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The rationale is simple: Fines and fees present a barrier to library use among the communities that need access most. They also contribute to material attrition, as a patron who can’t afford to pay the fine on a late item may not return it at all. While eliminating fines cuts a line item out of many libraries’ revenue, most have discovered that the loss could be absorbed—and that getting rid of fines raises circulation numbers, brings lapsed users back to the library, and boosts goodwill.
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Kudos to librarian Bruce Janu for discovering the rare August 31, 1946 New Yorker issue that featured John Hersey’s groundbreaking and devastating report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Very few copies of the edition with the original band exist today, which is why, as Blume noted, it’s considered one of the “white whales” of the antiquarian-magazine world.
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Libraries, sign up for today’s webinar to learn how you can get funding to promote vaccine confidence.
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“After three years of construction and $200 million, the library system was ready to reopen its largest circulating branch in spring 2020. Instead, the pandemic extended the closure. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, or SNFL, as it is now known (after a $55 million gift), finally threw open its doors to unlimited browsing in June.”
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Can’t wait to watch this documentary about Dolly Parton’s literacy project, the Imagination Library. Since she began the book-gifting project in 1995, Parton and local community partners have donated over 160 million books to almost two million children (from birth to age five) in the United States, Canada Britain, Ireland, and Australia. It’s streaming July 9 on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play.
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Coronavirus exposes the digital divide's toll →
The virus crisis is offering vivid case studies of real-world, everyday harms that result from inequality between those who have access to and can afford high-speed internet, and those who cannot.
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Kids Around The World Are Reading NPR's Coronavirus Comic →
Librarians, how are you keeping your patrons informed?
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My Uncle, The Librarian-Spy →
n 1943, a Harvard librarian was quietly recruited by the OSS to save the scattered books of Europe.
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YIVO, world’s biggest Yiddish research center, lays off all its librarians →
To make up for a $500,000 revenue shortfall, four librarians were laid off, and archivists (the archives is separate from the library) will be expected to perform library duties.
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Top 10 Checkouts of All Time | The New York Public Library →
Ezra Jack Keats’s 1962 ground-breaking classic The Snowy Day tops the list with 485,583 checkouts. As part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, the library is also offering a limited-edition Snowy Day library card.
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Robert Caro’s Papers Headed to New-York Historical Society →
The New-York Historical Society has acquired Mr. Caro’s papers — some 200 linear feet of material that will be open to researchers in its library. And just as important to the 84-year-old Mr. Caro, it will create a permanent installation in its museum galleries dedicated to showing how he got the job done…..
“I want people to be able to see how I gather my material and how I turn it into books, how I write,” he continued. “In my opinion, the quality of the prose is just as important in nonfiction as in fiction.”The archive will be among the largest of a single individual in the historical society’s collection. It includes research notes, drafts, annotated news clippings, correspondence and other documents, from once-classified memos excavated at the LBJ Presidential Library to at least one artifact literally coaxed out of a secret trunk.
Library and literary miscellany from your pals at Library Journal.