American Libraries

The historic Magic City of Birmingham, Alabama, home of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, opened its doors and down - home hospitality to some 400 attendees of the Black Caucus of the American...

We strive to provide great customer service, yet few of us actually use the "C" word. We have many names--patron, borrower, user, reader--but "customer" remains controversial and typically we avoid it. Not so at Howard County Library, located in the...

Welcome to a showcase of the dynamic doers--a snapshot of those singled out by the American Library Association in 2010 for dedicating themselves to the profession, who have gone above and beyond, and whose contributions have been so significant and...

Public libraries have maintained that they are significant in fostering children's literacy since the first children's section was established in the late 1800s. But in times of economic uncertainty, decision-makers find it easy to levy budget cuts...

We called it a "paradigm shift" in online communication (AL, Nov. 3009, p. 28), anxiously awaited an invitation to use it in its beta release, showed it off to colleagues, used it to lay the groundwork for American Libraries' Perpetual Beta blog, and...

Our Authors, Our Advocates" was launched at my Inaugural Banquet during Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., in June. I was deeply honored to have as my special guests four wonderful authors who spoke so eloquently. They were funny, passionate, compelling,...

Mashup artists, smart-phone users, academics, and people who are visually impaired are all winners, thanks to the latest exceptions made by the Librarian of Congress to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Since its enactment in 1998, the impact...

Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School professor and founder of Harvard Law's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, serves as one of several celebrity honorary co-chairs of the American Library Association's Spectrum Presidential Initiative,...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DUTCH Elmore Leonard's friends call him Dutch. Many of his fans do, too, and while using a nickname presumes a degree of familiarity to which those of us who only know Leonard through his books aren't entitled, we can't help ourselves....

ATLANTA SITE OF 13TH FORUM The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum explores leading-edge technologies and their applications in all types of libraries while providing the networking benefits of a small conference....

I recently answered a call on ASK NYPL, the New York Public Library's telephonic and electronic reference line, from the New York City Police Department. A 16 - year - old girl was threatening to throw herself off the Verrazano - Narrows Bridge that...

Once when I was working the reference desk, a seemingly normal community college student (no exposed underwear, multiple tongue piercings, neck tattoos, or a message shaven into his hair) asked why so many Civil War battles were fought in national...

Last time, I discussed QR codes and how they can link you to content that provides further information about an object. But what if you didn't have to put barcodes all over everything you wanted people to scan? What if all it took to get that content...