I am a school librarian. My community supports the school library, and students are active library users. At the same time, rhetoric from that legislative session and in the years since have shown me that the public has limited knowledge about how we choose books and select programming to make the library a place students … Continue reading Walk with a Purpose
We are looking for examples of innovative library architecture that address patrons’ needs in unique and effective ways. We are especially interested in submissions from libraries that are approaching design with sustainability, accessibility, and smaller budgets in mind. Partial renovations, projects under $1 million, and school libraries are encouraged to apply. To be eligible, projects … Continue reading Submissions Open for Library Design Showcase
New Zealand Two locations of Thames-Coromandel District Libraries closed temporarily on November 19 because of concerns that play sand used in crafts at the library may have been contaminated with asbestos, Radio New Zealand reported. Multiple brands of play sand have been recalled, and investigations are ongoing, according to New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation, … Continue reading Global Reach: Anime Site Banned in Russia
I am a school librarian. My community supports the school library, and students are active library users. At the same time, rhetoric from the 2023 legislative session and in the years since have shown me that the public has limited knowledge about how we choose books and select programming to make the library a place … Continue reading Walk with a Purpose
Welcome to the 2025 Library Design Showcase, American Libraries’ annual celebration of new and renovated libraries throughout North America. Today’s libraries are places where people from diverse communities can connect, learn, and grow. The institutions featured in this year’s showcase embody the library’s role as a true third space while honoring local histories and cultures … Continue reading 2025 Library Design Showcase
The Librarians (2025) Director: Kim A. Snyder thelibrariansfilm.com Running time: 92 minutes About: The Librarians follows librarians in Florida and Texas as they work to protect children’s rights to access books from challenges like Texas’s Krause List, which targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQ+ stories and has triggered book bans across the … Continue reading The Stacks on Screen
Regular appropriations Most years, to avert a government shutdown, Congress passes 12 separate spending bills (or a temporary continuing resolution that continues the prior year’s budget) by the start of the next fiscal year on October 1. This work historically starts after the president submits a budget request, which appropriators typically largely reject. As expected, … Continue reading Checking In on Federal Library Funding
“I propose it as: Let me do some of your work for you,” explained Podmore, librarian at Clark High School. They shared history programs that have worked for them in “Hyping History: Highlighting History in a High School Library,” a June 29 session at the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. … Continue reading A Home for History
In “Soft Censorship: How to Recognize It and How to Combat It,” a session on June 29 at the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia, Cooper explored how external pressures, policy choices, and personal biases can play into self-censorship and ways that school library workers can fight for a collection that … Continue reading Soft Censorship’s Pointy Edges
Theresa Chmara, general counsel for ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation, and Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, dove into some of these cases and the legal arguments underlying them at “Censorship in the Courts: Current Litigation throughout the United States,” a session of ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. “One … Continue reading The Case for Intellectual Freedom
A panel of librarians and authors dug into this slice of the broader fight against censorship at “Free Children Read Freely: Banned Books in Story Times for Young Children,” a June 28 session of the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. Pat Scales, a retired school librarian and author of … Continue reading Free Children Read Freely
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
