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Bedford (Tex.) Public Library hosted a Halloween-themed goat yoga program during fall 2021, in which goats were dressed in silly costumes. Photo: Mary Woodward/Bedford (Tex.) Public Library It’s not every day that patrons dodge prancing barnyard goats while navigating instructor-led yoga sessions, but goat yoga (exactly what it sounds like—yoga in the company of goats) […]
Kelsey Bogan, library media specialist at Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, uses her school library ’s TikTok account to create videos of book reviews, tutorials, and more. Ring lights, check. Tripod, check. Phone camera, check. Ideas for what trend to hop on, check. Librarians are making the most of the video-sharing social media […]
In March, Hickory (N.C.) Public Library held its Sheep to Sweater program series, designed to take patrons through five different stages in the wool and clothing production process. Photos: Hickory (N.C.) Public Library Hickory (N.C.) Public Library (HPL) Community Engagement Librarian Dacy Shute was looking to host a program that would celebrate the city’s agricultural […]
Photo: Allison Shelley/NPR In 1971, reporter Nina Totenberg called then–law professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg for help making sense of a legal brief. That conversation launched a decades-spanning friendship and Totenberg’s career. The journalist joined NPR in 1975 and currently serves as the non-profit media organization’s legal correspondent; Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court […]
Over at ResearchBuzz, Tara has had a busy summer learning JavaScript in order to satisfy her cravings for simple search tools that only exist in her head. The result is RB Search Gizmos, which you should definitely check out. As I continue to be a daily RSS user, one of the first I gravitated towards […]
Thanks to hard work by the Infrastructure Team from Stanford Libraries’ Digital Libraries Systems and Services group, the self-deposit web application for the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) just got a bit of a spiffing up for the new school year. The new application was released just over a year ago, but we’ve already added a number […]
Yesterday, shortly after helping a student start a literature search, I found myself poking around at DALL-E, one of the crop of machine-learning tools that can generate images based on a text prompt. I had an article title saved on my clipboard, and wondered what would be generated from the title. I was not impressed. […]
In their bestselling young adult memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), author and activist George M. Johnson tells the story of their life growing up Black and queer in the United States, while also addressing topics like racism, gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, and sexual abuse. The book has been […]
The Army National Guard distributes water at Hinds Community College’s Academic and Technical Center on the Jackson, Mississippi, campus. Water distribution sites have been set up to respond to the city’s recent water crisis. The capital city of Jackson, Mississippi—the “City with Soul”—is the state’s second-largest metropolitan area, home to many colleges, museums, and libraries, […]
Fulton County (Ga.) Library System’s Central Library in Atlanta Photo: Jonathan Hillyer Welcome to the 2022 Library Design Showcase, American Libraries’ annual celebration of new and renovated libraries that address user needs in inventive, interesting, and effective ways. This year’s slate—similar to last year’s—features building projects completed during the ongoing pandemic. Despite continued challenges and […]
The following libraries are winners of the 2022 Library Building Awards, sponsored by Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures (a division of the American Library Association) and the American Institute of Architects. The awards recognize the best in library architecture and design and are open to any architect licensed in the United States. Projects may be located […]
Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) recognizes the achievements of more than 200 individuals and institutions with an array of awards. This year’s winners, chosen by juries of their colleagues and peers, embody the best of the profession’s leadership, vision, and service as well as a continued commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and outreach. […]
Libraries are complicated. They have a maze of departments, a specific method for retrieving books, and many rooms with different purposes: public and staff areas, service desks, and storage areas for materials, with varying access policies. Library signs can help guide users through this unfamiliar maze, allowing them to find what they came for with […]
Patrons display their new enhanced library cards at an April 6 sign-up event at the Fairbanks branch of Harris County (Tex.) Public Library. The cards offer another form of ID. Photo: Nancy Hu/Harris County (Tex.) Public Library Photo identification is an essential part of American life. But for large swaths of the populace, photo IDs can […]
Play areas next to desks give caregivers flexibility at Henrico County (Va.) Public Library’s Fairfield branch. Photo: Chris Cunningham Photography In January, images of some unusual new workstations at Fairfield Area Library—part of Henrico County (Va.) Public Library (HCPL)—went viral on social media and across national and international news media. What caught people’s attention: the […]
George Saunders Photo: Zach Krahmer George Saunders is best known for his dystopic short stories that satirize—and humanize—the absurdities of our shared reality. His forthcoming collection Liberation Day (Random House, October) is no exception, exploring themes of power, ethics, and justice amid backdrops of a hailstorm, a tyrannical government, and an underground theme park. American […]
This movie poster is one of 3,000 items in the Witchcraft Collection at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Photo: Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections 19thCentury in which Halloween was popularized in the US, thanks in part to the arrival of Irish and Scottish immigrants. Halloween has its roots in the […]
RAR-Atlanta leaders (left to right) Sarah Cruz, Hannah Griggs, and Devin Cowens. Photo: Dessa Lohrey The gear library of the Radical Adventure Riders Atlanta chapter (RAR-ATL) isn’t the first of its kind for cycling gear, but it is one of the most organized and accessible. In researching other groups that loan cycling gear, “we hadn’t […]
Fall is my favorite time of the year. The air turns crisp; holy days and holidays—both religious and secular—come in quick succession; hope for the school year abounds; and heritage, awareness, and history months are in full swing. Embracing these celebrations, identities, and hopes is foundational to our shared core values of diversity, lifelong learning, […]
Early this year, there was some buzz about a new site called tl;dr papers, which claimed to “use machine learning to summarize arguments in scientific papers so that even a seven-year-old could understand them”. From the moment I tried to visit the site it was down, so I put a watch on it, hoping to […]
