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…

Book censorship efforts in the USA have become increasingly concerning for champions of freedom of expression and civil liberties. The movement to ban books is seemingly driven by a desire to curtail adolescents' access to information about sexuality and gender diversity. This paper details the findings of a content analysis of the American…

This research brief highlights how public libraries ensured patrons continued access to library services during the pandemic through 2021.

Applying a content warning to metadata and archival descriptions is a practice that libraries increasingly embrace, even though the American Library Association considers content labeling to be censorship under the Library Bill of Rights. The language used in a content warning, such as "offensive" or "harmful," carries…

YA author Pérez offers encouragement and insight into book challenges today, which are about much more than just a book. Offering tips for how to prepare for challenges and amplify student voices, the reader will also find ideas to help marginalized learners still find their way to targeted books.

In a socially just world, everyone would have an equal chance to become an enthusiastic reader. This article presents a detailed 'asset map' of a successful reading life and investigates three necessary components for creating readers: access, choice and time to read. Access to books, the chance and the requisite knowledge to choose reading…

When school librarians justify the purchase of electronic books (e-books) for their collections, they need to understand e-book usage patterns and whether or not e-books are meeting the recreational and informational needs of their students and teachers. Although a sizeable body of research is available examining the circulation and usage of…

Sharing both her personal and professional journey of finding mirrors, windows and sliding doors through access to diverse collections, the author offers steps to consider for maintaining learners' access when books relating to diverse characters, LGBTQ+ characters, or written by people of color are more frequently challenged: (1) revisit district…

Banned Books Week is a hallmark tradition among US-based librarians and the American Library Association. Yet, the ALA and librarians across the profession are excluding the most significant and egregious violations of intellectual freedom and access to literature and information in our so-called free society -- the US prison system. In this…

Access to books and storybook reading contribute to children's language, literacy and academic development. Homeless children often experience delays in these areas of development; however, their access to books and storybook reading is understudied. This study of 24 children in a family homeless shelter and 27 housed children in the same urban…

This article presents a systematic review of E-book user studies from 2001 to 2017. It focused on qualitative and quantitative studies that examined academic user groups' attitudes and interactions with E-books. The review aimed to reveal users' knowledge of the E-book format, their ability to define an E-book, their awareness of E-books'…

Academic libraries are continually being asked to demonstrate their value. Showing benefits that provide financial value to the user community is one approach to meeting this challenge. With a focus on journal articles and monographs, the authors have analyzed course syllabi to determine the cost savings graduate students in psychology receive…

Sixteen scholarly papers and twenty abstracts comprise the content of the eighteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship.…

School libraries have been in existence since at least the eighth century. However, it wasn't until the twentieth century that the school library was seen primarily as "a source of enrichment for the curriculum, and a means of developing reading and study habits in the pupils" (Clyde 1981, 263). While the formats available and tools for…

Starting in summer 2011, two librarians at Wesleyan University annually interviewed and directed usability studies with undergraduate students to determine how students interact with academic e-books. In 2014, the librarians used a campuswide quantitative survey to supplement these longitudinal qualitative findings. While students are increasingly…