News from the Field

David Free

2026 Leab Awards Recipients Announced

ACRL is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Catalog Awards. These annual awards recognize excellence in the production of catalogs and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for electronic exhibitions of such materials. The Leab Awards are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, former editors of American Book Prices Current.

This year, Leab Award recipients were determined by popular vote from ACRL and RBMS members. A listing of the 2026 Leab Award recipients is below, and all of ACRL’s past Leab Award recipients are listed on the ACRL Leab Awards website at https://www.ala.org/acrl/awards/publicationawards/leabawards.

Print Catalog Awards

Best in Show Print Catalog Category: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario for Women on the Move: An Exhibition of Travel Books curated by David Fernández, Ksenya Kiebuzinski, and Elizabeth Ridolfo

Excellence in Content Print Catalog Category: The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, New York and DelMonico Books for Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy edited by Erica Ciallela and Philip S. Palmer with contributions by Colin B. Bailey, Juliana Amorim Goskes, Araceli Bremauntz-Enriquez, Julia S. Charles-Linen, Rhonda Evans, Anne-Marie Eze, Daria Rose Foner, Jiemi Gao, Gail Levin, Deborah Parker, Deborah Willis, and Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty

Excellence in Description Print Catalog Category: Oak Knoll Press in New Castle, Delaware for Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books by Reid Byers

Innovation in Audience Engagement Print Catalog Category: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario for Women on the Move: An Exhibition of Travel Books curated by David Fernández, Ksenya Kiebuzinski, and Elizabeth Ridolfo

Innovation in Design Print Catalog Category: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Illinois for “We Are Each Other’s Harvest”: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of Black Literary Canon by Cait Coker, designed by Chloe Ottenhoff

Innovation in Inclusion and Representation Print Catalog Category: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Illinois for “We Are Each Other’s Harvest”: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of Black Literary Canon by Cait Coker, designed by Chloe Ottenhoff

Innovation in Production Print Catalog Category: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario for Women on the Move: An Exhibition of Travel Books curated by David Fernández, Ksenya Kiebuzinski, and Elizabeth Ridolfo

Digital Catalog Awards 

Best in Show Digital Catalog Category: Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota for “Disembodied Reembodied” by Jenny Schmid, Emily Beck, Jaime Konerman-Sease, and Lois Hendrickson

Excellence in Content Digital Catalog Category: Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, Georgia, for “Softness Was Always Ours: A Tender Tribute to Black Women and Girls” curated by Jami Adkins Murphy

Excellence in Description Digital Catalog Category: Oskar Diethelm Library, Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, New York for “Psychiatry, Insanity, and Religion in the Trial of Charles Guiteau” curated by Nick Brenner and Nicole Topich

Innovation in Audience Engagement Digital Catalog Category: Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, Georgia for “Softness Was Always Ours: A Tender Tribute to Black Women and Girls” curated by Jami Adkins Murphy

Innovation in Design Digital Catalog Category: Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota for “Disembodied Reembodied” by Jenny Schmid, Emily Beck, Jaime Konerman-Sease, and Lois Hendrickson

Innovation in Inclusion and Representation Digital Catalog Category: Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota for “Disembodied Reembodied” by Jenny Schmid, Emily Beck, Jaime Konerman-Sease, and Lois Hendrickson

AUPresses Welcomes Two New Members

The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) recently welcomed the LSE Press as a Regular Member to its global community of more than 160 publishers committed to the highest caliber of research-based scholarship. Founded in 2018 as a fully open access university press at the London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Press is a champion of the value of the social sciences in addressing contemporary global challenges. It currently has twenty-six book titles in print and supports five journals, including LSE Public Policy Review and the Journal of Long-Term Care.

A new university press also joined the association as an Introductory Member. The George Washington University Press is a teaching press managed and staffed by students under the direction of the university’s Graduate Program in Publishing faculty. It will publish peer-reviewed, open-access books and journals aligned with the university’s mission, as well as open educational resources, open-access journals, technical reports, and conference reports for the university’s faculty and students. Learn more at https://aupresses.org/news/aupresses-welcomes-new-members-august2026/.

GPO Launches Annual Reports Collection

The US Government Publishing Office (GPO) has launched a new Annual Reports collection on GovInfo, the one-stop site for authentic, published information for all three branches of the Federal Government. This release will make it easier to find and search for Annual Reports published by Federal agencies. GovInfo’s Annual Reports collection provides access to more than 700 annual reports from hundreds of Federal agencies and Government organizations, spanning more than 165 years—from the 19th century to the present. The Annual Reports collection comprises publications from other GovInfo collections that are grouped together based on metadata. The current collection includes content from Congressionally Mandated Reports, GOVPUB, and Serial Set collections. Publications from Congressional Committee Prints, Congressional Documents, and GPO collections will be added in upcoming releases. The new collection is available to the public at no cost at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/annualrep.

New from ACRL – Autistic Academic Librarians: A Guide for Success

ACRL announces the publication of Autistic Academic Librarians: A Guide for Success, edited by Rachael Cohen and Karen Stoll Farrell, offering actionable recommendations for both autistic librarians and libraries that seek to foster an inclusive and supportive environment.

As our understanding of autism continues to evolve, it is crucial that we engage in open dialogue and collaborative efforts to ensure that everyone, regardless of their neurological makeup, can thrive in academic settings. Together we can work toward creating environments that are not only supportive but also recognize and empower the unique strengths that autistic individuals bring to the workplace.

Autistic Academic Librarians: A Guide for Success aims to illuminate the diverse experiences of autistic individuals within the academic library profession while fostering a sense of community and understanding. Chapters are presented in pairs, with one chapter offering a personal narrative from an autistic librarian and the other academic literature and research findings. These pairs cover challenges for LIS students, success in the library workplace as a new professional, middle management, and the tenure process.

Autistic Academic Librarians offers effective strategies for achieving success and fulfillment in librarianship, emphasizing both personal and professional growth. It also addresses the systemic changes necessary for cultivating inclusive libraries that benefit all library workers.

Autistic Academic Librarians: A Guide for Success is available for purchase in print through the ALA Online Store and Amazon.com; as an ebook through the ALA Online Store; via EBSCO and other institutional ebook vendors; and by telephone order at (866) 746-7252 in the US or (770) 442-8633 for international customers.

JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services Secures Funding to Expand Public Access to Distinctive Collections

With support from the Mellon Foundation, JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services is launching a new initiative to help libraries and archives create a more public future for their distinctive collections by supporting a fuller pathway from digitization to long-term impact. Launched just over a year ago, JSTOR Stewardship is a digital collections platform designed to help institutions increase the impact of distinctive materials. Today, more than 350 institutions participate in JSTOR Stewardship, including over 50 charter members helping shape tools and practices to accelerate impact responsibly. Together, the Stewardship community makes a growing corpus of over 3 million items openly available on JSTOR.

The new initiative will further advance this work and purpose. Through it, new and existing JSTOR Stewardship charter participants can receive direct funding support for digitization and then use the full Stewardship infrastructure to move materials into broader discovery and use by processing materials at scale with JSTOR Seeklight and publishing openly on JSTOR, where collections become discoverable in a widely used research and teaching environment. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-stewardship-secures-funding-for-digitization-and-access/.

Springer Nature, OpenEvidence Announce Subscription Agreement

Springer Nature and OpenEvidence have announced a subscription agreement that brings peer-reviewed content from Springer Nature into OpenEvidence, where physicians can retrieve and cite it during patient care. This agreement took effect August 5, 2026, and forms part of Springer Nature’s community-led ARC3 framework. Clinicians and healthcare professionals need quick and easy access to the very latest trusted insights to help inform their decisions. Complete details are available at https://www.openevidence.com/announcements/springer-nature-and-openevidence-announce-agreement-to-maximise-exposure-of-trusted-findings-on-openevidence-platform.

Tech Bits . . .

Brought to you by the ACRL ULS Technology in University Libraries Committee

OpenAlex is a free, open catalog of more than 477 million scholarly works and related entities, including authors, sources, institutions, topics, publishers, and funders. Unlike subscription-based databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, OpenAlex makes its complete dataset freely available under the CC0 license, enabling anyone to access, share, reuse, and build on the data. Users can explore the catalog through its web interface, download the full dataset, or access it through an open API. They can search for publications on specific topics, browse authors and institutions, analyze research collaboration and publication trends, and conduct bibliometric studies. Organizations requiring higher API rate limits, metadata curation, or dedicated support can subscribe to premium services.

Grace YoungJoo Jeon, University of South Carolina

Open Alex
https://openalex.org/