June 2025

Annual Conference Preview; the Liberty Bell

Features & Trends

2025 Annual Conference Preview

By Alison Marcotte

ALA returns to this historic and vibrant city for its 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition, to be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center June 26–30. As the Association—and the nation—approach monumental anniversaries, library workers will reaffirm and celebrate what it means to run institutions foundational to democracy, equity, and civic discourse. Many sessions in this year’s … Continue reading 2025 Annual Conference Preview →

Revolutionary Eats

By Reid Bramblett

Even COVID-19 couldn’t slow our culinary roll, and while we lost many old favorites and promising new spots to the pandemic, we quickly bounced back—and back onto the lists of internationally acclaimed restaurants—all somehow without losing our street cred for comfort food. As an Annual Conference attendee, you’re doubly lucky to be stationed at the … Continue reading Revolutionary Eats →

Banning the Book Bans

By Jeremy Gantz

That relief has been a long time coming for Hickson, who retired late last year from her job as media specialist at North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, New Jersey. Just three years earlier, she had been called a pedophile and a pornographer at a public school-board meeting by a group of parents demanding to … Continue reading Banning the Book Bans →

Going to Press
By Web Behrens
Slide into the Library
By Rosie Newmark
Stopping the Spread
By Chris Coward and Jin Ha Lee
Newsmaker: Grace Lin
By Julia Smith
By the Numbers: Summer Reading
By Megan Bennett
Bookend: Eat and Greet
By Terra Dankowski

Columnists

Honoring Spirits
By Cindy Hohl
The Next Chapter
By Leslie Burger
Inclusive and Affirming
By Allison Frick and Sara DeSabato
Press 1 for Engagement
By Benjamin Stokes and David Quick
Community Archives, Collective Power
By Reanna Esmail

24h

Serra Sowers writes: “Jen Miller, librarian at Northern Guilford Middle School in Greensboro, North Carolina, is turning the page on lost book fees thanks to donations from a community of book lovers. With the end of the school year just days away, it’s a race against time to get books back on the shelves and clear student debt. When her social media account went viral, she started the Book Return Game—using her platform to keep tally of overdue copies and mobilize followers to help her replace books that never came back. Since then, she’s surprised schools locally and across the country with books.”

WXII-TV (Winston-Salem, N.C.), May 31
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Felicity Dachel writes: “A Minnesota school district is doing away with a book ban, settling a lawsuit that argued the ban was unlawful. The suit was brought against St. Francis Area Schools by Education Minnesota on behalf of eight students, all of whom have parents working as teachers across St. Francis schools.” The settlement requires the district to replace a policy that required selections align with the now-defunct Moms For Library–affiliated website booklooks.org with one that guarantees the input of qualified media specialists and follows a 2024 Minnesota state law that prohibits libraries and schools from banning books.

KARE-TV (Minneapolis), June 10; Words and Money, June 11; The Minnesota Daily, June 23, 2024
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Elissa Malespina writes: “In our seven-part series, we’ve explored AI’s role in personalized learning, assessments, research, libraries, and ethical considerations. Now, we focus on how educators and librarians can navigate the evolving AI landscape and ensure responsible integration. Librarians are essential in the AI-driven knowledge ecosystem, ensuring that students and patrons navigate AI-generated information critically and ethically.”

The AI School Librarian, June 9
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Stephen Town writes: “Little research exists about how library leaders develop their ethical identity, how they manage their work to facilitate library excellence, and how they overcome the difficult and complex problems arising in the academic context. This study provides evidence and a unique perspective toward answering these questions, based on narratives from research library leaders demonstrating the deployment of a range of virtues to improve the character and performance of their libraries.”

portal: Libraries and the Academy, vol. 25 no. 3, July
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Robert Costa writes: “On May 8, Carla Hayden received an email, one she thought may have been fake. It began simply, ‘Carla,’ and stated: ‘On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately.’ Hayden said there had never been any issues between her and President Trump. Hayden’s firing is seen by many as part of a broader story.”

CBS News Sunday Morning, June 8
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Chelsey Roos writes: “Families with students in special education may not get all the support they need from public libraries in the lead up to a new school year. Navigating the special education system is challenging. There are individualized education programs (IEPs), 504s, evaluations, and tons of documentation, and families new to the IEP system can find it especially overwhelming. But what if the library could build a program that connected parents and caregivers with the expert advice and support they needed before they begin another adventure through special education?”

ALSC Blog, June 7
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Peter Broadwell and Lindsay King write: “Facing a digital accessibility compliance deadline, we wondered whether and how AI tools could be implemented to generate alt text for existing online images within the Stanford Libraries’ digital exhibits. New large language models called ‘vision language’ models have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between text and image. Could we bring vision language models’ understanding of the images together with existing metadata to create alt text that would be useful to patrons who need it?”

Choice: LibTech Insights, June 9