American Library Association Journals
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Amplify Your Impact: Building the Market for Business
No full textDo you have an elevator speech prepared about your library? If you have 30 seconds or less to gainsomeone’s interest, what do you highlight? For me, there’s no doubt resources for entrepreneursand small business are a part of my list. Why? Library business initiative
From the Committees of RUSA: Outstanding Business Information Sources 2024
No full textEach year, the Business Information Sources Committee of the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) selects the outstanding business information sources published since May of the previous year. This year, the committee reviewed twelve entries; of these, two were designated as “Outstanding” and three as “Notable.” Works are examined for the following: ease of use; reputation of the publisher, author, or editor; accuracy; appropriate bibliography; organization; comprehensiveness; value of the content; currency or timeliness; uniqueness; quality and accuracy of index or cited references; and quality and usefulness of graphics and illustrations. This year’s selection of works runs a wide range of topics from: the latest in green finance, issues of natural resource depletion and overreliance, social media influencers from beginnings to current industry, mega project management, and an eye-opening work on the destruction of industries because of private equity firms
Little Kids, Big Words: Using Colossal Words in the Library
No full textI recently led a seminar for two hundred nine-year-olds at the Brooklyn Public Library, all about big words. There were no animations or screens—just me and the (seemingly dry) subject matter, big words for big kids or, in the name of my new book, Colossal Words for Kids (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2024). For an hour, the children were rapt, fully engaged by language, all of which left the organizer pleased but slightly astonished. For my part, however, I wasn’t at all surprised
Ready, Set, Respond: Becoming a Challenge-Ready Library Professional
No full textImagine you are setting up a new display when a community member approaches you about a book their family checked out. They feel that the book is inappropriate for their family to read. You may feel a variety of emotions: fear, anger, defensiveness. If you are not in a position to make decisions in your organization, you may also feel uncertainty and helplessness.However, no matter your position in the library, you can personally develop a confident approach to intellectual freedom challenges and bring that lens to your wider organization for greater team unity and preparedness
I’m with the Banned: The Unseen History of Reading Banned Books
No full textEven in the mid 2020s, our understanding of reading is inadequate. It complicated, often contradictory history is neglected. Myths of literacy dominate despite almost one half century of critical revisionism, prompted in part by my own research. This essay interrelates book banning, debates about patterns of reading and reading instruction, and unseen reading of “great” and banned books by people without higher education. Its intention is to raise more questions and provoke more inquiries
Lead On! How ALSC Can Help Build Leadership Skills
No full textFor years, educators have used authentic learning to engage learners in hands-on activities centered on authentic, relevant, real-world tasks that are of interest to the learner. This hands-on experience engages learners with relevant experiences that they can take away and apply to other situations, similar to on-the-job training when one joins the job market. Looking back over my twenty-seven years of active membership in ALSC, I see the many opportunities for authentic learning that helped me grow both professionally and personally that I applied not only to my work in ALSC, but also to work at the library and in semi-retirement
E-Resource Licensing Explained: An A-Z Licensing Guidebook for Libraries
No full textMany librarians, especially those who deal with electronic resources, are put in a position where itis their responsibility to read, interpret, and negotiate license agreements without having previouslyreceived any legal training. E-Resource Licensing Explained: An A-Z Licensing Guidebook forLibraries seeks to bridge this gap in knowledge by educating its audience on important terms andtheir legal implications. In addition to theoretical knowledge, it also provides practical examples ofdesired language and acceptable alternatives. As such, it plays an important role in providing contexton different options so that librarians can make informed decisions when negotiating on behalf of theirlibraries
Adopting Critical Cataloging Practices Post Diversity Audit: Connecting the Community to Your Collection
No full textTo increase patrons’ ability to find resources, it is imperative to investigate barriers and biases in thedescriptive catalog data for inclusive collection management and development standards. This studyused a specially designed descriptive approach to gather quantitative data from 101 public librariansin Connecticut via a Qualtrics survey to identify the key variables that influence the successfulenhancement of online public access catalog (OPAC) metadata after a diversity audit of the librarymaterials. The results revealed factors that promote or impede the integration of inclusive catalogingthat reflects the diversity of the community: (1) appreciating the benefits of audit methods that arefocused on bibliographic records, (2) recognizing the need for buy-in and participation from theentire organization, and (3) stressing the useful integration of institutional and community feedbackto improve the collection’s accessibility and representation. The findings provide practical adviceto public libraries that want to satisfy the diverse demands of their user base by integrating criticalcataloging frameworks into their diversity and inclusion objectives
Disability Perspective in Children’s Literature: A Case Study
No full textChildren’s literature plays an important role in influencing the socio-emotional development of children. Representation of different aspects of life in children’s literature has gained a focus over the past few decades, especially in terms of the display of diversity. An important aspect of diversity is disability representation. This study focuses on the collection within the Serving Every Ohioan (SEO) library system, which at the time of study included 99 library systems across the state of Ohio. Books tagged with terms ranging from “disability,” “Children’s disability,” and specific impairments in the juvenile collections were selected for review. A survey of 162 fiction picture books about disabled children were read for characteristics such as the disability focus, narrator focus, use of characters of color, and general themes. This paper examines the occurrence of these themes and proposes the need for more authentic representation of disability in children’s literature, for both disabled and non-disabled children. This research aims to illuminate patterns within children’s disability literature while also discussing the vital need for such literature on library shelves
Thinking About Genre
No full textI work in a non-Dewey library that essentially uses a combination of BISAC and simplified languageto organize our shelves to create an easily browsable collection. While my area of selection isadult fiction and probably the least different from Dewey libraries, traditional genres can still be aconundrum.It’s not that I don’t know genre conventions—I have fifteen years of library experience, havevolunteered for numerous genre award committees, and even write reviews for Library Journal.The puzzle arises from the conflict betwee