People

Beginning as a series of posts on the American Library Association (ALA) Connect members discussion board in fall 2024, Librarians We Have Lost was created to celebrate the Association’s sesquicentennial. ALA members were asked to submit tributes through ALA Connect to honor the memory, service, and professional contributions of librarians, educators, and library workers we have lost over the past 50 years.

Kayleen Jones, Education and Human Service Professions Librarian at the University of Minnesota–Duluth (UMD) Kathryn A. Martin Library, was named a 2025 Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her work launching the Antiracist Literary Advisory Board. Together with her library colleagues and the UMD Education faculty, Jones created the platform for Education students to learn about identifying needs around representation in children’s publishing and exploring ways to fill them. LJ spoke with Jones about the genesis of the project, and how it impacted those who participated.

Voting for the American Library Association (ALA) 2027–28 presidential campaign opens March 9, and ALA members in good standing can cast their ballots through April 1. LJ invited candidates Tamika Barnes, Associate Dean for Perimeter Library Services at Georgia State University, Atlanta, and President of the Georgia Library Association; and Becky Calzada, District Library Coordinator for the Leander Independent School District, TX, and a cofounding member of Texas #FReadom Fighters, to discuss some key issues they see facing the association and librarianship.

This year marks Library Journal’s 150th anniversary. How many media companies can say they have been actively publishing for a century and a half? In an increasingly challenging media landscape, it feels almost miraculous to still be here.

Janet Hyunju Clarke, associate dean of research and learning at Stony Brook University (SBU) Libraries, NY, was named a 2025 Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her campus-wide collaborations to create needed support and social systems for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students. LJ spoke with Clarke about how SBU’s AAPI Mentorship Network and AAPI Heritages Committee have evolved and grown.

With the threats facing our democracy, librarians are on the front lines in the battle for truth, knowledge, justice, and equity in their communities. Being a librarian or information professional has never been harder—and universities that offer Master’s in Library and Information Science degree programs are helping students meet this challenge.

Nearly all archival institutions, at every scale, hold a backlog of material awaiting processing. JSTOR’s recently created Digital Stewardship Services aims to address this situation with a next-gen service designed to help libraries and archives describe, preserve, manage, and share their collections using JSTOR’s AI-driven Seeklight tool (in conjunction with human expertise. Roger Schonfeld, who was recently named Managing Director of JSTOR Stewardship, spoke to LJ about bringing machine knowledge to a human-centered workflow.

Among all the encouraging dispatches coming out of this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, one of the most welcome was ALA’s announcement that Daniel J. Montgomery has been appointed as the association’s next Executive Director. He will start in the role on November 10, succeeding Interim Executive Director Leslie Burger.

It’s been four years since LJ spoke with Joy Bivins when she first stepped into her role as director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research division of New York Public Library. During that time, Bivins has thoughtfully grown the collections and expanded programming, and this year’s Centennial exhibit and celebration have given her the chance to flex still further. LJ caught up with Bivins to hear her thoughts on collecting, the importance of archiving with an eye to the future, and what goes into celebrating 100 years of cultural heritage.