For his work bringing partners from across the county to drive innovation and change lives, Las Vegas–Clark County Library District Executive Director Kelvin Watson is LJ’s 2026 Librarian of the Year. 

As ICE raids continue in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN (MSP), the school day is anything but normal. Parents are standing guard and acting as escorts for immigrants and all nonwhite students at drop-off and pickup, recess has often been moved inside while ICE agents stand just outside campuses, schools are facilitating online learning to accommodate children whose families are too scared to let them leave the house, and students are staging walkouts in protest.

A three-year research project, funded through a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, has been making progress on examining how libraries can help their communities better understand artificial intelligence. Led by a partnership between the Urban Libraries Council and the State University of New York at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government, four public libraries—Frisco Public Library, TX, Palo Alto City Library, CA, Queens Public Library, NY, and Schaumburg Township District Library, IL, are involved.

Looking for heated rivalries, racing hearts, and love on the line? Check out these sports romances.

From the New Jersey Monitor: New Jersey librarians and lawmakers who joined forces to fight book-banners a few years ago have a new target: publishers whose restrictive e-book licensing agreements have shrunk digital access for library users. [Clip] Such practices would become a violation of New Jersey’s consumer fraud law under a bill Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-Middlesex) […]The post Report: “In Digital-First Era, NJ Librarians Demand More Affordable E-Books” appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

From a COMET Blog Post: The COMET team is pleased to share results from an exciting line of work we have recently completed, focused on unlocking author-affiliation metadata from preprints. Specifically, we have trained a small, open-weight large language model (LLM) that achieves state-of-the-art performance on author-affiliation extraction for arXiv works. With this approach, we […]The post Project Results From COMET: “Unlocking Author-Affiliation Metadata For All of arXiv” appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

Iowa Iowa Bill Advanced Monday Would Remove Library Exemptions From Obscenity Restrictions (via The Gazette) Exemptions from restrictions on obscene materials would be lifted from Iowa public libraries under legislation advanced by state lawmakers Monday. The bill, Senate File 2119, would repeal a section of Iowa code that provides exemptions from restrictions on obscene materials that […]The post Legislation Roundup: Iowa Bill Advanced Monday Would Remove Library Exemptions From Obscenity Restrictions; Controversial Library Book Policy Bill Clears First Reading in Wyoming House appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

Here’s the table of contents for the latest issue of Library Trends (Volume 74, Number 3, February 2026). The issue is titled, “Data Literacy: Navigating the Shift from Hype to Reality” and was edited by Ben B. Chiewphasa. From the Introduction: The 74 (3) issue of Library Trends examines the intersection of technological hype and practical reality […]The post New Issue of Library Trends (74.3): Data Literacy: Navigating the Shift from Hype to Reality appeared first on Library Journal infoDOCKET.

Art by AI? In this episode we look at AI filling our playlists, our literary magazines, and gulp, even our library shelves. Does an embrace of AI alienate institutions like libraries from their communities, or is it an embrace of a new creative medium? How do you draw the line between AI slop and AI assist?

Art by AI? In this episode we look at AI filling our playlists, our literary magazines, and gulp, even our library shelves. Does an embrace of AI alienate institutions like libraries from their communities, or is it an embrace of a new creative medium? How do you draw the line between AI slop and AI assist?

In this episode, we consider the nature, joy and despair and the challenges and opportunities that we deal with every day in the digital age. Are we in control? Are we merely pawns in their game?

Ohio Humanities launches a yearlong celebration of Nobel Prize–winning Ohioan Toni Morrison. Andy Weir wins the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The Dublin Literary Award longlist and the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards shortlists are revealed. Audible names 15 new inductees to its Narrator Hall of Fame. Kentucky governor Andy Beshear announces his forthcoming memoir, Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country, due out September 22. Plus, LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for top holds title The Astral Library by Kate Quinn.

Coombe’s debut is highly recommended for anyone who loved the town/business-building, dream-catching coziness of the “Legends & Lattes” series by Travis Baldree, the “Tomes & Tea” series by Rebecca Thorne, or Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz.

A particularly well-crafted sports romance from a talented new voice. Readers will be clamoring for more from Vellner.

Two new novels to check out include a poignant story of the power of human connection in The Unforgettable Mailman by April Howells and Westward Women, a unique and riveting novel by Alice Martin.