Editor's Letter Archives | American Libraries Magazine

How We “Do” Annual Conference

Laurie D. Borman | July 30, 2014

ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition can be quite a production, especially in Las Vegas. For the American Libraries team, this past conference involved four editors reporting, blogging, tweeting, and posting on Facebook, with five freelance librarian writers reporting. Two editors hung back in the Chicago office to accept our on-the-spot work, editing for style, resizing … Continue reading How We “Do” Annual Conference →

Don’t Let It Stay in Vegas

By Laurie D. Borman | June 2, 2014

Have you watched American Libraries Live, our free, streaming library program? If you want to sample it, we have an excerpt in our June issue from our mobile technology in the library program. Hosted by Heather Moorefield-Lang, education and applied social sciences librarian for Virginia Tech, the expert panel included Bohyun Kim, digital access librarian … Continue reading Don’t Let It Stay in Vegas →

Now Trending: Tech and People News

By Laurie D. Borman | May 5, 2014

This issue (May 2014) we invited Marshall Breeding to give us a status and trends report on strategic products of the library technology industry. His detailed investigation begins here. He has been reporting on technology in the industry for more than a decade and regularly provides updates for us and on his own site. Breeding … Continue reading Now Trending: Tech and People News →

Emerging Leaders Poised for Action

By Laurie D. Borman | March 3, 2014

What’s it like to be selected an Emerging Leader? Find out about this year’s class of 56 up-and-coming librarians in our cover story. Once again this year we’re featuring each Emerging Leader on trading cards, which will be available at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas. Not only are these leaders … Continue reading Emerging Leaders Poised for Action →

Fear of Flying

By Laurie D. Borman | January 8, 2014

Flying to Philly is the only thing I don’t look forward to when it comes to Midwinter. Flying is not pleasant business. The indignity of airport screening, waiting to board an overcrowded plane, jamming my carryon into the overstuffed bins. The sole redeeming feature of air travel is my 15 minutes of quiet reading because … Continue reading Fear of Flying →

Scoring Points with Sports Fans and History Fans

By Laurie D. Borman | November 4, 2013

On a clear autumn day, I sit on my balcony reading a book when I hear a muffled cheer and see fireworks erupt. Moments later, a slightly delayed TV signal repeats the same sounds from the Chicago Bears game at nearby Soldier Field. All day, people in orange and blue shirts parade down the streets, … Continue reading Scoring Points with Sports Fans and History Fans →

Dreamy Reading Rooms and More

By Laurie D. Borman | October 14, 2013

I’ve never been to Ketchikan, Alaska, but I wouldn’t mind being there right now, contemplating the amazing vista of woods and mountains from the Ketchikan Public Library windows. I’d be happy to check out the reading room view from the Spartanburg County (S.C.) Public Libraries’ Middle Tyger branch, too, watching the river tumbling over rocks. These … Continue reading Dreamy Reading Rooms and More →

Moving Along

By Laurie D. Borman | September 9, 2013

Each year, ALA Annual Conference hovers like a beautiful and tempting hot air balloon, ready to take us off on an amazing ride, filled with excitement, ideas, and a chance to see old friends and meet new ones. I observed ALA Council sessions this year, met with advertisers, and perused new products in the Exhibit … Continue reading Moving Along →

Chicago, My Kind of Town

By Laurie D. Borman | June 26, 2013

One of the best perks of working at ALA is picking up “gently used” advance reading copies (or ARCs, as they’re known) of yet-to-be-published books. Every few weeks, Booklist editors share with the ALA staff piles of bound galleys and ARCs that have been considered for review by the magazine. When these books arrive in … Continue reading Chicago, My Kind of Town →

Exploring National Parks, Leveraging Social Media

By Laurie D. Borman | May 16, 2013

Dreaming of a National Park vacation? If so, there just might be a special library for you to visit between hiking and geyser viewing. Author and California State University Stanislaus librarian Maryann Hight volunteers at LeConte Memorial Lodge Library in Yosemite. She researched several unique libraries in national parks and found it was interesting and … Continue reading Exploring National Parks, Leveraging Social Media →

Something Old, Something New

By Laurie D. Borman | April 10, 2013

Seven years ago, then–ALA President Leslie Burger helped launch the Emerging Leaders program with 117 participants and 23 projects. This year’s class of 55 Emerging Leaders met at Midwinter in Seattle, and will present their projects at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. Open to librarians and support staff who are new to the profession, … Continue reading Something Old, Something New →

Engaging Our Communities

By Laurie D. Borman | February 20, 2013

Where’s Johnny Depp? In 2013, you can find him in American Libraries, as part of our annual Year in Review. He started his own book imprint last year, with the inaugural title—about Bob Dylan—slated to appear in 2015. There’s a lot more to our 2012 retrospective than celebrity sightings, though. Check out surprising Pew Research … Continue reading Engaging Our Communities →

Latest Library Links

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Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
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Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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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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