Carnegie Medals Archives | American Libraries Magazine

Covers of the six books on the shortlist for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in fiction and nonfiction: Martyr!, James, Cinema Love, A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, and Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV

ALA Announces 2025 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

November 13, 2024

The two medal winners will be announced at 10:30 a.m. Mountain on January 26, 2025, at the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) Book and Media Awards’ virtual event, held during ALA’s LibLearnX conference in Phoenix. The 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include: Fiction Martyr! (Knopf) By Kaveh … Continue reading ALA Announces 2025 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2024 winners: The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters and We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian.

2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced

January 20, 2024

The selections were announced during ALA’s 2024 LibLearnX conference in Baltimore January 20 at the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Book and Media Awards event, sponsored by NoveList. In The Berry Pickers, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is picking summer blueberries in 1962 Maine when their youngest child, 4-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her 6-year-old brother, Joe, … Continue reading 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced →

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in fiction and nonfiction 2024 shortlist, with covers of The Berry Pickers, Denison Avenue, Let Us Descend, The Great Displacement, The Talk, and We Were Once a Family

ALA Unveils 2024 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

November 14, 2023

The two medal winners will be announced at 9:45 a.m. Eastern on January 20, 2024, during the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Book and Media Awards virtual event, held during ALA’s LibLearnX conference in Baltimore. The 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include: Fiction The Berry Pickers, by … Continue reading ALA Unveils 2024 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

Book cover art for the 2023 Carnegie Medal winners

2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced

January 29, 2023

The selections were announced during ALA’s 2023 LibLearnX conference January 29 at the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Book and Media Awards event, sponsored by NoveList. Otsuka’s The Swimmers takes place in an underground pool, and a collective “we” reports the comings and goings of the titular swimmers—regulars who have established their schedules, lanes, … Continue reading 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced →

Newsmaker: Rebecca Makkai

By Donna Seaman | January 3, 2023

Your first novel, The Borrower, features a children’s librarian and a bright, book-loving 10-year-old. What are your thoughts on the current spate of book challenges in libraries? I’m always so flummoxed by the book-banning discussion because, first of all, what does someone think is going to happen when they try to ban a book? It … Continue reading Newsmaker: Rebecca Makkai →

ALA Unveils 2023 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

November 15, 2022

The 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include: Fiction Greenland, by David Santos Donaldson (Amistad). While working on a historical novel about British author E. M. Forster’s Egyptian lover, Mohammed el Adl, writer Kip confronts his own trauma and alienation. Donaldson delivers a psychologically acute portrayal of a queer Black … Continue reading ALA Unveils 2023 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced

January 23, 2022

The American Library Association (ALA) has selected The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (Little, Brown and Company) by Tom Lin as the winner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (Random House) by Hanif Abdurraqib as the winner of the … Continue reading 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced →

ALA Unveils 2022 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

November 8, 2021

The 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include the following: Fiction The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade (W. W. Norton & Company). Amadeo Padilla filled the role of Jesus during the re-creation of the Crucifixion as part of Holy Week. He also has heavy burdens to bear in his real … Continue reading ALA Unveils 2022 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

Colson Whitehead (Black man with braided hair pulled back, wearing leather jacket, looking just up and to the right)

Newsmaker: Colson Whitehead

By Donna Seaman | September 1, 2021

Will the experience of having The Underground Railroad turned into a 10-episode miniseries for Amazon affect your writing? No, I don’t think it will affect my writing. It felt very separate. They optioned it five years ago, so it was always on the backburner, and occasionally I would talk to Barry Jenkins, the director, but … Continue reading Newsmaker: Colson Whitehead →

2021 Carnegie Medal Winners for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced

February 4, 2021

The selections were announced February 4 at the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Book and Media Awards virtual event, sponsored by NoveList. McBride’s novel takes place in a vibrant, multicultural 1969 Brooklyn neighborhood, and introduces readers to Cuffy “Sportcoat” Lambkin, the titular deacon and least likely of heroes. When Sportcoat shoots Deems Clemens, the … Continue reading 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal Winners Announced →

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2021 Shortlist

ALA Unveils 2021 Carnegie Medals Shortlist

November 17, 2020

The 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles include: Fiction A Burning, by Megha Majumdar (Alfred A. Knopf). After witnessing a gruesome train station attack during her walk home to the slums, Jivan responds to a Facebook post. Days later, she has been beaten, jailed, and accused of terrorism. Majumdar’s debut … Continue reading ALA Unveils 2021 Carnegie Medals Shortlist →

Longlist for 2021 Carnegie Medals Announced

October 26, 2020

“This was unquestionably a challenging year for all the obvious reasons,” said 2021 Selection Committee Chair Bill Kelly in an October 26 statement. “And yet, in the end, reading proved to be just the balm one needs to sustain us, to give hope and strength and resilience in the face of an oppressively uncertain future. … Continue reading Longlist for 2021 Carnegie Medals Announced →

Latest Library Links

5h

Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
10h

Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
1d

Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
1d

Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
2d

Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
2d

Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
3d

Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9

View more Latest Library Links