The digital natives of Gen Z identify as readers, distrust algorithms, and increasingly turn to libraries.

The city of Huntington Beach, CA, has been ordered by an Orange County Superior Court judge to pay nearly $1 million in legal fees as the result of a lawsuit claiming that the Huntington Beach Public Library (HBPL) violated state policy. The city was sued in February 2025 by residents, including a former HBPL librarian, who alleged that the Huntington Beach City Council’s relocation of books deemed to have sexual content violated the 2024 California Freedom to Read Act.

Google.org last week announced a $3 million grant to Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), New York Public Library (NYPL), and Queens Public Library (QPL) to help the systems expand artificial intelligence (AI) literacy programming for staff and the public. All three systems offer extensive digital literacy programming to patrons, including thousands of classes and workshops at branches across the city. This initiative will build on that foundation, aiming to help library staff and patrons better understand the potential benefits and risks of AI as a quickly developing technology.

Libraries are meeting this year’s challenges with a wide range of action, all the more reason to shine a light on the ways—often simple (but not easy), often incremental, and nearly always rooted in great care and concern—that library workers are supporting their communities.

From OCLC: As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, OCLC today introduces America’s 250-Year Bookshelf, a collection of 250 nonfiction books about America—one for every year since 1776—identified through data from WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive source of information about library collections. The list reveals which books, from among the vast number written about America over […]

The post OCLC Releases “America’s 250-Year Bookshelf” Shaped by What Libraries Collect appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

From The Royal Society: An archive of over 1,600 sets of meteorological, magnetic and tidal observations taken from 1706-1915 from across the globe has been digitised for the first time. The treasure trove of historic weather data and imagery is now available for scientists across the globe to study on the Royal Society’s Science in the […]

The post The Royal Society: Historic Weather Data Made Available to Scientists and Public, Spanning Antarctica to Greenland appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

From a Crossref Post by Patricia Feeney: A significant update is nearly here. Schema 5.5 will expand contributor metadata to support multiple roles per contributor, and will introduce support for CRediT — the ANSI/NISO taxonomy for contributor roles. This means that an individual’s complete contribution to a research output can finally be described in our metadata, rather […]

The post A Look at the “Story of Crossref’s Metadata Development” appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

From PC World: That chaotic, 1995-era state of the web is similar to where we are now with the “agentic” web. Just like users struggled to find URLs back in those days, so do AI agents struggle to find the tools they need to actually get things done online. When you ask an AI agent […]

The post Standards: Say Hello to the Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Specification appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

Information schools are navigating serious structural challenges — including mergers into larger university units and the difficulty of preserving disciplinary identity within administratively complex institutions. The hosts propose that iSchools come together to collectively address the organizational challenge along with curriculum, leadership, and integration of AI issues.

Libraries aspire to be a place where everyone belongs — but what does that commitment look like today when it is being both tested and expanded? In this episode, we explore how libraries are redefining sanctuary: partnering with nonprofits and social service agencies, navigating uncertain immigration policy, and balancing the needs of the most vulnerable with maintaining a welcoming and safe space for families and the broader community.

We consider crime and crime stories through an information lens. From the Serial podcast to seventeen copies of James Patterson on our shelves, we all love a good mystery. But, lying beneath every cold case, wrongful conviction, and uninvestigated crime is an information failure. Buckle up, because we're about to ruin your next true crime binge.

World War II novels have long been a major theme in the historical fiction category, and publishers continue to mine that period—and other historical eras—to find stories that we don’t yet know and new ways of telling the ones that we do. 

Rob Franklin’s Great Black Hope wins the Ernest J. Gaines Award for emerging Black American fiction writers. Ben Lerner’s Transcription and Karen Bartlett’s Escape from Kabul win Orwell Prizes. Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul, Marc Bendavid’s The Sapling, and Marcus Kliewer’s We Used To Live Here win Canada’s Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes. NYT’s Book Review Book Club picks Douglas Stuart’s John of John for July; Read with Jenna picks Jenny Jackson’s The Shampoo Effect. Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of Careless People, is suing over the company’s efforts to silence her. Plus, Page to Screen and a new collection of early writings by Pope Leo XIV.

University presses have played a vital role in society and scholarship in the U.S. since the 19th century. But their high standards have never been more important than they are in today’s collapsing information ecosystem. 

Shortlists are announced for the Taste Canada Awards for cookbooks and food writing and for Australia’s Miles Franklin Literary Award. Melissa Powless Day and reuben quinn win Canada’s Indigenous Voices Awards. Ingram and Penguin Random House team up to offer libraries hardcover print-on-demand options for backlist titles. ThriftBooks launches LibraryAdvantage, through which libraries can order new releases and out-of-print editions. A new audiobook of Homer’s Odyssey is narrated by an AI-generated Michael Caine. Plus, new title bestsellers and LJ’s Galley Guide for ALA 2026.