Technology

The Greater Columbus Convention Center’s exhibit halls were full of activity during this month’s Public Library Association (PLA) 2024 conference in Ohio. Here are a few of the topics LJ had the opportunity to discuss in person at the show, as well as other vendor announcements within recent weeks.

Michael Reynolds, editor-in-chief of Europa Editions, saw libraries and publishers as star-crossed lovers that have been kept far apart for as long as possible, finally meeting in one room in Columbus, OH, at IndieLib, a conference hosted by the Independent Publishers Caucus and the Digital Public Library of America on April 2.

Library entertainment platforms offering movies and TV shows gain on commercial streaming services as consumers balk at subscription costs. With “subscription fatigue” on the rise, libraries are seeing a growing popularity in streaming services—and deciding how best to provide them.

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.

Unite Against Book Bans—the national initiative launched by the American Library Association (ALA) in 2022 to help readers, libraries, publishers, and other institutions in the fight against censorship—this week launched a free collection of book résumés “to support librarians, educators, parents, students, and other community advocates in their efforts to keep frequently challenged books on shelves.” Separately, OverDrive subsidiary TeachingBooks last month announced the launch of a new Book Résumés Toolkit at ALA’s LibLearnX conference in Baltimore.

On January 22, the Library of Congress (LOC) announced the launch of the COVID-19 Archive Activation website, an online tool created in collaboration with national oral history nonprofit StoryCorps, which will allow members of the public to submit audio accounts of their pandemic experience. Anyone wishing to share their story or interview others can take part. These oral histories will become part of LOC’s American Folklife Center collections and be made accessible at archive.StoryCorps.org.

Artificial intelligence (AI) was a hot topic at this year’s American Library Association LibLearnX conference in Baltimore, January 19–22, with multiple presentations, panels, and workshops covering the technology and its impact on libraries and the people they serve, touching on both AI’s potential and its current flaws.