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As we limp headfirst into a new decade, it's beginning to feel like many of these stories have become perennial entries.

2019 saw yet more drag queen story hour protests, vendor buyouts, the persistence of fake news, scandals, and lawsuits aplenty, along with the usual spate of book burning and banning.

Below are some of the other notable headlines from the past year's library-related news.

10. Naomi Cries Wolf

Feminist author Naomi Wolf found her book Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love cancelled by the publisher after a public revelation that its research was based on the flawed assumption of equating "death recorded" with the death penalty.

9. Circulating More than Books

For years, libraries have been experimenting with checking out tools, humans, and other non-book items—a practice which continues to make headlines.

8. Clueless Architects

Can you believe it's almost 2018? That means it's time to look back at some of the notable library-related stories from the past year.

10. Librarians Fight Fake News

The problems with fake news caused many of us to revamp our web evaluation handouts into guides for spotting bogus information sources.

9. Elsivier Roundup

Elsivier made several headlines this year, in the form of boycotts and resignations. Their buyout of bepress also raised eyebrows.

In related news, Beall's List went dark in January.

8. ALA's Trump Statements

Late last year

The rollback of net neutrality opens the possibility for ISPs to start to play with how we pay for the internet, but because [it hasn’t] been rolled back yet, we don’t have evidence that they will in fact do those things. It’s a little speculative at this point. I think everyone is speculating a little bit in this. But the indications we got from the ISPs are that there will be paid prioritization and for us, there are specific things that would likely end up in the slow lane.

Phoenix Fire Capt. Reda Bigler said a pipe in the ceiling of the building's fifth floor ruptured when the storm lifted the roof and caused it to move in a wave-like fashion.

“When (the roof) slammed back down it broke a sprinkler pipe," Bigler said. “That caused about 50 to 60 gallons a minute of water to start flowing through the building." All five stories were affected.

Can you believe we're closing in on 2017? It's time once again to look back at the notable library-related stories from the past year.

Dishonorable Mention: Librarian Arrested in "First Amendment" Issue
In May, an altercation with security personnel at a Kansas City Public Library event led to violent arrests against several people, including the programming director.

10. Google Books Case Finally Ends
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the last appeal of the Authors Guild in the nearly decade-old Google Books copyright case.

9. Open Data Initiatives
This year saw continued growth of efforts to make research data freely available.

8. Libraries Catch Pokémon Go Fever
Many libraries got on board with the latest augmented reality app based on collecting and fighting with other Pokémon creatures.

7. Intellectual Property Disputes Aplenty
Legal cases involving everyone from Anne Frank to the NFL made headlines this year.

6. Libraries Fund Open Access
More libraries now offer to pay author fees for open access publications.

5. Welcome, Robot Overlords
This year AI agents won a game against a grandmaster of Go, made medical diagnoses, and drove a truck across the highway. Time will tell how these advances impact libraries.

4. Sci-Hub
Piracy of academic research became a big league success via the website Sci-Hub, raising many questions and discussions about the need for such a clandestine distribution of knowledge.

3. "Illegal Aliens"
After the U.S. Library of Congress announced the Subject Heading "Illegal Aliens" would be replaced with the terms "Noncitizens" and "Unauthorized immigration," Congress legislated a halt to the renaming process.

2. Carla Hayden becomes the new Librarian of Congress
In September, Dr. Hayden was sworn in as the successor to James Billington, giving many hope about the future of the nation's library.

1. Our "Post-truth" Era
The circumstances resulting in the naming of OED's word of the year, namely the rise of fake news and our current political climate, make librarians and other educators as important as ever.

What was your favorite story this year?

In 2015, OCLC announced that WorldCat Discovery Services would replace FirstSearch at the end of the calendar year. The Discovery interface, similar to Open WorldCat, features a revamped design, faceted results, and improved listings of related editions and formats. However, it lacks a few advanced search functions available via the FirstSearch version. In response to complaints about these missing options, the retirement date for FirstSearch was extended to 2016. This week it was announced that FirstSearch would continue into 2017, while work is done building a new platform to support full-featured searching. Since Worldcat Discovery will apparently also be enhanced with new capabilities, OCLC's prolonged development cycle and plans to maintain two product lines seem confounding.

It's that time of year again! Here's our thirteenth annual rundown of notable library stories from the last twelve months.

10. Go Set a Watchman Raises Eyebrows

Strange circumstances surrounded Harper Lee's first publication since To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. Mixed reviews and strong sales followed.

9. Open Source Textbooks Gain Momentum

This year saw an increased push for more affordable course readings, as well as the growth of the Open Textbook Library.

From the New York Times:

A pipe burst in the Times’s morgue which occupies the sub-subbasement of the former New York Herald Tribune building on 41st Street. Morgue manager Jeff Roth is quoted as saying "this was the stuff of nightmares. It’s always been a worry."

Roth stated that most likely 90% of the photos could be salvageable. But it raised the question of how in the digital age — and in the prohibitive Midtown Manhattan real estate market — can some of the company’s most precious physical assets and intellectual property be safely and reasonably stored?

Week in Review photos protected the card catalog.

Here's the popular NYT Photo Archive tumblr account, the Lively Morgue.

The average scientist is not statistically more likely than a member of the general public to have an artistic or crafty hobby. But members of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society -- elite societies of scientists, membership in which is based on professional accomplishments and discoveries -- are 1.7 and 1.9 times more likely to have an artistic or crafty hobby than the average scientist is. And Nobel prize winning scientists are 2.85 times more likely than the average scientist to have an artistic or crafty hobby.

From The Correlation Between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize

“Over the last five years, OCLC has been in a period of significant investment in new products and services,” the nonprofit computer-service and research organization said in a statement. “To support that investment, we have increased staffing in a number of areas and completed acquisitions to strengthen our position.”

From OCLC lays off 27 in Dublin as libraries struggle | The Columbus Dispatch

With 2015 around the corner, it's time to look back at this year's notable headlines.

10. Little Scofflaws

The Little Free Library movement ran afoul of local ordinances in several locations this year.

9. IKEA Catalogue

Amidst the hoopla over 3D printers, many of us got a

Cites & Insights 14:11 (December 2014) available
http://www.lisnews.org/cites_insights_1411_december_2014_available

From the Teen Librarian Toolbox, a description of how the Ferguson, MO Public Library is serving the populace of this troubled town.

If you would like to donate to Ferguson Library, their address is:
35 N Florissant Rd,
Ferguson, MO 63135.

Reading Public Library, MA

Canton Public Library, MI

New York Public Library, NYC

Video piece featuring Robin Williams Announcing the opening of the San Francisco Main Library from Free for All Films

He will be sorely missed.

This from the usually forward looking site io9, "A historian has reconstructed the lost library of books that accompanied Charles Darwin during his five-year scientific voyage across the world, allowing the public to read the more than 400 volumes that served as reference and inspiration for the young naturalist whose theories would revolutionize biology.

The library was dispersed at the conclusion of the voyage. But now, nearly 180 years later, it has been electronically reconstructed in its entirety by historian John van Wyhe and is freely available at his Darwin Online website. The collection consists of more than 195,000 pages containing over 5,000 illustrations."

Here's the link to the Charles Darwin Beagle Library

Cites & Insights 14:8 (August 2014) is now available for downloading at http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i8.pdf

The City of Lincoln has evicted a Little Free Library from its location near a church in the Indian Village neighborhood, saying the library box can't sit in a public right of way.

The city gave the group and the church, New Visions Community-Southminster site, until Thursday to move the box onto private property or face fines that could hit $500.

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