Report: “They Hold These Truths: Minnesota’s Archive of Endangered National Park Signs Tops 11,000 and Counting”

Report: “They Hold These Truths: Minnesota’s Archive of Endangered National Park Signs Tops 11,000 and Counting”

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From The Minnesota Star-Tribune:

Historians and librarians at the University of Minnesota launched Save Our Signs this summer. There is no central database of national park signs, so they asked the public to send in their own photos from the parks, historic sites, monuments, memorials, battlefields, seashores that make up the National Park Service.

“This is information that belongs to the people and they should be able to access it and learn from it,” said historian Kirsten Delegard, co-founder of the Mapping Prejudice Project. “To me, this feels like a direct attempt to take the full force of the federal government to erase all the nuance. Just completely erase it. Make it inaccessible.”

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Again and again, people question Jenny McBurney, government publications librarian and coordinator of the U’s massive regional depository of government documents: Do you really want a picture of every sign? I’m not sure if this is the sort of sign they might remove.

“We want all signs,” said McBurney, who snapped her own photos of every sign she could find at Independence Hall National Historical Park during a recent trip to Philadelphia. “It doesn’t matter if you think it’s at risk, because we don’t know if it’s at risk.”

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (about 875 words)

Direct to Save Our Signs (SOS) Archive

Direct to Save Our Signs Project Website (SOS)

Direct to SOS FAQs

See Also: Digital Collections: Save Our Signs Archive Containing Over 10,000 Photos of National Park Service (NPS) Interpretive Materials Launches Online (October 13, 2025)

Report: “‘People Have Had to Move House’: Inside the British Library, Two Years on From Devastating Cyber Attack”

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From The Independent:

Home to more than 170 million items, including the Magna Carta, the British Library is one of the largest and most impressive book collections in the world. But in October 2023, a major cyber attack plunged it into chaos, shutting down its digital systems and resulting in the leaking of staff details onto the dark web.

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Two years on, staff – who are striking due to a pay dispute – have said the disruption is still creating chaos and considerably increasing their workload. They say they have faced abuse as a result of the ongoing issues, while some have had to make major changes in their personal lives after their personal details were leaked.

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Meanwhile, dozens of services at the library are still unavailable, including ebooks, its archives and manuscripts catalogue, and online journal articles. This has meant staff have suffered abuse from frustrated members unable to access the materials needed.

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Boston Library Consortium (BLC) Announces Launch of the of the Digital Lenders Forum

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From a BLC Announcement:

Boston Library Consortium is excited to announce the launch of the Digital Lenders Forum, a conversation series about shaping the future of digital lending in libraries. The Digital Lenders Forum brings together library innovators and practitioners to spark practical solutions and visionary ideas that will drive actionable change across the digital lending ecosystem.

This forum builds on BLC’s digital lending work as part of our 2023 National Leadership Grant from IMLS, resulting in the Digital Lending Toolkit, Digital Lending Summit, and a number of other publications on e-book interlibrary loan, controlled digital lending, and resource sharing systems.

Through insightful discussions and shared experiences, the forum will dive into the opportunities and challenges of lending various digital resources, from e-books to multimedia collections. Whether you’re new to digital lending or a seasoned professional, the Digital Lenders Forum invites you to learn, collaborate, and build the strategies your library and organization needs to strengthen digital lending for all.

More details to come – sign up now for the Digital Lenders Forum mailing list.

Google Updates NotebookLM with 8x Larger Context Window, 6x Longer Conversation Memory, & More

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From Google:

We’re rolling out changes to NotebookLM to make it fundamentally smarter and more powerful. First, a set of back-end improvements provide a major boost to performance and quality, and second, we are expanding the ability to set goals for your notebook, allowing each notebook to adapt to your needs. Here’s what’s new.

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We have significantly expanded NotebookLM’s processing capabilities, conversation context and history. Starting today, we’re enabling the full 1 million token context window of Gemini in NotebookLM chat across all plans, significantly improving our performance when analyzing large document collections. Plus, we’ve increased our capacity for multiturn conversation more than sixfold, so you can get more coherent and relevant results over extended interactions.

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We have enhanced how NotebookLM finds information in your sources. To help you uncover new connections, it now automatically explores your sources from multiple angles, going beyond your initial prompt to synthesize findings into a single, more nuanced response.

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To support long-term projects, your conversations will now be automatically saved. You can now close a session and resume it later without losing your conversation history.

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Now available to all users, you can customize chat to adopt a specific goal, voice or role — ranging from a PhD student analyzing sources to a creative storyteller exploring ideas. To get started, click the configuration icon in the chat.

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Clarivate Releases Pulse of the Library 2025 Report

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From Clarivate:

Clarivate today released the Pulse of the Library 2025 report. The report examines how libraries globally are adapting to fast-moving opportunities and challenges such as AI adoption, open science and geopolitical pressures.

The findings reveal a steady rise in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, with 67% of libraries exploring or implementing AI tools, an increase from 63% in 2024. While the majority remain at the initial stages of evaluation, early adopters are pressing ahead and reporting greater optimism, particularly as they progress through implementation phases.

The report also shows that libraries are more likely to be in the moderate or active implementation phases of AI when AI literacy is part of the formal training or onboarding program (28%), librarians have dedicated time/resources (23.3%), or have managers actively encouraging development (24.2%).

Oren Beit-Arie, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Innovation, Academia & Government at Clarivate, said: “Our second Pulse of the Library report points to growing maturity in library approaches to AI, and an increase in the number of early adopters since last year. It also underscores the importance of offering AI literacy and professional development. Libraries that invest in literacy report greater confidence and will be better positioned to leverage AI for a range of uses, including to increase efficiencies to leave more time for important strategic and creative tasks.”

What’s changed in 2025

Our report revealed a steady increase in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. More libraries—67% compared to 63% in 2024—are either exploring or actively implementing AI technologies. The majority of respondents (35%) remain at the evaluation stage, ahead of any implementation, but 33% are now in the implementation stages, which is three times as many as in 2024.

Indeed, we noted a statistically significant relationship between the focus of a library to support AI literacy development and the implementation phase of AI.

  • Libraries are more likely to be in the moderate or active implementation phases when AI literacy is part of the formal training or onboarding program, librarians have dedicated time/resources, or have managers actively encouraging development (28.0%, 23.3% and 24.2% respectively).
  • Respondents who say there is little to no institutional focus on AI literacy were significantly less likely to be implementing AI.

As awareness of AI’s potential grows, our report revealed that libraries are pursuing wider goals with AI, considering it as a tool to address a broader range of possibilities.

  • In 2025, respondents selected a greater number of objectives for using AI (selecting on average 4 objectives vs. 3 in 2024).
  • The top objectives for using AI remain unchanged from 2024, with support for student learning and content discovery highest overall.

Other key findings from the report include:

  • Pace of AI adoption varies regionally: Asia and Europe have continued to advance AI adoption, with 37 – 40% in initial implementation or beyond, compared with 14 -16% in 2024. The U.S. is behind in adoption and confidence, with the lowest optimism about AI’s potential benefits (7% optimistic, compared with 27 -31% in Asia, Mainland China and Rest of World).

  • Perception gaps across roles: Senior librarians are more likely to prioritize library efficiencies as a primary objective of implementing AI technologies, especially when compared to librarians. Senior librarians were more confident in AI terminology, with 43% ranking their confidence in AI terminology as 4 or 5 (on a scale of 1 for not confident to 5 for highly confident), compared to 36% for junior librarians.
  • Core library missions mostly unchanged from 2024: The only shift observed was in academic libraries where student engagement has become the primary focus in 2025 (40%).
  • Budget constraints remain a key challenge: Many libraries are experiencing geopolitical pressures, affecting budgets and collections. Half of U.S. and North American respondents expect cuts to collections as a result.
  • Public libraries snapshot:
    • Only 20% were optimistic about the benefits of AI over 5 years, a decline from 26% in 2024.
    • 54% have no plans or are not actively pursuing AI.
  • External forces reshaping strategy:
    • Budget pressures remain the top challenge for libraries, selected by almost half of all respondents (47%).
    • Funding cuts are impacting OA collections strategies for almost half of respondents.

John Chrastka, Executive Director at EveryLibrary, said: “Librarians play a leading role in sharing knowledge and building connections within their communities. This report will help support library and information professionals worldwide as they navigate challenges and opportunities.”

The 2025 Pulse of the Library report draws on insights from more than 2,000 librarians across 109 countries and regions, representing academic, public and national libraries. Building on the first report in 2024, it provides actionable insights and recommendations for libraries seeking to maximize the benefits of AI.

Direct to Full Text Report
DOI: 10.14322/pulse.of.the.library.2025

Direct to Report Microsite

Direct to Survey Findings Data File (via Zenodo)

Report: Texas Schools are Using AI to Screen Library Books Under New State Law

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From the Austin American-Statesman:

Nestled in a red-leaning suburb south of Houston, Pearland is one of several school districts turning to artificial intelligence to keep up with the law, Senate Bill 13, which requires boards to sign off on all library purchases. The legislation comes after a 2023 law first required schools to purge “sexually explicit” books.

Katy ISD, Leander ISD, and New Braunfels ISD all confirmed to Hearst Newspapers that they also use AI tools to help identify potentially noncompliant titles. Some have hired a Dallas-based startup called Bookmarked to do the AI reviews for them.

Proponents see the technology as a gift, freeing up staff time while helping weed out content they see as inappropriate for schools.

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But critics of the new law say that AI screenings don’t factor in context and dehumanize stories about controversial topics, clearing the way for increased restrictions.

AI “doesn’t fully understand the community,” said Laney Hawes, an activist with the Texas Freedom to Read Project. “Books and stories are all about the human experience. Isn’t that the point of books?”

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Some school librarians see AI as a broader threat to their jobs as districts struggle under inflation and funding deficits.

“That’s my real fear, is that the AI sources will take the place of the librarians rather than the school board,” said Rachael Welsh, a high school librarian who chairs the Texas Association of School Librarians’ legislative advocacy committee. “We know that AI is not reliable. It can be biased. It can hallucinate.”

Welsh acknowledged that librarians cannot read every title, but said they have training, tools and processes that many board members do not. In Texas, books must have at least two reviews from accredited journals such as Booklist, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. Many librarians also refer to statewide lists of recommended titles.

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