policies Archives | American Libraries Magazine

Council III: Update on Filling President-Elect Vacancy

By Megan Bennett | July 2, 2024

Council approved the meeting’s agenda (CD#8.6), and Drabinski announced memorial resolutions for: Joseph John Harzbecker, Jr. (M#7) Nancy E. Gwinn (M#8) Karen Crane (M#9) William Noel (M#10) Carole J. McCollough (M#11) Phyllis Jean Fisher (M#12) Linda Anne Dougherty (M#13) Delaine Andree Eastin(M#14) Jodie Gambill (M#15) Carolyn V. Neal (M#16) Marcia Goodfellow Schatz (M#17) James (Jim) … Continue reading Council III: Update on Filling President-Elect Vacancy →

Presenter Candice Benjes-Small at a podium gesturing as she speaks

It’s Not Okay

By Sanhita SinhaRoy | July 2, 2024

Benjes-Small addressed dozens of attendees at “‘It’s Not Okay. It’s Not Normal’: Sexual Harassment of Librarians and Implications for the Field,” a July 1 program held at the American Library Association’s 2024 Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego. Spurred by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, Benjes-Small and Jennifer Resor-Whicker, university librarian at Radford (Va.) … Continue reading It’s Not Okay →

Behavior Policy Reboot

By Adrienne Doman Calkins | March 1, 2023

In preparing to welcome our patrons back amid a statewide mask mandate, library leadership realized our existing behavior policy was inadequate. Our policy lacked the nuances needed during a pandemic and didn’t cover our expanded virtual services. It needed more consistent and empathetic oversight when we knew our community was dealing with polarized and heightened … Continue reading Behavior Policy Reboot →

What Does Diversity Mean?

By Andrea Jamison | May 3, 2021

My study aimed to determine whether sampled policies had manifest messages of diversity and the degree of congruence between these policies and ALA’s “Diversity in Collection Development: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights,” adopted in 1982 and last amended in 2019. Given that diversity is one of the core values of librarianship and … Continue reading What Does Diversity Mean? →

A Patron Wants to Print a Gun: Now What?

By Timothy Inklebarger | August 9, 2018

The incident and the recent efforts by the Texas-based nonprofit Defense Distributed to publish blueprints for manufacturing 3D-printed guns has libraries across the country working to establish policies to block individuals from printing the weapons. On July 31, US District Court Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order to block Defense Distributed from publishing … Continue reading A Patron Wants to Print a Gun: Now What? →

Melvil Dewey with the 1888 class of the School of Library Economy at Columbia College, New York City. Photo: ALA Archives

Bringing Harassment Out of the History Books

By Anne Ford | June 1, 2018

Though his moniker is absent from modern headlines, there’s one harasser whose name is known to librarians everywhere: Melvil Dewey. In the #MeToo era, how should the library profession handle Dewey’s legacy, tainted as it is by sexism and racism? Dewey—who was, of course, a founder of the American Library Association (ALA) and the inventor … Continue reading Bringing Harassment Out of the History Books →

An Overdue Discussion

By Phil Morehart | June 1, 2018

Point: Jenny Paxson, readers’ advisory librarian, Webster (N.Y.) Public Library Does your library charge fines? We do charge fines at Webster Public Library. How are the collected funds used? We use the funds—$71,000 collected from fines annually—as part of our operating budget. Without them it would be difficult to run the library. Do fines discourage … Continue reading An Overdue Discussion →

Better Communication, Safer Facilities

By Steve Albrecht | September 14, 2015

Safety and security are everyone’s jobs. This includes the library director, every department head, every supervisor, all full- and part-time employees, library board members, Friends of the library members, elected officials, and even patrons—who can and should tell us about safety or security concerns when using our branches. Safety and security themes Facility safety and … Continue reading Better Communication, Safer Facilities →

Latest Library Links

1d

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
1d

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
2d

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
2d

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
3d

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
3d

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
4d

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