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The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting FY21 proposals for National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-L) and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program (LB21). Applicants have through October 2, 2020, to submit their two-page preliminary proposals. National Leadership Grants for Libraries support projects that enhance the quality of library and archives services nationwide by advancing theory and practice. The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program invests in developing a diverse workforce of librarians to better meet the changing learning and information needs of the American public.
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Julius C. Jefferson Jr. writes: “As I assume leadership of ALA, we are confronting an unprecedented global pandemic, the likes of which has not been seen since 1918; an economic collapse, including the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression; unjust police killings of unarmed Black people and domestic civil protest not seen since the Sixties; and, like 1968, another pivotal election year. Racial animus and a pandemic make a perfect storm for a revolution, and we are in uncharted territory.”
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Agostino Ramelli, a 16th-century Italian military engineer, designed many Renaissance-era contraptions, including a geared wooden wheel with angled shelves, which allowed users to read several books at once. A group of undergraduate engineering students at Rochester Institute of Technology built two of them—one resides in the Melbert B. Cary Jr. Graphic Arts Collection at RIT’s Wallace Library, and the other at University of Rochester’s Rossell Hope Robbins Library. Each weighs about 600 pounds and has room for eight books.
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The Panorama Project, in collaboration with the Washington Post, has released a customized version of its Panorama Picks to spotlight a broader range of titles of interest to readers that are similar to the most frequently recommended titles on antiracist reading lists. The nine regional lists include a total of 42 unique titles published between 2003–2020, all related to civil rights, and race and ethnic relations—reflecting the diverse interests and perspectives of readers in each region.
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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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