American Libraries launches E-Content blog

CHICAGO — Keeping up with the many varieties of digital content—and how libraries can offer them to their patrons—just got easier. American Libraries has launched an “E-Content” blog (http://americanlibraries.org/e-content) that provides information on e-books, e-readers, e-journals, databases, digital libraries, digital repositories, and other e-content issues. The blog complements the new section on e-content that appears in the weekly e-newsletter American Libraries Direct and focuses on similar issues.

E-Content is administered by Christopher Harris, director of the School Library System for the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership in New York State. Harris was selected because of his engaged expertise in many things digital. A participant in the first ALA Emerging Leaders program in 2007, Harris was subsequently honored as a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2008. He is coauthor of Libraries Got Game, published by ALA Editions in 2010, and is a regular contributor to School Library Journal.

The E-Content blog will help disseminate the work of the new ALA Working Group on Digital Content and Libraries, which is currently being formed to proactively address digital content opportunities and issues from both policy and practical perspectives. This Association-wide group of experts, selected by ALA President Molly Raphael, will broadly represent the many constituencies within the library community. The working group’s charge reflects a priority of the ALA 2015 Strategic Plan, supporting the “transformation” of libraries.

American Libraries, the flagship magazine of the American Library Association, continues to extend its 104-year tradition of keeping readers informed in print and (increasingly) online. The American Libraries suite of publications includes:

• six print issues of American Libraries and four digital supplements per year;
• American Libraries Direct, the award-winning weekly e-newsletter;
• americanlibrariesmagazine.org, a continually updated, comment-enabled website;
• a growing family of blogs, including “Inside Scoop,” “Ask the ALA Librarian,” “Censorship Watch,” “Global Reach,” and “E-Content”;
• a Twitter feed and Facebook page; and
• video archives at AL Focus with coverage of conferences and events, interviews, profiles, and more.

American Libraries, the premier source of news and information about the library and information science profession and published by the American Library Association, has been keeping library and information science and technology workers in touch with the profession’s most current concerns for more than a century.