NOTE: Included in State of America’s Libraries Report 2022 is the list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021. The formal ALA release announcement can be accessed here.
In 2021, libraries of all types stepped up to meet the needs of their communities as they responded to the impacts of a second year of the global pandemic. Library staff in every state faced an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals. Most targeted books were by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons. Read more about the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2021 and libraries’ response to the pandemic in the State of America’s Libraries Special Report: Pandemic Year Two.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From a Plan S / cOAlition S Announcement: cOAlition S releases today the end-user portal of the Journal Comparison Service (JCS). This secure, free, online service aims to shed light on publishing ...
From the University of Victoria, Canada: Canada’s genocide is getting harder to deny. So too is the growing recognition that human rights and the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples offer solutions ...
From the American Library Association: With funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, the American Library Association (ALA) has published “Programming with Primary Sources: Women’s Suffrage,”a resource ...
From a PEN America News Release: James Patterson, the best-selling author, has donated $2 million to PEN America to build communications capacity and help the premier writers’ organization speak louder ...
From a Introductory Blog Post by Dylan Ruediger and Danielle Miriam Cooper: Today, Ithaka S+R releases findings from one of the largest in-depth studies of teaching practices across social science ...
From Stateline/Pew: There are more than 600 oral history recordings housed where Lina Ortega is an associate curator for the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Ortega speaks ...
From the University of Louisville: The current and former ownership of one of America’s most respected newspapers has made it possible for a treasure trove of an estimated 3 million ...
Elsevier Appoints Emily Singley to the Newly Created role of Vice President, North American Library Relations Exploring the Potential Role of Citizen Science in the Warning Value Chain for High ...
From the UC Berkeley Library The UC Berkeley Library is full of stories — and not just the ones that line its shelves. The facts you’ll find here are at ...
From The Chicago Tribune: Last week, city and Chicago Public Library officials declared Chicago a sanctuary city for those stories, by establishing “Book Sanctuaries” across the city’s 77 distinct community ...
From Penn State: Penn State University Libraries has expanded its robust scholarly research potential of one of America’s foremost 20th-century writers through the acquisition of the Toby and Betty Bruce ...
From Politico: Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, ...
In 2021, libraries of all types stepped up to meet the needs of their communities as they responded to the impacts of a second year of the global pandemic. Library staff in every state faced an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals. Most targeted books were by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons. Read more about the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2021 and libraries’ response to the pandemic in the State of America’s Libraries Special Report: Pandemic Year Two.
