of Columbia Public Library for 10 years.”

AL: The Scoop, Dec. 9

View more Latest Library Links

January/February 2018

Features & Trends

2018 Midwinter Preview

Mile-High Bites

2017 Year in Review

By the Numbers: Get to Know Denver

Stories, Songs, and Stretches

The Question of Little Free Libraries

Newsmaker: Dolly Parton

Blazing Trails

An Archive for All

A Space Apart

Out of the Branches, into the Woods

Hurricane Maria: The Aftermath

Bookend: Tribal Heritage

Columnists

Free Reading Zones

Small Business Support

Tying Up the Lion

A Tough Environment

Creating Space for Agency

Self-Directed Programming

Leadership and Vision

How We Lead

Learning to Teach