Author Archive: Rebekkah Smith Aldrich

From Anxiety to Action

By Rebekkah Smith Aldrich | March 3, 2025

This hope comes from the efforts to take action, both large and small, that I have seen among my colleagues locally and nationally over the past decade: American Library Association (ALA) members who started ALA’s Sustainability Round Table (SustainRT) in 2013; members of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative (SLI), which launched the same year and partners … Continue reading From Anxiety to Action →

Libraries and Sustainable Thinking

By Rebekkah Smith Aldrich | April 20, 2017

This is the first column in a multipart American Libraries series that explores the library profession’s relationship to sustainability. In today’s world, libraries cannot afford to be passive or neutral. We find ourselves contending with disruption on all fronts—political, social, economic, technological, and environmental. Fully participating in community life through the pursuit of our professional values … Continue reading Libraries and Sustainable Thinking →

Latest Library Links

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Phil Morehart writes: “Hubbard (Ohio) Public Library’s (HPL) oldest patron, Lily Walter, who celebrates her 105th birthday in May, stopped by the library last month to renew her library card. She told the library she has loved reading and libraries for 101 years—as long as she can remember. Lily got her first library card at age four, and it began a lifelong love of the library. She volunteered at HPL during her 80s and 90s and said she was fascinated by learning about library circulation and what people did—and didn’t—read.”

I Love Libraries, Mar. 14
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Briana Mendez-Padilla writes: “To encourage students to read novels, teachers can employ strategies such as allowing students to choose their books, encouraging them to read ones outside their comfort zone, and providing supplemental reading materials. The reading of novels is being sacrificed for short passage reading because students are more likely to encounter these texts in standardized tests, said Alex Corbitt, assistant professor of literacy at the State University of New York at Cortland. Corbitt encourages teachers to create book clubs that are thematically organized but with three or four different novel options at varying reading levels for students to choose from.”

K-12 Dive, Mar. 19
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Barbara M. Pope and Samantha Thompson-Franklin write: “Students with disabilities attending institutions of higher education without accessible library resources and students who are unaware of available resources may be unable to fully participate in or complete their education. Accessibility in library resources and services helps to eliminate those barriers, but the information must be communicated to those who need it, including student disability services, teaching faculty, and students themselves. Ideally, academic libraries should collaborate with campus partners to assess existing resources and services to provide accessible learning and support materials.”

Journal of Creative Library Practice, Mar. 25
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Mike Olson writes: “Library catalogs have always been battlegrounds where content is not merely described but debated. President Trump’s Executive Order 14172 directing the renaming of longstanding geographical designations ‘Mount Denali’ and ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to the politically loaded ‘Mount McKinley’ and ‘Gulf of America’ reveal the naked truth of what cataloging has always been: a battlefield where meaning is contested and conquered. When catalogers implement politically motivated terminology changes, they become unwilling performers in a linguistic ritual that normalizes certain worldviews while erasing others. But there’s potential for subversion within these systems.”

The Scholarly Kitchen, Mar. 25
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Jonah Aragon writes: “There is a growing sentiment that the US shouldn’t be relied upon for the technologies that many people and businesses use every day. At Privacy Guides, we generally value technical guarantees over matters like jurisdiction. There is simply no alternative to privacy technologies like strong end-to-end encryption when it comes to protecting your information. Tools from the European Union (EU) also generally benefit from much stronger data protection laws, thanks to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of our favorites.”

Privacy Guides, Mar. 19
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Hannah Fingerhut writes: “Iowa cannot, for now, continue to enforce part of its book ban law, US District Judge Stephen Locher said March 25. The decision temporarily blocks the part of the law that prohibits school libraries and classrooms from carrying books that depict sex acts. In his decision, Locher stated that the unconstitutional applications of the book restrictions ‘far exceed’ the constitutional applications ‘under both legal standards the Court believes are applicable.’ Expecting an appeal, Locher included an alternative standard through which the restrictions could be considered constitutional, but added he does not believe it should be applied in this case.”

Associated Press, Mar. 25; May 26, 2023
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Kim Chandler writes: “The Alabama Public Library Service Board of Trustees voted Thursday to withhold state funding from the Fairhope Public Library after complaints from conservative parents about books in the teen section. Board Chairman John Wahl, who is also the chair of the Alabama Republican Party, said board members believe the Fairhope library is in violation of state policies to protect children from inappropriate materials. The books cited by the upset parents included Sold, a National Book Award finalist about a girl who is sold into sexual slavery in India. Read Freely Alabama has started a fundraiser to try to replace the $42,000 in state funding.”

Associated Press, Mar. 21

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