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Weekly News Digest
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August 21, 2025 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Hank Green Launches Successful App for Strengthening Attention Span
Amanda Silberling writes the following in “Hank Green’s Focus Friend App Is Climbing the App Store Charts—And It’s Extremely Cute” for TechCrunch:You must stay focused. You cannot open TikTok, or Instagram, or whatever little phone games you like to play. If you fail, you will make an anthropomorphic bean very sad, because its knitting project depends on your ability to stay focused. This is the premise of Focus Friend, a productivity app created by Honey B Games and Hank Green, the longtime online creator/entrepreneur/educator/sock salesman. … For more information, read the article.
People News for Summer 2025
CILIP announced that David McMenemy, reader in the School of Humanities in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow and CILIP Scotland’s 2025 president, is the inaugural chairperson of its new Intellectual Freedom Committee. Emma O’Brian, previously chief of staff and SVP of strategy for Dow Jones, becomes GM for Factiva, where she will work on “embracing AI-driven search, spawning new specialized data businesses, and forging an AI marketplace for publishers.” IMLS’s chief of staff, Katherine Maas, is now its deputy director of museum services. Maas, who has been at IMLS since 2010, will be “guiding [IMLS] museum programs, overseeing key grantmaking activities, and ensuring [IMLS will] deliver on [its] mission to support and strengthen museums nationwide.” Project ReShare elected two new members and two new officers to its steering committee. The new members are Claire DeMarco, associate vice provost for operations at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ian Bogus, executive director of ReCAP. The new officers are co-chairperson Clara Fehrenbach, document delivery services librarian at the University of Chicago, and treasurer Isaac Gilman, executive director of Orbis Cascade Alliance. The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) appointed Jamie Fowler as managing director of government publishing and print procurement (GPPP), overseeing GPO’s Customer Services business unit. Fowler joined GPO as a printing specialist in 2008 and was most recently its chief of DC procurement. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) named a new treasurer for 2025–2027: Rhonda Ross, chief of staff at CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society. Ross has been a NISO board member since 2019.
Growing Libraries Announces Free Webinar
PRESS RELEASE Contact Information Growing Libraries, LLC Ian Downie, CEO media@growinglibraries.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Growing Libraries announces free webinar, Increasing Cardholder Numbers Through Data-Driven Outreach. Dover, DE—August 13, 2025—Growing Libraries has announced a free webinar in conjunction with Data Axle: Increasing Cardholder Numbers Through Data-Driven Outreach. THURSDAY, SEPT. 25 at 1 p.m. EDT The webinar will explore how the Growing Libraries platform gives libraries demographic insights into their communities, identifies non-cardholding households and helps expand library membership via highly focused, targeted outreach campaigns using both direct mail postcards and email. Register at hubs.la/Q03zLsFC0. About Growing Libraries Growing Libraries helps U.S. public libraries expand their reach and impact by increasing cardholder registrations. We believe that when libraries grow, so do the communities they serve. Our innovative SaaS platform empowers libraries to create data-driven outreach campaigns that grow their membership. Our Community Insight tools provide powerful demographic insights into the community, identifying and segmenting non-cardholding households, enabling high-precision targeting to drive cardholder growth. Using our Growth Programs, libraries can engage these households with personalized and optimized outreach messaging via email or direct mail campaigns and track progress within the platform. Our CI-Sync connector integrates seamlessly with both the library’s ILS and our community data sources, allowing real-time updates of the platform. For more information, please visit growinglibraries.com. About Data Axle Data Axle is a leading provider of data and marketing solutions, trusted by organizations to deliver accurate, actionable information that drives outreach, engagement, and measurable growth. As part of that mission, Reference Solutions—one of Data Axle’s flagship products—empowers public libraries with trusted access to business and consumer data. From supporting job seekers and small business owners to enabling targeted outreach and research, Reference Solutions helps libraries strengthen their role as vital community resources. For more information, please visit data-axle.com. ###ENDS###
Publishers Weekly Explores Florida Ruling in Favor of the Right to Read
Nathalie op de Beeck writes the following in “Freedom to Read Advocates Cheer Decision in ‘PRH v. Gibson’” for Publishers Weekly:Right to read advocates hailed a Florida court’s ringing defense of First Amendment rights. … On August 13, U.S. District Court Judge Carlos E. Mendoza of the Middle District of Florida ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Penguin Random House v. Gibson, a lawsuit challenging Florida House Bill 1069. The decision came in a state besieged by school library book removals after threats of legal action by the state attorney general and education commissioner. HB 1069, in effect as a law since May 2023, has enabled Florida parents to challenge K–12 public school library materials by filing objection forms. For more information, read the article.
Roundup of More Federal Fallout: NEH, Smithsonian, and Local News
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) rolled out “an agency-wide reorganization to consolidate its grantmaking programs and divisions,” the press release states. “Following a reduction in force (RIF) of two thirds of the agency’s workforce in June, NEH will merge the functions and staff of seven grantmaking offices and divisions into four new divisions to support projects that advance humanities research, education, public programs, infrastructure, and cultural preservation.” They are the Division of Federal/State Partnership, Division of Collections & Infrastructure, Division of Lifelong Learning, and Division of Research.EveryLibrary issued a statement, The Chilling Effect of White House Overreach Into the Smithsonian Institution, saying, “According to public reports, the Trump administration is requiring eight Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Portrait Gallery, to submit their exhibition content, draft plans for future shows, and internal guidelines for review. The administration expects the Smithsonian’s vast collections to be aligned with President Trump’s executive order on ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History’ within 120 days.” EveryLibrary continues: This attempted oversight of the Smithsonian, an institution the administration cannot legally control, comes at a time when numerous other federal cultural institutions, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Library of Congress, and the National Archives, are without permanent, Senate-confirmed directors. This leadership gap leaves these organizations especially vulnerable to political interference, which can undermine the safeguards that protect those agencies from politicization. Federal actions like these have ripple effects at the state and local levels. If the Smithsonian, a prestigious institution known for its historical independence, can be compelled to align its content with political agendas, smaller organizations such as local history museums and public libraries will likely face increased pressure to modify their collections, exhibitions, and programs to fit these prevailing narratives. This encroachment threatens the right of communities to explore their history, culture, and identity honestly and on their own terms. EveryLibrary issued another statement on a related issue titled They’re Trying to Erase Our History from the Gift Shop, which reads in part, “The fight over books has left the library: National Park Service gift shops. And make no mistake—this isn’t about souvenirs. It’s about censorship. … The goal is simple: silence voices, sanitize the past, and control the narrative. If they can erase uncomfortable truths from the park gift shop, they can erase them from the classroom, the library, and eventually, our collective memory.” PEN America published Alarm Over Trump Administration’s Attempt to Rewrite History and Strip Truth From Exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution. It quotes Hadar Harris, managing director of the Washington, D.C., office: “Telling the story of the United States must extend to the full and complex history of its past and present, including an honest assessment of wrongs and injustices, and a recognition of the never-ending project of creating a more perfect union. The administration’s efforts to rewrite history are a betrayal of our democratic traditions and a deeply concerning effort to strip truth from the institutions that tell our national story. …” The Knight Foundation put out a press release stating, “The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Pivotal, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation … will commit nearly $37 million to provide immediate relief to public media stations at risk of closure following federal funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).” These cuts “will have dire impacts on the nation’s more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. Some 115 stations—serving 43 million people—are losing more than 30 percent of their budgets, according to the most recent data available.” The press release continues, “This initiative creates a vital emergency revenue stream, providing the public media network with the stability and time needed to diversify funding sources and develop sustainable business models that will help secure its long-term future.”
Grammarly Introduces Eight Specialized AI Agents for Targeted Help in Docs
Grammarly “will launch eight specialized AI agents that provide targeted assistance for specific writing challenges—from finding credible sources and checking originality to predicting reader reactions and evaluating work against rubrics.” The agents will be part of Docs, “Grammarly’s new AI-native writing surface that brings intelligent assistance directly into the writing process, whether helping students develop their academic work with proper research and structured feedback or assisting professionals in polishing their communications for impact and clarity.”For more information, read the blog post.
Mellon Foundation Grant for PEN America Will Help Fight Book Bans
PEN America received “a $1.4 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to fortify its work on the freedom to read, with a heightened focus on supporting public libraries and librarians. This gift will enable PEN America to extend its groundbreaking research and analysis, public awareness campaigns, and coalition building to include public libraries and librarians who are facing escalating threats to their work, safety and core mission.”The grant will support the following new initiatives: - Research and analysis of educational censorship in public libraries through the lens of free expression
- Public education campaigns to highlight the free speech implications of book bans on library systems
- Safety resources and trainings for librarians who face harassment for the books they shelve and the public programs they mount
For more information, read the news item.
Book Riot Digs Into Supreme Court-Sanctioned 'Quiet Censorship'
Kelly Jensen writes the following in “Resources to Better Understand the Mahmoud v. Taylor SCOTUS Decision” for Book Riot:Upon the release of the Supreme Court opinion in the Mahmoud v. Taylor case, I wrote at length about what the ruling did and did not mean. This isn’t a case about book banning. No books are forced to be removed or banned from schools or libraries. While book censorship will be an outcome of this ruling—we’ll see untold amounts of quiet censorship on the part of schools and educators related to the materials available and used in libraries and curriculum—this is a case about religious liberty and public education. … One of the biggest concerns worth thinking about with Mahmoud is how it will be another tool in the arsenal to dismantle public education. For more information, read the article.
Choice Rolls Out Blog Series on AI Tools for Academic Libraries
Choice is planning a new blog series, set to begin in mid-August, called AI Tools for Academic Libraries. It was initiated by Kari D. Weaver, the AI and machine learning program manager for the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). “The new collaboration will bring OCUL’s multipart blog series to Choice’s technology vertical, LibTech Insights, which provides practical instruction and guidance on using and implementing library technology to thousands of academic librarians worldwide,” the news item notes.For more information, read the news item.
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Brandi Scardilli
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