chmara-file

June 29, 2025 465 × 310 The Case for Intellectual Freedom

Theresa Chmara, general counsel of the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation, at LibLearnX in January 2020. Photo: Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries

Latest Library Links

15h

Jennifer A. Keach, Jenne M. Klotz, and Galen J. Talis write: “Library leaders at all levels are well-placed to create opportunities for joy in their organizations and to model how to do so with nuance and balance. Toward that end, we explored the multidisciplinary literature and compiled an annotated bibliography for leaders who wish to support joy within groups, organizational change agents who want to create equitable conditions for joy in the workplace, and readers seeking to develop their personal practice of joy. We provide a guide exploring five themes: defining joy, finding individual joy, work and organizational joy, empowering change with joy, and joy-adjacent emotions.”

Library Leadership and Management, June 30
17h

David Vickers Loertscher and Michelle Young write: “This tutorial introduces school librarians to the use of data visualization tools for documenting and communicating their impact on teaching and learning. By leveraging accessible platforms like Google Forms and Google Sheets, the authors demonstrate how librarians can build dashboards and real-time visual reports to showcase co-teaching, instructional collaboration, and student engagement. The tutorial features real-world examples, highlights common data sources already available to librarians, and argues that dynamic visual storytelling is a powerful alternative to traditional library statistics.”

Learning Hub, June 25
20h

Robin Camille Davis writes: “It wasn’t until seven years into my career as a user experience librarian that I realized I’d been accidentally excluding a sizable segment of users from my user research. Interviews, surveys, and usability studies favor people who are gifted at oral and written communication. What about people who are more gifted at visual communication? In the context of user research, this participatory design invites participants to design their own response to a given prompt.”

Choice 360 LibTech Insights, June 30
23h

Stories from communities nationwide come to life on ALA’s new Show Up for Our Libraries interactive site map. The stories illustrate the real-life consequences of potential funding cuts to rural, research, city, state, and university library programs and, in turn, to the hundreds of millions of library users across the country. Services such as summer reading programs, telehealth resources, interlibrary loan, and ebooks have all been affected. ALA collected the stories in conversation with patrons, library professionals, and advocates across the country to better understand the impact of federal funding cuts since the President’s executive order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, June 25
2d

On June 27, the Supreme Court upheld the Universal Service Fund, which funds the E-Rate program. ALA issued a statement regarding the ruling that reads, in part, “The ALA applauds the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision to uphold the Universal Service Fund. The system of telecommunications subsidies administered by the Federal Communications Commission includes the E-Rate program, which provides libraries and schools billions of dollars each year for broadband access and connectivity. More than half of all public libraries apply for funding to subsidize the cost of internet connectivity through E-Rate each year.”

AL: The Scoop, June 27
2d

On June 27, ALA announced its new executive director, Daniel J. Montgomery. ALA’s announcement read, in part, “Montgomery has worked on behalf of public education and the rights of workers for more than two decades. He was elected to a three-year term as president of the 103,000-member Illinois Federation of Teachers in October 2010 and has been unanimously reelected every three years since then. He will start at ALA on November 10. The steering committee chose Montgomery because of his commitment to public institutions, his comfort working across diverse and difficult political situations, his service to both cities and rural areas, and his experience managing a complex, member-driven organization.”
6d

Oliver Moody writes: “In the €100 million Oodi library, which looms over central Helsinki like a cruise ship from the future, robots called Tatu, Patu, and Veera trundle back and forth between the shelves and the reading rooms. Against this backdrop, foreign visitors might be surprised to see how many children and teenagers are engaged in an almost unsettlingly archaic activity: reading and borrowing books. In the age of TikTok, Netflix, and Candy Crush, it is not just Finland’s public libraries that are booming, but also demand for their physical paperbacks and hardbacks.”

The Times (London), June 20

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