Latest Library Links
-
M Roberts writes: “August 4 marked one year in my role at Vanderbilt. The time has flown by! One of my goals for the summer was to reflect on my first year as a librarian and to plan for the second year based on what I’d learned. Although I haven’t had as much time for that reflection as I’d hoped, for my final post as a First-Year Academic Librarian blogger, I wanted to share a few lessons learned that I’m planning to build on during the upcoming year.” -
Lauren Quinlan writes: “Between 1893 and 1919, Andrew Carnegie gave away $60 million of his fortune to fund 1,689 public libraries across the country. These ‘Carnegie libraries’ became cultural centers in towns big and small and were instrumental in constructing the blueprint of small-town America as we know it today. These towns were often so proud of these monuments of culture that they distributed postcards celebrating the new library. Many of these postcards, along with thousands of other postcards of libraries around the world, are housed at the ALA Archives.” -
Jeff Lang writes: “For too many of us, conversations about accessibility in scholarly communication begin and end with alt text. While text descriptions are an important accommodation, they represent just one element of a much broader challenge: ensuring that research can be understood by the widest possible audience. The goal is not simply to make content available, but to communicate ideas effectively across different abilities, contexts, and modes of engagement. This is the foundation of open science and a core tenet of universities, funders, scholarly societies and many others.” -
Austyn Szempruch writes: “With Florida’s homestead exemption amendment appearing poised to be voted into law in November, the Hernando County Board of County Commissioners are looking to be proactive in making the cuts necessary for staying under budget. The tentative 2027 budget was set to shutter West Hernando Library to save upwards of $500,000. Due in large part to more than a thousand emails, and the fervent opposition of more than 30 residents at the county’s special budget meeting August 6, the board unanimously voted 4–0 for a budget that included keeping the popular local library.” -
Lauren Busser writes: “Designing a new website is about more than just aesthetics. It’s also a time to consider what is and isn’t currently working for your audience. Analytics can help you make some suggestions, but engaging your audience in the design process can help uncover aspects of your website that you’ve never considered. Over the last two years, I have been engaging the community at Fairfield (Conn.) University to aid in redesigning the DiMenna-Nyselius Library website. These are a few exercises we conducted that got us talking about ways to make meaningful change.” -
Betsy Gomez writes: “ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has released two reports providing additional detailed insights from 2025, the year with the highest level of library censorship ever documented in the US. The reports are derived from additional analysis of the 2025 data that was announced during this year’s National Library Week. One report focuses on censorship activities that took place at public libraries, and the other examines censorship at school libraries. Each report includes an overview of significant changes and trends, data on threats to intellectual freedom at public libraries or schools, and details on the censorship of books.” -
Comic-Con International announced the winners of the 38th annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards July 24. Topping this year’s winners is Absolute Martian Manhunter (DC) by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez, which won Best Limited Series and Best Penciller/Inker and shared the prizes for Best Cover Artist (Rodriguez) and Best Lettering for Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. The only other title with multiple wins was This Place Kills Me (Abrams Fanfare), by Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux, which received awards for Best Publication for Teens and Best Writer. -
Slone Williams writes: “In April 2025, I presented a proposal to the Cobb (Ga.) Library Foundation to turn library brand loyalty into a sustainable funding mechanism. The result was the Cobb Library Shop, a permanent, virtual storefront designed to move beyond traditional fundraising and into the realm of modern e-commerce. Today, the shop features over 100 products with price ranges designed for broad community accessibility, maintaining a profit margin of 20% to 60% depending on the item. The shop achieved a full return on investment within the first 14 days. Every dollar earned in net revenue flows directly back into the community.” -
Larissa Kennedy writes: “Closures? Canceled. Reduced opening hours? Backtracked. £500,000 in job cuts? Blocked. These are the concrete wins of the Save Newham (England) Libraries campaign. Yes, there were petitions, banner-making workshops and town halls—hallmarks of countless campaigns. But what I’m truly interested in lies beneath that. The Newham community met the perfect storm of cuts and elections with their own cocktail of classic campaign techniques and novel ways to tap into shared memory, creativity, and duality.” -
Peter Derk writes: “If you haven’t already, I can just about guarantee you that you’ll get an offer to add an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to your website or catalog within the next couple years. I’m begging you to not utilize one. The person trying to sell you on the AI assistant is going to tell you that 90% of the calls, emails, and messages you get are very simple. But while 90% of your questions might be simple, that doesn’t mean they will be adequately answered by the AI assistant.” -
Trevor A. Dawes writes: “One of the great achievements of academic libraries over the past two decades has been making access to information feel effortless. The challenge with seamlessness, though, is that it can shade into invisibility. Invisibility has consequences. When budget conversations happen, the loudest voices in the room tend to belong to those who have most recently felt a loss, not those who have been benefiting all along without quite noticing.” -
David Lankes writes: “We are living in the early stages of an information shock caused by generative artificial intelligence (AI). Information shocks are rare, but historically transformative. We are currently living in the result of the last one at the end of World War II, when the sheer amount of information in the form of scientific and research data exploded, enabled by the introduction of the digital computer. One key result of such disruptions is the redefinition in the identity of what we now call information science and the tools information scientists and professionals develop and study.”
All links outside americanlibrariesmagazine.org are provided for informational purposes only. Questions about the content of any external site should be addressed to the administrator of that site.