Just over a year ago, JSTOR launched its Digital Stewardship Services to help libraries manage, preserve, and share their distinctive collections for maximum impact and discoverability through a comprehensive suite of services. In mid-July, JSTOR Stewardship Managing Director Roger Schonfeld announced a new round of funding from the Mellon Foundation that will help participants at the first step of their workflow: direct support for digitizing unprocessed materials.

The era of mere “firefighting” and polite, incremental negotiation is over. The library sector is asking for relief from ebook pricing schemes that consume tremendous amounts of public dollars while providing neither ownership nor legitimate lending rights to libraries. The eBook Study Group, alongside a coalition of state legislators and frontline librarians, has moved beyond waiting for voluntary vendor reform. We are steadily reasserting the rights of memory institutions through established state contract law, consumer protection, and procurement policy. 

Large language model generative AIs are deceptively easy to use. Enter a natural language prompt, get an answer. But librarians are all too familiar with the imperfections of GenAI. Answers may be incomplete or completely incorrect. Sources may be conflated or made up. EBSCO has been working to create an alternative with the development of EBSCOhost AI Exchange, a new AI tool designed to generate responses using vetted EBSCO content. Library Journal spoke with EBSCO Executive VP Sam Brooks about this new approach, and what AI might mean for the future of discovery services.

Library vendors have made several announcements recently, including many during the recent American Library Association (ALA) conference in Chicago at the end of June. Here’s some recent news from this year’s exhibition.

The “Ethical AI in Libraries: A Critical Look at the Promise and Potential” panel at the 2026 American Library Association (ALA) Conference and Exhibition in Chicago covered AI as an issue that librarians must contend with for the sake of their patrons and their institutions. There are problems, risks, and opportunities that should be addressed proactively.

Libraries have been migrating to open-source software for many years. In fact, more than 30,000 libraries worldwide now use Koha, an open-source integrated library system (ILS), according to usage statistics. However, some false assumptions about open-source software still persist.

Providing digital book access via libraries has been a controversy since 2011. Communications initiatives, meetings, convenings, committees, market innovations, legislation, a lawsuit, and research have been employed in the effort to resolve this controversy. Despite this well-intentioned effort, many stakeholders remain dissatisfied. This paper reviews the trajectory of the library digital book issue since 2011 and finds that a more strategic and long-term perspective are needed—to go beyond the “firefighting” that has characterized the effort thus far.