Kelley Woolley poses with items from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance library collection

Bookend: From A to Zoo

June 3, 2024

“I’ve been a huge animal person my whole life,” Woolley says. Today, she oversees the library and archive for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), the nonprofit that runs the zoo and park. Her workplace is one of a handful of zoo libraries across the US that employs a full-time librarian. SDZWA’s 16,000-item library comprises … Continue reading Bookend: From A to Zoo


Participants at LifeWorks, a residential community for neurodiverse young adults, hold bags from Warren County (Ky.) Public Library (WCPL). WCPL recently opened a satellite branch at LifeWorks.

Meeting Neurodiverse Needs

March 1, 2024

To fill in service gaps exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Warren County (Ky.) Public Library (WCPL) opened four satellite libraries. These one-room, full-service satellites, housed by community partners, are meant to support populations that would otherwise struggle to visit a full-size branch because of socioeconomic, transportation, or other barriers. Last year, WCPL debuted a satellite … Continue reading Meeting Neurodiverse Needs


Anna Kresmer, holding a title from the B&O Railroad Museum research library, poses in front of a 19th century locomotive.

Bookend: Keeping Track

January 2, 2024

“It really [was] a seismic culture shift,” Kresmer says. “We call it the moonshot. We liken it to the internet, how it had that kind of change on people.” Kresmer analyzes and catalogs materials, supports exhibit development, and oversees BORM’s research library, home to more than 5,000 titles. Locomotives aside, BORM’s collection—including its archives, library, … Continue reading Bookend: Keeping Track


Philip Espe stands in a room with filing cabinets in the background. He is in a red US Marine Band uniform holding a stack of sheet music. Various pieces of music, memorability, and children's books are arranged on the table in front of him.

Bookend: Marching Full Circle

November 1, 2023

All signs pointed to Philip Espe joining the Marines. The 34-year-old comes from a long line of military family members. But he also had a calling in music. Espe studied clarinet performance, earned a master’s of music in orchestral conducting, and directed community and youth orchestras. He used those skills when serving as a youth … Continue reading Bookend: Marching Full Circle


Rachael Bild (left), teen services librarian at Skokie (Ill.) Public Library, and Analú María López, Indigenous studies librarian and assistant curator at the Newberry Library in Chicago, at “An Introduction to Organizing and Collective Bargaining in Libraries,” a session at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June 24.

The Reasons for Unions

June 25, 2023

At “An Introduction to Organizing and Collective Bargaining in Libraries,” a session at the American Library Association’s 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago on June 24, a panel of five Chicago-area library workers addressed these questions by sharing their experiences with organizing, winning recognition for their unions, and negotiating contracts at their respective libraries. … Continue reading The Reasons for Unions


Bookend: At the Heart of Medical History

June 1, 2023

“It’s not a traditional library,” says Michelle Rinard, referring to the museum’s Thorek Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection. As curator and manager of exhibitions and development, Rinard stewards the library—home to more than 1,000 volumes of medical books, journals, illustrations, letters, and manuscripts dating from the 16th century to the present. Among the collection’s rare … Continue reading Bookend: At the Heart of Medical History


Head curator Jenny Robb poses with collection items from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

Bookend: A Library of Laughs

May 1, 2023

“When I was growing up, we didn’t have graphic novels for a children’s audience,” says Robb, head curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (BICLM) at Ohio State University in Columbus. “But now we have all kinds of stories,” she says. “Autobiographical, fantasy, adventure, you name it. It’s incredible to see this explosion … Continue reading Bookend: A Library of Laughs


Javier Barrios, Hilary Swett, Lauren O’Connor at the Writers Guild Foundation’s Shavelson-Webb Library in Los Angeles

Bookend: Flipping the Script

March 1, 2023

The library’s ephemera provides an illuminating look at Tinseltown and a record of the guild and its members: a Cold War–era FBI file on blacklisted screenwriting couple Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol, two lifetime achievement awards given to seven-time Oscar recipient Billy Wilder, and screenwriter Linda Woolverton’s correspondence related to the development of Disney’s animated … Continue reading Bookend: Flipping the Script


Ladino singer-songwriter Sarah Aroeste explains how the migration of Sephardic Jews from Spain to Macedonia and Greece informed Ladino music. Aroeste performed June 27 at the Association of Jewish Libraries Conference 2022. Photo by Sally Stieglitz.

Saving Our Stories

July 1, 2022

Highlighting history In the session “Documenting History through Collections,” presenters discussed how collections tell—or exclude—stories from the past. Herb Calanes, retired director of Corpus Christi (Tex.) Public Libraries, shared his research on Sephardic Jews in northern Mexico (an area then known as Nueva España) following their 1492 expulsion from Spain. Although Sephardic families were longtime … Continue reading Saving Our Stories


The Sphere, a sculpture by Fritz Koenig, survived the collapse of the Twin Towers partially intact. The unrestored sculpture now sits in New York City's Liberty Park near the National September 11 Memorial Museum. (Photo: Michael Rieger/FEMA)

What Was Lost

September 1, 2021

Kathleen D. Roe, chief of archival services at New York State Archives in Albany at the time and now retired, says her team was prepared to deal with wet or dusty records or damaged collections. “We pretty quickly found out that either collections were pretty much okay because they were in a safe building that … Continue reading What Was Lost