Blog | American Libraries Magazine

Bookend: Once Upon a Time
By Anne Ford | December 12, 2025
Bookend: Up Her Sleeve
By Anne Ford | November 24, 2025
2025 Holiday Gift Guide for Librarians and Book Lovers
By Alison Marcotte | November 16, 2025
State of Play

Roll into International Games Month
November 3, 2025
Jam Forever

Creating tabletop role-playing games in the library
By Carrie Smith | November 3, 2025
Adaptive Arcade

Library program makes videogames accessible to all
By Greg Landgraf | November 3, 2025
2025 Platy Hall of Fame Inductees
November 3, 2025
Q&A with Adriana Harmeyer

Archivist and Jeopardy! super champion on what it takes to beat the buzzer
By Anne Ford | November 3, 2025
Professional Development Is a Wellness Program
By Donald W. Crankshaw | November 3, 2025
Road to Recovery

Preparing for a ransomware attack and building a support network can improve library response
By Cass Balzer | November 3, 2025
Newsmaker: Sean Sherman

Award-winning chef’s second cookbook highlights the diversity of Indigenous food
By Terra Dankowski | November 3, 2025
Recipe: Squash and Pepita Tartlets
By Sean Sherman | November 3, 2025

Latest Library Links

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Cass Balzer writes: “Worldwide, more than 15 million cyberattacks have been reported every year since 2020. At public institutions like libraries, these attacks often shut down core systems, compromise personal information of patrons and staff, and leave communities without access to certain services, all while demanding substantial resources to repair the damage. For libraries that have suffered these attacks, recovery was long, complicated, and costly, but their experiences offer lessons in how libraries can respond and rebuild.”

American Libraries Trend, Nov./Dec.
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Benjamin Charles Germain Lee and Kyle Deeds write: “We are excited to share GovScape, a public search system for 10+ million government PDFs. GovScape is built upon the End of Term Web Archive, an incredible multi-institutional effort to document the federal government’s online presence at the end of each presidential administration going back to 2004. GovScape currently includes all renderable PDFs from the 2020 crawl that are 50 pages or under in length. We are already working to incorporate PDFs from the other crawls in the End of Term Web Archive, including the 2024 crawl once it is fully uploaded.”

Data Rescue Project, Dec. 2
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Kelly Jensen writes: “It was never a question whether the end of Moms for Liberty’s BookLooks in March would be the end of parental rights groups taking up the mantle on reviewing, rating, and targeting books on library shelves. RatedBooks.org is now developing its own ‘new’ resource of reviews, The National Book Rating Index, [which will] put the reviews done by actual experts in the field beside those done by parents with an agenda. It attempts to elevate those biased reviews to the same level of professionalism and authority as those done by experts.”

Well Sourced, Dec. 6; BookRiot, Mar. 10
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Nick Tanzi writes: “When libraries encounter an emerging technology, we seek to identify both the threats and opportunities for our organizations. Artificial intelligence (AI) presents a significant communication challenge for libraries, requiring engagement with multiple audiences.” This post discusses the information about AI that libraries should be communicating to their staff, users, and vendors.

The Digital Librarian, Dec. 4
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Mike Masnick writes: “Companies that used to provide real value are now focused on extracting more value from users. There was a time when many people felt more fulfilled after using new innovations that helped them do new things. We’ve replaced that with engagement metrics, growth hacks, and AI slop. The tech industry spent the last decade optimizing for shareholder value and calling it innovation. A group of us decided to articulate what the alternative actually looks like. We’re calling it the Resonant Computing Manifesto, and it’s an attempt to reclaim what innovation should mean.”

Techdirt, Dec. 5
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Claire Woodcock writes: “As prices for streaming subscriptions continue to soar, people are turning to the unexpected last stronghold of physical media: the public library. Films and TV shows on streaming also become more vulnerable when companies merge. Some streaming platforms just outright remove their own intellectual property from their catalogs if the content is no longer deemed financially viable, well-performing, or is no longer a strategic priority. The data-driven recommendation systems streaming platforms use tend to favor newer, more easily categorized content, and are starting to warp our perceptions of what classic media exists and matters.”

404 Media, Dec. 3
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Annaliese Melvin writes: “As librarians, it is essential to highlight individuals with disabilities in our programs and our collections. However, it is also necessary to critically evaluate titles that are in your collection or that you are considering adding to the collection to ensure that they portray people with disabilities in an appropriate manner. Here is a list of ideas for evaluating books from several different sources and further resources for deeper research.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 6