“Collecting fines is the single greatest point of friction between library staff and patrons,” he told the San Francisco Public Library Commission last month. The commission voted that night to make San Francisco the latest library system to go fine-free.

Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teen school leavers skills equivalent to university graduates who didn’t read

An Ohio library says a 1968 copy of Life magazine with the Beatles on the cover has been returned by a borrower who apologized for stealing it as a "kid" and sent $100 to cover late fees.

The New York Public Library has one of the largest public collections in the world. But, unlike Amazon, it does not have seemingly infinite storage. Every book must earn its place on crowded shelves. Nothing gets there by accident. With millions of books to choose from, the library often gets asked how a book gets on the shelves.

The Cleveland Public Library is ending fines for overdue materials. That announcement was made during a "State of the Library" address by executive director Felton Thomas Jr. at the City Club of Cleveland on Wednesday, Feb. 27. Thomas also laid out plans for a year-long sesquicentennial celebration that, he said, "focuses on places, programs and people."

As a leader in the global movement toward open access to publicly funded research, the University of California is taking a firm stand by deciding not to renew its subscriptions with Elsevier.

On Tuesday, the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony on Councilmember Daniel Dromm’s bill, Int. 1184, that requires the Department of Correction to provide access to the library for all incarcerated people within 48 hours of entering the jail system. The Department would be required to report on the number of books they receive, the source of those books and, if books are censored, the reason for the censorship.

School districts would no longer be required to have a school nurse and a teacher librarian under a proposal advanced in the Iowa Senate Tuesday. Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, chair of the Education Committee, said the bill would give school boards and communities more power to make decisions that are best for local students. “Do we trust those people and their teachers to make the decisions that are appropriate to their students, or not?

Highly selective journals, in particular, argued that they have high internal costs that couldn’t reasonably be recouped in a fully open-access model, and that cutting costs would risk reducing journals’ quality.

Many of these institutions have begun to embrace this marriage of ideas. Hip-hop curricula, archives, conferences, and fellowships now have homes in even the nation’s most venerable academic institutions, including Cornell University, Harvard University, Duke University, and many more.