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Arizona State University Library’s first Indigenous land acknowledgement is a five-sentence statement about the place that the library and the university have inhabited in Tempe for more than a century. “The statement represents ASU Library’s intentions to begin a healing process,” said Lorrie McAllister, associate university librarian for collections and strategy. “We need to acknowledge that ASU is an occupant on Indigenous lands and that we need to take active steps to forge relationships of reciprocity.”
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Jan van der Made writes: “Books written by prominent Hong Kong democracy activists have disappeared from the shelves of the territory’s public libraries. The books are ‘under review’ in another sign that Beijing is stepping up censorship and curbing free expression in the city. The move comes just days after Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on the territory.”
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At an online meeting on June 30 to which all British Library staff were invited, Chief Executive Roly Keating spoke of the urgent need for a “generational shift” to ensure that the library becomes truly representative in terms of its staff, collections, and the users it serves. Issues discussed in the meeting included the long-standing lack of minority representation within executive management and senior curatorial staff, along with the urgent and overdue need to reckon fully and openly with the colonial origins and legacy of some of the library’s historic collections and practices.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead announced on July 2 that he would not be part of a Free Library of Philadelphia author event on July 8. FLP’s Black employees posted an open letter to library leadership on June 26 stating that they are paid less than white coworkers, face routine racism, and have been asked to return to work without plans in place to keep them safe from the coronavirus.
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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States, announced on June 30 that it is adjusting its mission and grant-giving to emphasize programs that promote social justice. A new $5.3 million program will distribute collections of 500 books—“freedom libraries” of fiction, poetry, science, social thought, and more, curated by program leaders—to 1,000 prisons across the country.
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When it was published in 2016, Yaa Gyasi’s first novel Homegoing was lauded for its broad historical, geographical, and generational sweep, tracing a sprawling family tree back to two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana. Transcendent Kingdom (Knopf, September) also explores the Ghanaian-American immigrant experience, this time through the eyes of a neuroscientist named Gifty, who turns to a discipline called optogenetics to make sense of family tragedies and an upbringing immersed in the racism and evangelism of the American South
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Four libraries earned this year’s ALA) Presidential Citation for Innovative International Library Projects. Their projects included smartphone training for seniors, multicultural events, a country-wide reading festival, and programming to raise awareness of Indigenous populations and their perspectives and needs.
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Tracie D. Hall writes: “We are living in extraordinary times. A time when a pandemic has required that we distance ourselves from one another, and a time when the stand against racism and racial violence requires we come together. Just as there was an outcry across the field to keep our staff and communities safe and protected from COVID-19, so too are we obligated to decry racism. As library and information workers, our resistance in both fights requires resilience.”
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In an April 23 Public Library Association (PLA) webinar, “Public Libraries Respond to COVID-19: Strategies for Advancing Digital Equity Now,” three public librarians shared their experiences with everything from lending laptops and mobile hotspots to low-tech solutions like using sandwich boards and direct mail to advertise library services.
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ALA praised the July 2 introduction of the Library Stabilization Fund Act, introduced in both chambers by Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Representative Andy Levin (D-Mich.), respectively. The legislation would establish a $2 billion fund, administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to address financial losses and bolster library services, with priority to the hardest-hit communities (view ALA summary).
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In votes on Tuesday, June 23, and Saturday, June 27, the ALA Council voted to approve Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures as a new ALA division beginning September 1, 2020, and to dissolve the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, the Library Information Technology Association, and the Library Leadership and Management Association, effective August 31, 2020. The vote to form Core was 163 to 1. For more information on Core, visit core.ala.org/.
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