As the American Library Association (ALA) celebrates 150 years, we’re drawing inspiration from key events since its 1876 founding: from the first conventions and library schools, through wartime and ...

The year 2023 was another record-breaker for book bans. The American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 1,247 attempts to censor library books and other ...

From left: ALA Executive Director Dan Montgomery, ALA Past President Sam Helmick, OIF Executive Director Sarah Lamdan, and ALA President Maria McCauleyPhoto: EPNAC Sam Helmick recalls the first moment ...

Z! Haukeness from the Shine Initiative—a nonprofit based in Madison, Wisconsin—keeps a prominent profile in a glass room in the middle of Madison Public Library, where he and a coworker spend 30 hours ...

Welcome to the 2025 Library Design Showcase, American Libraries’ annual celebration of new and renovated libraries throughout North America. Today’s libraries are places where people from diverse ...

When Jessie Carney Smith arrived at Fisk University in Nashville in 1965, she says many people there did not know about black literature. Smith, the dean of the library, says, “Many scholars were told ...

Film programming is a natural fit for libraries. It’s another tool in our arsenal of storytimes, book groups, and lectures to create educational, emotional, and silly programs for every age and ...

Contemporary research in the humanities has expanded beyond anything that could be considered traditional. Historians are building interactive digital maps, literary scholars are using computers to ...

The June 30 panel at the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia gathered library technology experts to discuss ways that AI—and other technologies—are ...

In the past several years, virtual reality (VR) technology has finally begun to fulfill what had long been promised. Traditional VR, which creates environments that allow people to be “present” in an ...