Baker & Taylor and Library Ideas have announced an exclusive partnership that will see Baker & Taylor distributing Library Ideas’ VOX and IR [Immersive Reality] Books to libraries and schools. VOX Books are hardcover print fiction, nonfiction, and picture books with permanently attached VOX Readers that transform the titles into all-in-one read-along audiobooks. IR Books are hardcover nonfiction print books featuring virtual reality and augmented reality elements.
On Saturday, March 16, a standing-room-only crowd—especially notable for one of the first warm days of spring and the day of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade—packed into Queens Public Library's (QPL) Queensbridge Tech Lab, a makerspace in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. Drawing them to the space was the Queens Name Explorer Edit-a-Thon, hosted by QPL’s Memory Project, Wikimedia NYC, OpenStreetMap US, and Urban Archive.
Libraries are incorporating collaboration, creativity, and a steadfast commitment to create accessible and inclusive spaces. Also, LJ looks at EBSCO's academic ebook accessibility findings.
On March 14, the American Library Association (ALA) released its most recent book challenge data for 2023. According to ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which tracks challenges and acts of censorship in public schools and libraries across the United States, the number of targeted titles rose 65 percent from 2022—once again, the highest levels ever documented by ALA. In public libraries, numbers increased 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase. Challenged titles featuring the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.
In the past two years of semi-occupation and warfare, public libraries in Ukraine have established themselves as actors in state defense. Among the first institutions to reopen after the war began, libraries continue to operate despite a shortage of funds and staff, and in the areas close to the front line, continuing shelling.
UPDATE: The ALA-SLI National Climate Action Strategy Working Group will hold an open forum to introduce a draft Climate Action Strategy for Libraries to ALA members, and to solicit feedback from the field, on Thursday, March 14. All library workers and trustees are invited.
The American Library Association and the Sustainable Libraries Initiative have teamed up to create a National Climate Action Strategy for Libraries to be released later this year. Both organizations have been working to raise awareness in the profession for the need to act with urgency to create communities of practice that can help library workers understand the issue and that can provide the practical approaches to manage the predicted impacts and systemic nature of climate change.
Ry Moran, associate university librarian for reconciliation at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, was named a 2023 Library Journal Mover & Shaker for his work bringing the university’s reconciliation department to fruition and developing a podcast called Taapwaywin, which means “truth” or “speaking truthfully” in Michif, a language of the Métis people. LJ recently touched base with Moran to learn more about his work with truth and reconciliation, and how the podcast is going.
To help break down the relevant library issues in this election year, LJ convened a roundtable of experts including John Chrastka of EveryLibrary; Nick Grove of Meridian Library District, ID; Jason Kucsma of Toledo Lucas County Public Library, OH; and Representative Ashley Hudson from the Arkansas House of Representatives. They covered everything from voter engagement strategies for libraries on the ballot to book ban advocacy in challenging districts to engaging the electorate in an important presidential election year.
In January 2020, Crosby Kemper III stepped into a four-year term as director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). At the time, one of the main concerns at IMLS was then-President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to zero out the agency’s budget; less than two months later, libraries across the country would shut down for COVID-19 safety precautions, and, soon after they began to reopen, a surge of intellectual freedom challenges would escalate. Kemper’s term ends on March 8; LJ caught up with him to hear his take on the past four years and find out what’s next.
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