National Library Week is celebrated during April, and these multitalented authors have also worked in libraries. Recognize them with a display!

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.

It’s April, which means that in addition to celebrating spring’s arrival, I’ll be joining libraries across the nation in celebrating National Library Week.

This superbly executed open-access database offers an unprecedented gateway to different versions of Shakespeare’s First Folios. AM’s powerful search tools and thoughtfully selected tips and pointers allow for exciting research opportunities.

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 Seattle Times: Whose job is it to care for a city’s most vulnerable residents, and how do libraries fit into the spectrum of services? On Monday, Seattle Times Mental Health Project engagement reporter Taylor Blatchford moderated a live discussion on mental health and the role of libraries. The event was co-hosted with the […]

From National Archives News: Did you know that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) isn’t just a building in Washington, DC? It’s actually a collection of more than 40 facilities nationwide, including field archives, federal records centers, and presidential libraries. To better highlight the archival holdings nationwide, the National Archives established a new web […]

From AL.com: If Alabama public libraries want to get millions in state funding, they now must move “inappropriate” material for children, mandate library cards specifically for minors, and obtain advanced approval for obtaining materials — and they need to make changes this summer. After more than 6,000 letters and 87 public comments, many in opposition, the executive […]

Copyright Sony Music Group Warns More Than 700 Companies Against Using its Content to Train AI (via NBC News) ||| Sony Statement Information Retrieval From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrieval (preprint via arXiv) Open AI GPT-4o Has a Few Tricks Up Its Sleeve That OpenAI Hasn’t Talked About (via The Decoder) […]

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.

Caleb Azumah Nelson wins the Dylan Thomas Prize for Small Worlds. Finalists have been selected for the Firecracker Awards, honoring the best independently published fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Abrams buys Taunton Books. Plus, interviews with Hari Kunzru, Coco Mellors, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Carvell Wallace.

Winners of the CrimeFest Awards are announced. Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, Iman Mersal’s Traces of Enayat, and Ian Penman’s Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors win the James Tait Black Prizes for biography and fiction. The Finnish translation of This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone wins the Helsinki Science Fiction Society’s Tähtivaeltaja Award. Plus new title bestsellers.

Bill Clinton details his life after the White House; Angela Merkel writes about her life as the first woman chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany; several celebrities pen memoirs; and fascinating historical figures inspire biographies.

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren is the top holds title of the week. LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for patrons waiting to read this buzziest book.