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Learn about emerging trends around technology capacity, resources for patrons, infrastructure, digital literacy, and staffing in U.S. public libraries in the newly released 2023 Public Library Technology Survey report.
The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.
Your front line reports help ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom to stay on top of trends and supply library workers with resources to combat censorship. You can also help get the word out and encourage reporting of book censorship.
For more than 140 years, the American Library Association has been the trusted voice for all libraries, advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all.
Contact the ALA Communications, Marketing, and Media Relations team to learn more about ALA positions and actions and get comprehensive insights into key issues facing libraries nationwide.
Discussion boards and shared libraries provide collaboration tools connecting more than 50,000 library professionals with a wide variety of interests and specialization is the place to share ideas and make new connections with library workers across the globe.
Welcome to ALA eLearning, the leading global content provider of courses, webinars, and customized eLearning content for library and information workers in all types of libraries and related organizations. Designed to meet your evolving learning needs, ALA eLearning brings together content from every office and division of ALA in one place. New events are added all the time; search and browse for fee-based eCourses and webinars as well as free events. Come learn with ALA and its divisions and offices!
The ALA Awards program celebrates excellence in literature and media across a comprehensive and diverse array of categories. From captivating storytelling to groundbreaking research, the ALA Awards program showcases the best in literature and media.
ALA Professional Recognition Awards honor individuals and institutions that have made significant contributions to the advancement of library science and services, from excellence in leadership to innovative initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion within library spaces.
ALA Grants invest in the future of libraries and librarianship through the funding of programming, research, and professional development. Grants may be offered to support the planning and implementation of programs, to promote research in library and information sciences, to assist with conference and travel fees, and more.
The American Library Association (ALA) is committed to promoting and advancing the librarian profession. To demonstrate this commitment, the ALA and its units provide more than $300,000 annually for study in a master's degree in library and information studies from an ALA-accredited program, or for a master's degree with a specialty in school librarianship that meets the ALA curriculum guidelines for a CAEP-accredited unit.
The scholarship process is open annually from September 1st - March 1st. Applications and reference forms (which must be submitted on-line) are available during that time period. Instructions and general information remain available year round.
A 12-month book log and undated planner with weekly reads, book trackers, and more. Track your progress, discover new stories, and inspire a year of reading with the ALA's undated reading challenge planner.
Award-winning singer-songwriter, actress, author and philanthropist Dolly Parton has sold more than 100 million records worldwide but counts her Imagination Library initiative as one of her greatest achievements.
A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location, a virtual space, or both. A library's collection normally includes printed materials which may be borrowed, and usually also includes a reference section of publications which may only be utilized inside the premises. Resources such as commercial releases of films, television programmes, other video recordings, radio, music and audio recordings may be available in many formats. These include DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, or other applicable formats such as microform. They may also provide access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases.
Libraries can vary widely in size and may be organised and maintained by a public body such as a government, an institution (such as a school or museum), a corporation, or a private individual. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are trained experts in finding, selecting, circulating and organising information while interpreting information needs and navigating and analysing large amounts of information with a variety of resources.
Library buildings often provide quiet areas for studying, as well as common areas for group study and collaboration, and may provide public facilities for access to their electronic resources, such as computers and access to the Internet.
The library's clientele and general services offered vary depending on its type: users of a public library have different needs from those of a special library or academic library, for example. Libraries may also be community hubs, where programmes are made available and people engage in lifelong learning. Modern libraries extend their services beyond the physical walls of the building by providing material accessible by electronic means, including from home via the Internet.
The services that libraries offer are variously described as library services, information services, or the combination "library and information services", although different institutions and sources define such terminology differently.
Libraries may provide physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical location, virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, table games, video games, and other formats. Libraries range widely in size, up to millions of items.
Services offered by a library are variously described as library services, information services, or the combination "library and information services", although different institutions and sources define such terminology differently. Organizations or departments are often called by one of these names.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
Larger libraries are often divided into departments staffed by both paraprofessionals and professional librarians. Their department names and occupational designations may change depending on their location and the needs of the library.
Basic tasks in library management include planning acquisitions (which materials the library should acquire, by purchase or otherwise), classifying and preserving items (especially rare and fragile archival materials such as manuscripts), deaccessioning materials, patron borrowing, and developing and administering library computer systems and technology.[15] More long-term issues include planning the construction of new libraries or extensions to existing ones, and the development and implementation of outreach services and reading-enhancement services (such as adult literacy and children's programming). Library materials like books, magazines, periodicals, CDs, etc. are managed using a library classification system such as the Dewey Decimal Classification Theory, though libraries will usually adjust their classification system to fit their needs.[16]
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published several standards regarding the management of libraries through its Technical Committee 46 (TC 46),[17] which is focused on "libraries, documentation and information centers, publishing, archives, records management, museum documentation, indexing and abstracting services, and information science". The following is a partial list of some of them:[18]
Some patrons may not know how to fully utilize library resources, or feel unease in approaching a staff member. Ways in which a library's content is displayed or accessed may have an impact on use. An antiquated or clumsy search system, or staff unwilling or not properly trained to engage their patrons, will limit a library's usefulness. In the public libraries of the United States, beginning in the 19th century, these problems drove the emergence of the library instruction movement, which advocated library user education.[19] One of the early leaders was John Cotton Dana.[20] The basic form of library instruction is sometimes known as information literacy.[21]
The emergence of desktop computers and the Internet, however, has led to the adoption of electronic catalogue databases (often referred to as "webcats" or as online public access catalogues, OPACs), which allow users to search the library's holdings from any location with Internet access.[22] This style of catalogue maintenance is compatible with new types of libraries, such as digital libraries and distributed libraries, as well as older libraries that have been retrofitted. Large libraries may be scattered within multiple buildings across a town, each having multiple floors, with multiple rooms housing their resources across a series of shelves called bays. Once a user has located a resource within the catalogue, they must then use navigational guidance to retrieve the resource physically, a process that may be assisted through signage, maps, GPS systems, or RFID tagging.[citation needed]
Finland has the highest number of registered book borrowers per capita in the world. Over half of Finland's population are registered borrowers.[23] In the US, public library users have borrowed on average roughly 15 books per user per year from 1856 to 1978. From 1978 to 2004, book circulation per user declined approximately 50%. The growth of audiovisuals circulation, estimated at 25% of total circulation in 2004, accounts for about half of this decline.[24]