It has been a busy legislative session in the Louisiana House, with several bills poised to impact libraries and library workers halted at various points, while others have been approved and moved on to the Senate. As they proliferate, grassroots library advocacy organizations are stepping up to combat them.

Jackie x 3! Consider these novels about Jackie Collins, Jacqueline Susann, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Those outside our field may marvel at—or be disconcerted by—transformations they experience as new, seismic shifts from what they understand about libraries. We know the transformation is far from sudden, and far from over. Understanding this, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is using best practices and key research to better understand and equip libraries with the tools needed to address the future needs of the diverse communities they serve.

Fifty-seven percent of academic libraries report that the use of audiovisual (AV) sources such as news reels, recordings, performances, and films have increased over the past three years—with 21 percent describing significantly increased usage—while only 15 percent say that use of these resources have decreased, according to Library Journal’s recent AV Primary Sources Survey of Academic Libraries, sponsored by AM, that netted 220 responses from academic librarians in the United States and Canada. Thirteen percent of respondents said that college and university students now prefer AV primary source materials, compared with 18 percent who prefer print and other archival primary source materials.

COVID shifts drove falling print circ and rising ebooks. But will it last? LJ's 2021 Materials Survey looks at some of the last year's trends.

This is the 13th year of the LJ Index of Public Library Service and Star Library ratings. The 2020 scores and ratings are based on FY18 data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Public Library Survey (PLS). Because of that delay, they don’t reflect the impact of the coronavirus; that won’t be reflected in the data until 2022. The big news in this year’s edition is that successful retrievals of electronic information (e-retrievals)—measuring usage of online content, such as databases, other than by title checkout—joins the six other measures that determine the LJ Index.

Whether librarians are providing services in-person or virtually, reference has changed with the pandemic.

Library Journal’s annual Placements & Salaries survey reports on the experiences of LIS students who graduated and sought their first librarian jobs in the previous year: in this case, 2019. Salaries and full-time employment are up, but so are unemployment and the gender gap; 2019 graduates faced a mixed job market even before the pandemic.

From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts… Direct to Full Text Article See Also: More “Not Real […]

From the National Information Standards Organization (NISO): The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced today that its draft revision of the Journal Article Version (JAV) Recommended Practice is open for public comment through July 7, 2024, at the project web page. First published in 2008, the JAV Recommended Practice was developed to describe different versions of online […]

The research article (preprint) linked below was recently posted on SSRN. Title How Researchers Use Open Science Authors Stephanie Permut Carnegie Mellon University Silvia Saccardo Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Social and Decision Sciences Gretchen Chapman Carnegie Mellon University Source SSRN Posted: 23 May 2024 DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4838469 Abstract The Open Science Revolution of the past […]

From the National Library of Medicine Technical Bulletin: The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has recently added a new repository to the Dataset Catalog, a catalog of biomedical datasets from selected publicly available repositories. Based on feedback from users, NLM will gradually add new repositories to the initial four — dbGap, Dryad, ImmPort, and Harvard […]

When the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines began to roll out in mid-December 2020, their distribution was immediately complicated by a shortage of doses and widespread uncertainty about who would be given priority. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued suggested guidelines for phased allocation. When it was not yet clear who would be next, many library workers, leaders, and associations began advocating for public facing library workers to be vaccinated as soon as feasible.

In the messy middle of the pandemic, library leaders share how things have changed since March 2020, their takeways, and continuing challenges.

Whether librarians are providing services in-person or virtually, reference has changed with the pandemic.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of books on the subject has been increasing exponentially. This introductory list, which will be updated regularly, is meant to help collection development librarians get started on determining which books work best for their collections.

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles Riot of 1992, Korean Americans gained visibility and recognition as a minority group—distinct from Chinese and Japanese Americans—because they were featured so prominently in media coverage. Korean Americans were often a largely invisible group in the United States prior to the Los Angeles Riot.

Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal wins the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which is given to an emerging Black American fiction writer. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, tr. by Sean Cotter, wins the Dublin Literary Award. Ali Bryan’s Coq, Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist, and Deborah Willis’s Girlfriend on Mars are shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Canadian humor writing. The shortlists for Britain’s Society of Authors Awards are announced. Plus, new title bestsellers and interviews with Amy Tan, Kaliane Bradley, and Monica Youn.

JSTOR’s Path to Open pilot project and MIT Press’s Direct to Open program are both demonstrating that open access (OA) monographs are receiving significantly more use and are cited more often than non-open counterparts, according to a recent JSTOR webcast and an impact report released last week by MIT Press. 

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos wins the International Booker Prize. The winners of the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Awards and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire are announced. Library Reads and LJ offer read-alikes for Ruth Ware’s buzzy book of the week, One Perfect Couple. People previews Sally Rooney’s forthcoming novel, Intermezzo, due out from Farrar on September 24. Emma Törzs’s Ink Blood Sister Scribe will get a TV series adaptation. And NYT distills the essential Don Delillo.