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Gamers! Visit I Love Libraries at Gen Con 2008, booth #1430.

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month, and NBA superstar and author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the honorary chair for the annual event. Learn more on the I Love Libraries Library Card Sign-Up Month page.

How do I prove the value of libraries? Learn the answer to that and more on I Love Libraries' Ask the Librarian page.

Top Stories

August 5, 2008: Love Libraries at Gen Con 2008
I Love Libraries will be exhibiting at the Gen Con gaming convention in Indianapolis. If you’re a gaming fan and are going to be at the show be sure to stop by and let us know how much you love your library at Booth #1430. We’ll have bookmarks, buttons, and a photo booth on hand for you to get a picture showing the world how much you love Gaming @ your library. Read more...

August 5, 2008: Encourage Young People to Have Fun and Learn at Museums and Libraries This Summer!
For over 100 years, one of the most popular means to keep young people engaged in reading—and enjoy it!—is the summer reading program. Not only are they fun, but summer reading programs (SRPs) are particularly important to a young person's continuing education. Read more...

July 22, 2008: People of the Book: Establishing a Parish Book Discussion Group
While the primary and most immediate purpose of all education need not be religious, learning, at its core, restores and revivifies us both spiritually and intellectually. The Saint Raphael Parish Book Discussion Group was born out of insights from a 2003 discussion of The Da Vinci Code. Read more...

July 22, 2008: The Digital Television Transition, Libraries, and You
Television as you know it is about to change. By law, on February 17, 2009, television stations nationwide must stop transmitting signals in analog format and begin transmitting in digital. That process has come to be known as the Digital Television (DTV) Transition and libraries are set to play a big role. Read more...

July 9, 2008: 25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians
As a librarian, you want to be able to share information with patrons and students in the easiest way possible, and social networking offers a great way to do just that. With social networking tools, you can create bookmark collections, share notices, and more. We've profiled 25 of the best here. Read more...

July 9, 2008: Art Installation Focuses On Public Libraries
Mixed media artist, Mindy Nierenberg, is one of five artists featured in “5 x 5,” the Tufts University Art Gallery Summer 2008 Exhibition. Her site-specific art installation, “Bibliotheca Publicus: An Endangered Species,” calls attention to the current and very serious issue of public library budget cuts, while also highlighting the importance of the public library to a democratic society and to the public that it serves. Read more...

June 25, 2008: Changing Lives Through Literature
Have you ever read a novel that has impacted your life in a profound and meaningful way, or made you feel as though you’re not alone? Literature has the power to transform lives. This is the driving philosophy behind Changing Lives through Literature (CLTL,) an award-winning alternative sentencing program that has grown from one chapter in Massachusetts in the fall of 1991, to roughly 20 chapters across the United States and England today. Read more...

June 25, 2008: Two Million on the Wrong Side of the Digital Divide
The digital world is alien to the vast majority of men and women who have been serving time in U.S. prisons from before the eras of the PC and the coming of the Digital Age. Over two million people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails, of which sixty percent are minorities. Ninety-five percent of these people will be released at some time during their lives and become part of the migration of more than 600,000 ex-offenders returning from prisons and jails to American communities each year. Read more...

June 11, 2008: Oakland Public Library Makes Manga Magic
The Oakland (Calif.) Public Library recently held its 5th annual Making Manga Magic contest, asking teens to create their own Manga/Anime Characters. Six winners (one per age group) were announced at a reception on April 12. Read more...

June 11, 2008: A Glimpse into the Libraries of Central Africa
Author Barbara Conaty profiles library developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Malawi, and Zambia. Read more...

May 29, 2008: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Speaks Out For Libraries
September is Library Card Sign-up Month–a time when the American Library Association and libraries across the country remind parents that a library card is the most important school supply of all. This year, NBA legend and author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is this year's honorary Library Card Sign-up Month chair. Read more...

May 29, 2008: How READ Posters Get Made
ALA Graphics, which has produced READ posters featuring hundreds of international celebrities, including movie and TV stars, comedians, athletes, musicians, and innovators, explains how celebrities are selected–and persuaded to pose. Read more...

May 14, 2008: Get Through Tough Times @ your library
All this talk of recession and economic downturn is a bit scary isn't it? As a librarian, I look at what is occurring and begin to wonder how it will affect our budgets in coming years. But I couldn't help but think of all the ways libraries can help their communities and actually increase patronage during tough times through the "free" services we offer. Read more...

May 14, 2008: A Library Mission to Kyrgyzstan
Something weird and wonderful happened to me in October 2007. The U.S. State Department sent me to the Kyrgyz Republic in central Asia on a public library good will mission. This odyssey began in August 2007 when I found a message on my desk from the U.S. State Department offering me a speaking engagement in a central Asian republic. Read more...

April 30, 2008: Graphic Women
Dale Messick started the first enduring newspaper comic strip by a woman, Brenda Starr, in 1940, and Nicole Hollander (Sylvia), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), and Lynn Johnston (For Better or Worse) followed in her footsteps, only much later. Women creating graphic novels came still later. In fact, this core collection of books either made up of comic-book short stories and comic-book serials or created as books is an honor roll of pioneers. Read more...

April 15, 2008: Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day
April 17 is the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day, created by the Academy of American Poets to help us celebrate April as National Poetry Month. Poem in Your Pocket Day encourages us all to pick our most favorite poems and carry them with us to share with our family and friends. The Academy suggests several clever ways to take our poems along with us, including handwriting some lines on the back of our business cards, adding a poem to our e-mail footers, posting a poem on our blog or social networking page, and texting a poem to our friends. Read more...

April 12, 2008: Dora the Explorer Supports Family Literacy During Día Celebration
April 30th marks the 12th anniversary of the national El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day) celebration, also known as Día, and libraries across the country will host Día celebrations with family programs including bilingual story hours, book giveaways, and other literacy events. This year, through the generosity of Nickelodeon®, Dora the Explorer™ will support Día as its first ever spokescharacter. Dora can be found in libraries throughout the country posing for a special bilingual poster and bookmark that encourage children to “Celebrate Books!” (Celebremos los libros!). Read more...

April 12, 2008: Gaming @ your library Day: One Game, One Time, Many Players
Friday April 18th is “gaming @ your library Day”. As one part of that day, the Games and Gaming Members Initiative Group (MIG) and the ALA are encouraging people across the country to play the same board game at the same time: "Ticket to Ride", at 7PM Eastern/6PM Central/5PM Mountain/4PM Pacific. Designed by Alan R. Moon, and published by Days of Wonder, "Ticket to Ride" is an excellent example of the new generation of board games. Read more...

April 11, 2008: In Celebration of National Library Week
"One might hear this week how we celebrate libraries because they house national treasures—e.g., knowledge, history, creativity, and equal accessibility. But I celebrate libraries for very personal reasons," writes author and professor BJ Ward. Read his memories of libraries from his youth here...

April 4, 2008: Step Up to the Plate @ your library Swings Into Action
The boys of summer are stepping up to the plate, so why not join them? The American Library Association and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum are getting into the swing of things by launching the third season of Step Up to the Plate @ your library. It could be your chance to win a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame! Read more...

April 1, 2008: Small Change Makes a Big Difference
If Barker residents are fond of their pennies, they had best lock them away and guard them carefully. Otherwise, a Pratt Elementary School pupil could very well snatch them up and deliver them to Barker Free Library, which is a bit squeezed for cash these days. When school started in September, Pratt pupils got together with their teachers and decided to collect as many pennies as they could during the school year to assist the library. Read more...

April 1, 2008: Deedy, Breslin Named Spokespeople for School Library Media Month
Award-winning author Carmen Agra Deedy and Oscar-nominated actor Abigail Breslin have been named national spokespeople for the 2008 School Library Media Month, celebrated in April. School Library Media Month is sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and celebrated by school library media centers around the country. Read more...

March 19, 2008: First Lady Laura Bush Discusses Post-White House Agenda
American Libraries Editor Leonard Kniffel visited the White House March 19 for an exclusive interview with First Lady Laura Bush. Mrs. Bush, a teacher and librarian and the first librarian to serve as First Lady, covers a host of topics, including the role she will play in the George W. Bush Presidential Library to be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, how her work as a librarian influenced has influenced her own initiatives, and why young people should consider librarianship as a career. Read more...

March 19, 2008: Welcoming Libraries: How Communities’ Favorite Public Institutions Are Settling New Immigrants
If you’re listening to the presidential debates, you know immigration continues to be a hot issue in America. Foreign-born residents now constitute nearly 13% of the American population, a rate not seen since 1910. A new report from the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) entitled “Welcome, Stranger: Public Libraries Build the Global Village” reports on trends for the spread of immigration into new cities, and the role public libraries play in welcoming and settling new residents. Read more...

March 19, 2008: Booklist Editors' Choice
Every year, the editors of Booklist magazine prepare a set of Editors' Choice lists. These lists contain dozens of great reads representative of the year's most outstanding books. Books included on these lists balance popular appeal with intellectual, literary, and aesthetic excellence. Read more...

March 4, 2008: Teen Tech Week 2008
It’s Teen Tech Week, the Young Adult Library Services Association’s annual celebration of technology available to teens at the library. More than 1,500 libraries across the country are holding special events ranging from podcasting seminars to gaming nights–but for twenty libraries, Teen Tech Week is downright special this year. Read more...

March 2, 2008: Sunshine Week: Your Right To Know
Sunshine Week is an annual event that marks the importance of public access to government information. Access to information is one of the founding principles of librarianship, so it’s no surprise that libraries play a role during Sunshine Week. ALA will participate in a national Sunshine Week dialogue and webcast March 19. Read more...

February 20, 2008: The Civil Rights Movement: Sites for Students and Researchers
The Supreme Court's Brown versus Board of Education decision turned 50 in 2004. Over the next several years, many of the perennially popular research topics of the Civil Rights Movement will celebrate equally momentous anniversaries. Media attention and scholarly interest increase with each significant anniversary. This article offers several excellent resources for students and researchers. Read more...

February 17, 2008: Booklist Editors Read For Fun 2007
American Libraries Associate Editor Dan Kraus talked to seven editor-reviewers for Booklist Magazine about the books they read in their spare time in 2007. Learn one editor's excuse for not reading Harry Potter, how another found cheer in "an intrusive and lying government, torture, and nuclear experiments," and the treasure a third found in Montana. See video...

February 14, 2008: It Took a Community to Build This Library
The Fort Washakie School in Wyoming was chosen as a winner of the 2007 Thompson Gale Giant Step Award because of its efforts to make the library not only a school affair, but a community one too. With no library on the Shoshone reservation the school serves, the school superintendent and board realized that students needed a place to do homework, and adults needed library access to pursue careers or interests. Read more...

February 6, 2008: Grassroots Group Grows School Library Support in Washington State
More than 100 people gathered in the rain at the state capitol steps in Olympia, Washington, February 1 to rally for school libraries (above), despite cold winds and a storm in the eastern half of the state that prevented many from attending, and which later caused Governor Christine Gregoire to declare a state of emergency for 15 counties. The rally and an all-day summit were the culmination of the work of a group of concerned Spokane mothers. Read more...

January 29, 2008: Grassroots Group Rally for SKILLs Act
Characterizing school library media specialists as “an endangered species,” Washington State Sen. Tracey J. Eide (D-Federal Way) introduced a bill January 22 that codifies through a per-pupil formula how many credentialed school library media specialists should be employed by each district and offers some $55 million to fund the initiative. Its aim of guaranteeing the presence in school libraries of certificated staff echoes the language of the federal SKILLs (Strengthening Kids’ Interest in Learning and Libraries) Act, introduced in June 2007 as an unfunded amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act and scheduled for Senate committee review in February. Read more...

January 24, 2008: 65 Reasons to Love Your Library
The 65 Reasons to Love Your Library tool kit (PDF) was developed by the Texas Library Association Public Relations Committee, under the leadership of Sue Haas, committee chair, 2003-2005. Texas libraries use it to develop local promotional campaigns. The elements of the 65 Reasons tool kit can be adapted to fit your library and your needs. Read more...

January 22, 2008: Serving the Vision Impaired
Recently, writes Central Washington University Catalog Librarian Mary Wise, I visited the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (http://www.wtbbl.org/) in Seattle, where the books talk. Library director Gloria Leonard filled me in on the history of this special library. It opened around 1906 at the Seattle Public Library, then located on Fourth Avenue. As the story goes, a library employee wanted to supply Braille materials to the entire state, and by 1907 about a hundred Braille-embossed books were circulating by mail. Read more...

January 14, 2008: American Library Association announces literary award winners
The American Library Association (ALA) today announced the top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults—including the Caldecott, King, Newbery, Schneider Family and Printz awards—at its Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia. Read more...

January 8, 2008: Enterprising Alabama teen restocks Greensburg's library
Though Greensburg has been visited by scores of individuals with greater clout and name recognition since its utter destruction by the May 4 tornado, none have come to Kiowa County in recent months with a greater sense of purpose than did 17-year-old Christopher Skrzypczak last Friday. With his mother Sonja, two younger brothers and little sister, Skrzypczak traveled to Greensburg last week with a trailer full of books to help restock the town’s library. They left last Wednesday afternoon from their home in Enterprise, Alabama, site of an F-4 tornado last March 1 that killed eight of the teen’s fellow students as they huddled in a hallway just outside their classrooms. Read more...

January 8, 2008: ALA President Loriene Roy releases statement on PEW survey on library use
Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association (ALA) released the following statement regarding the release of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the University of Illinois’ "Information Searches That Solve Problems: How People Use the Internet, Government Agencies, and Libraries When They Need Help" survey. The survey was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the primary source of federal funding for U.S. museums and libraries. Read more...

News from 2007