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Whether you are looking to escape into the histories of some libraries or looking to expand your knowledge on the future of reading and research we’ve got something for every librarian with this reading list. How many have you read? Which ones are interested in? Let us know your thoughts.

Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Rick Anderson

Need an overview of what’s happening in the world of journals and books? Then this is the book for you! Offering an examination of books, journals, copyright law, digital archiving, metadata, and much more, discover the many problems that arise due to conflicts between the various values and interests at play within these systems and how the implications of these issues extend far beyond academia.

Read: Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know

Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe by Kathy Peiss

This book tells the story of an unlikely band of librarians, archivists, and scholars who travelled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause during World War II.

In this fascinating account, cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and postwar reconstruction. Focusing on the ordinary Americans who carried out these missions, she shows how they made decisions on the ground to acquire sources that would be useful in the war zone as well as on the home front.

Read: Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe

Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World by Naomi S. Baron

In 2007, Amazon introduced its first Kindle. Three years later, Apple debuted the iPad. Meanwhile, as mobile phone technology improved and smartphones proliferated, the phone became another vital reading platform.

In Words Onscreen, Naomi Baron, an expert on language and technology, explores how technology is reshaping our understanding of what it means to read and explains why the virtues of eReading are matched with drawbacks.

Read: Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World

How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio by Naomi S. Baron

The digital revolution has transformed reading, and with the recent turn to remote learning, onscreen reading may seem like the only viable option. Yet selecting digital is often based on cost or convenience, not on educational evidence. In this book, author Naomi Baron connects research insights to concrete applications, offering practical approaches for maximizing learning with print, digital text, audio, and video.

Read: How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio

Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library by Wayne Wiegand

Despite dire predictions in the late twentieth century that public libraries would not survive the turn of the millennium, their numbers have only increased, which makes us ask, why do Americans love their libraries?

Drawing on newspaper articles, memoirs, and biographies, Part of Our Lives paints a clear and engaging picture of Americans who value libraries not only as civic institutions but also as public places that promote and maintain community.

Read: Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library

The Oxford Guide to Library Research: How to Find Reliable Information Online and Offline (4ed) by Thomas Mann

This book is not “about” the Internet: it is about the best alternatives to the Internet. It shows researchers how to do comprehensive research on any topic and explains the variety of search mechanisms available so that the researcher can have reasonable confidence that they have not overlooked something important. This includes not just lists of resources, but discussions of the ways to search within them.

Read: The Oxford Guide to Library Research: How to Find Reliable Information Online and Offline (4ed)

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Article by Molly Dixon, Marketing Executive on the Global Library Marketing team.

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