Long live reference! LJ’s annual feature celebrates the resources and librarians that help patrons find facts, plan new ventures, write papers, and learn everything about anything from atoms to zoogeography. In this supplement, librarians across the nation highlight research-ready databases that make a daily difference in the search experience of students, scholars, and general users. A team of reference librarians detail how they help incarcerated patrons. Reviewers and editors showcase a cornucopia of reference titles, over 870+ of them, ranging from print titles to new databases and updated ebook collections.
Library advocates have become increasingly sophisticated about collecting the emotional outcome stories that bring to life how libraries change lives. We may, sadly, need to start applying that savvy to collecting the outcomes of what happens when libraries are lost or gutted, whether due to pervasive underfunding, as in the UK, or ideologically driven campaigns against books, displays, and programs that represent LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC experiences, as is being attempted in the U.S.
This report highlights how academic libraries apply equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) standards when acquiring digital resources and includes the full data from LJ’s 2022 survey of 220 college/university libraries.
Barbara Alvarez is a PhD student in Information Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and adjunct faculty at multiple universities. Her work using information science to study the pandemic’s effect on abortion services in Wisconsin won her a 2022 Movers & Shakers Award. Library Journal recently reached out to learn more about her other work in this area.
With two different, disconnected systems tracking different aspects of the university’s research activities, the staff of the Mario Rostoni Library at LIUC saw an opportunity with Ex Libris Esploro to streamline workflows to comply with Italian laws, and to provide a better service to the university’s community of researchers.
By Emily Jacobson, Jennifer Gibson, and Megan Phifer-Davis
In the United States, 2.3 million people are imprisoned inside of jails, prisons, or detention facilities with little to no access to information services of any kind. Some public libraries meet this need through Reference by Mail.
"Library advocates have become increasingly sophisticated about collecting the emotional outcome stories that bring to life how libraries change lives. We may, sadly, need to start applying that savvy to collecting the outcomes of what happens when libraries are lost or gutted."
Books of lists, lists of books, collections of music, art, movies, and more (so much more) offer multiple pleasures for browsers, list makers, and the endlessly curious.
With an ever-increasing volume of misinformation circulating online, students and adults alike need help navigating the information landscape and finding accurate data sources. Reference books and databases are critical in filling this need.
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy leads holds this week. Waterstones names Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men Book of the Year, and Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry, Author of the Year. Lots of year-end lists arrive, including those from Amazon, NYT, LA Times, and Audiofile. Ten LibraryReads and ten Indie Next picks publish this week. People's book of the week is A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney.
Tiya Miles has won the 2022 Cundill History Prize for All That She Carried. The 2022 Banipal Prize shortlist is announced, and there is a plethora of reading lists for the end of the year. Author interviews feature the voices of Mithu Sanyal, Stephanie LaCava, Allie Rowbottom, Buki Papillon, Alyssa Songsiridej, Heather Radke, and Clint Smith. Adaptation news arrives for H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and David Baldacci’s “Atlee Pine” series.
As a cataloging librarian, I decide how a resource is described in its catalog record by assigning subject headings and a call number and determining whether notes or a summary is necessary. All of these decisions impact the findability of a resource and how a catalog user will perceive its content. So I am especially concerned with how a library resource is represented when it contains prejudicial content.
Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands, by Linda Ronstadt and Lawrence Downes, is a starred performing arts selection. "Ronstadt celebrates her roots in this engaging, personal and entertaining hybrid family memoir/cookbook and social history." Also in performing arts, Dijanna Mulhearn's Red Carpet Oscars is another starred title. "Fashion writer Mulhearn highlights, from 1929 to the present, what the Oscar winners wore to the Academy Awards ceremonies and the social and political trends that motivated them.... A delectable compilation, sure to please fashion and film devotees." TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema, by Millie De Chirico and Quatoyiah Murry, is another starred performing arts selection. "Adventurous film buffs will enjoy the keen-eyed observations and backstories about these obscure, odd, and underappreciated films." And Ulf Danielsson's The World Itself: Consciousness and the Everything of Physics is a starred sciences title. "An excellent addition to any science collection, Danielsson’s book serves as an exceptional ingress into the universe of theoretical physics and how it relates to a diverse cross section of human interests."
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