All 91 books in Oprah's Book Club | American Libraries Magazine

Since 1996, Oprah’s Book Club has included meticulously selected books—each chosen by the media mogul herself—that often become bestsellers. Now, in partnership with Apple, Oprah’s Book Club is experiencing a new chapter. Her most recent pick is Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, a history of the caste system in the US, which Oprah called the most “essential” Book Club pick yet. Look back at all 91 selections in this slideshow.

Oprah Daily, Aug. 3

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Rick Anderson writes: “‘Are libraries neutral?’ This is the question that was posed at the ALA Midwinter President’s Program in Denver a few years ago. A diverse panel of librarians was asked to take turns responding to that question, with results that were sometimes very interesting and sometimes fairly predictable. There was a very big problem, though, and it lay in the organizing question itself. One can’t really answer it meaningfully without first asking a clarifying question: ‘neutral’ about what? In some ways neutrality in the library is clearly a very bad idea—and yet in some important ways, it’s absolutely essential.”

The Scholarly Kitchen, Sept. 3
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JoelYana Kunichoff writes: “Joel D. Valdez Main Library in Tucson, Arizona, could close for downsizing renovations in December, with a proposed plan to reopen in a different location at a future date. The change, along with the closure of more branches and the transition of one to a library administrative building, are part of a series of proposals for the Pima County Public Library system. The proposed changes are necessary because of chronic staffing shortages and the financial weight of some of the library locations, as well as strains faced by the system in responding to community needs like health care, shelter, and food, a draft report said.”

Arizona Luminaria, Aug. 27
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Ian Hodgson writes: “A coalition of the nation’s largest book publishers filed a lawsuit August 29 against Florida education officials alleging that a 2023 Florida law that increased scrutiny of school library books unconstitutionally limits free speech. The law requires school librarians to remove books that contain ‘sexual conduct,’ with no consideration of the work’s educational or artistic merit, according to the complaint. Once a parent or resident of the county objects to the book, it must be removed within five days and remain unavailable until the objection is resolved.”

Tampa Bay Times, Aug. 29
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Louise Hoffman Broach writes: “Moms for Liberty and the Rev. Jacob Marchitell asked New York State Supreme Court in Wayne County August 23 for an injunction that would remove five books from the Clyde-Savannah (N.Y.) Junior-Senior High School library. The school board followed its policy and convened a committee to review the books when Marchitell first brought his complaint in the spring of 2023. After a review, the committee unanimously determined the material was not pornographic.” Following another complaint from Maritchell, the board removed the books in August 2023, but returned them the following month, and denied an appeal in April 2024.

Finger Lakes Times (Geneva, N.Y.), Aug. 27
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ALA will present a free webinar for library workers about Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on October 2. The webinar will explain how to obtain student loan relief from the PSLF program, which is administered by the US Department of Education. PSLF will forgive the federal student loan balances with qualifying employment history at a government or non-profit organization, such as many school, academic, public, and special libraries. To date, nearly 1 million public servants—including qualifying library workers—have received more than $69 billion in loan forgiveness under PSLF.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, Aug. 29; American Libraries feature, June 2022
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“We have been grappling with questions about the impact of library public programs since 2014. That is when we and other colleagues at ALA and Knology (a social science research organization) launched the National Impact of Library Public Programs Assessment (NILPPA). Phase 1 (2017–2019) yielded a conceptual framework for categorizing public programs offered by US libraries and the first-ever competency framework for designing and running public programs at libraries.” Phase 2 (2021–present) focuses on assessing work with partner organizations and generating sets of behaviors and events that could serve as indicators of impact.

Programming Librarian, Aug. 22
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Alvin Wanjala writes: “A small language model (SLM) is a type of artificial intelligence model with fewer parameters. Like [the large language models that power applications like ChatGPT], SLMs can generate text and perform other tasks. However, SLMs use fewer datasets for training, have fewer parameters, and require less computational power to train and run. For most use cases, SLMs are better positioned to become the mainstream models used by companies and consumers to perform a wide variety of tasks.”

MakeUseOf, Sept. 2

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