The School Libraries in South Australia: 2024 Census offers a snapshot of the current state, challenges, and evolving roles of school libraries and their staffing in South Australia. Conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) at the behest of the School Library Association of South Australia (SLASA), this census builds…

This research report, produced for National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa (National Library), focused on a Putoi Rito Communities of Readers project carried out in Dargaville in 2023-24. Putoi Rito is a National Library initiative that works with communities to design, develop, and deliver support for reading engagement…

The American Library Association (ALA) reported an "unprecedented" number of book challenges in 2022 (ALA, 2022b), resulting in nationwide media coverage and increased awareness of censorship attempts. However, these numbers represent only censorship attempts from external entities, such as parents and the general public; some librarians…

Librarianship is constantly confronted with unexpected and quickly evolving sociotechnical challenges, yet the documents that define the core professional competencies for librarians are infrequently updated. Based upon survey responses collected from 383 working librarians located in the United States, we describe a set of gaps between current…

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including…

Computational thinking is an essential 21st-century skill that all youth should develop in order to navigate and succeed in an increasingly computational world. For all youth to have hands-on opportunities to develop essential computational thinking skills, libraries and informal learning environments play a critical role. This is especially true…

Over the past couple of years, school districts nationwide have seen a wave of challenges to books in libraries and on reading lists, as well as rising demands to know what titles are in schools. These challenges and demands have put public school libraries under significant scrutiny and raised fundamental questions about their purpose and…

Meaningful learning resources for earthquake safety and survival have become an increasingly important topic among geoscientists, especially educators and researchers. Various members of the public, especially K-12 (ages 5-18) learners, continue to depend on scientific trade books available at their local public and school libraries for…

K-12 instructional settings diversified worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic response. Research is needed in examining school librarians' evolving roles during this era. Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, K-12 remote-synchronous learning was an instructional option in a progressive U.S. public school district. This new "school"…

School libraries are supplementary places enabling students to acquire reading habits and reading culture. The purpose of this study is to determine the status of libraries in schools and to take the opinions of teachers towards school libraries. For this purpose, a case study design has been utilized in the current research and observation and…

Libraries in Nigeria have long struggled to adequately serve the information needs of visually impaired individuals, particularly those who are literate. Despite this, scholarly research addressing these issues in South-Eastern Nigeria is lacking, highlighting the urgency of investigating predictors of user satisfaction among visually impaired…

This multiple-methods two-part study included a collection analysis of the holdings of trans books in 35 randomly selected public high school libraries in one state in the southeastern United States. Also, the attitudes and practices of 37 high school librarians (in the same state but not necessarily at the same schools whose collections were…

The structural inequalities perpetuated by the caste system are a grave challenge to creating a just society. The education system pays short shrift to this topic and caste discrimination is spoken about without holding caste privilege accountable. Historically, social justice is a core mission of libraries. This project worked closely with a…

Surveys such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) enable educators, policymakers and the wider community to compare Australian students with each other, as well as their counterparts across the…

Data collected from a study of school libraries in Massachusetts provide source material that identifies barriers and enablers related to equitable access and meaningful use of school library resources and services. These quantitative and qualitative survey data supplied by school librarians across rural, urban, and suburban schools describe…