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Frankly, I should have seen it coming, but personal growth and change can be so subtle that you sometimes don’t realize you’re doing it until you’ve done it. In my case, things started small: snapping a photo of a wildflower while on a walk, admiring my friend’s summer crop of vegetables.

On Thursday, June 27, at the American Library Association Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego, CA, the Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the launch of its nationwide Information Literacy Initiative. The multipartner project provides a website, InformationLiteracy.gov, that offers a wide range of ready-to-use tools and resources for library and museum professionals—trusted educators—to engage their communities to find, understand, evaluate, and share accurate information.

A Minnesota bill with a section prohibiting book bans in public libraries, and libraries or media centers in public postsecondary institutions and schools, was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz on May 17. Senate File 3567, an omnibus education reform bill—which also includes rulings on cell phone use in schools, student performance data, and student journalism, among other items—went into effect immediately.

June 24 marks two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, making abortion a state’s issue. As of this writing, abortion is banned or severely restricted in 21 states. However, abortion is just one part of the larger landscape of Reproductive Justice and reproductive health. Whether you are providing reproductive health information, especially abortion information, in your collections, at the reference desk, or through programming, consult with a legal expert about your options. This may include what type of information you can provide and where in your collection it’s located.

The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is continuing to recover from a ransomware attack on Saturday, May 25. At press time, all branches were open, in-person and virtual programs and events were still being hosted, books and other physical materials were available for checkout, and online services provided by third-party vendors including ProQuest, Hoopla, Kanopy, and others were available to patrons. However, access to SPL’s ebooks and e-audiobooks, public computers, in-building Wi-Fi, printing and copying services, pickup lockers, museum pass services, interlibrary loan services, and some other online resources remained unavailable.

In a divided three-judge panel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a majority decision largely upholding a preliminary injunction ordering Llano County Library System to reshelve several titles that were previously removed.

In their shared hometown of Columbus, OH, at an event where readers celebrated their writing, Hanif Abdurraqib and Jacqueline Woodson sat with Library Journal for a conversation about libraries, book bans, and censorship.

As a book lover who works in the book industry, I have a job that aligns with my love for reading—and I get to work with librarians! Witnessing the sharp rise in attempts to ban books nationwide in recent years, I have become a vocal supporter of the First Amendment in ways that I didn’t expect when I began in publishing in 1988.

Frederick Douglass famously said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” This powerful and inspiring idea continues to resonate more than a century later, at a time when the essential services that libraries provide are more vital than ever.