Jason, Dan

In February, after being alerted to the issue by a group of Massachusetts librarians, Library Freedom Project and Library Futures released a joint statement demanding accountability from Midwest Tape President and Hoopla founder Jeff Jankowski about hateful content and disinformation regarding COVID-19, the Holocaust, LGBTQIA+ people, and other topics on his company’s massively popular electronic content platform for public libraries. Six months later, there is still a great deal of disinformation to be found in Hoopla’s collection on topics ranging from LGBTQIA+ experiences to reproductive health to vaccines.

From more intuitive searching to digital circulation of formerly print-only reference materials and to more materials on marginalized populations, trends in reference reflect library users’ changing needs and expectations.

The appeal of podcasts is easy to understand—they’re free, easy to sample and subscribe to, and there are now so many that it’s possible to find a show to match any interest and satisfy any reader.