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Baker & Taylor's CEO swore under oath that the company owes libraries about $33 million for books it never delivered. Almost no library has filed a claim, and most do not have to, as long as the number next to their name is right. Here is the ten-minute check that tells you whether it is.
VendorsVendor failure
Part of the Vendor failure record
Fifty states and DC: which open meetings law is yours, and which section of it governs notice. Checked one row at a time, with the misses written down.
GovernancePublic records
Everything you need to start keeping track of a school board, library board, or city council, on this page. Three people, one printed sheet, no software.
GovernancePublic recordsSchool libraries
The minutes describe a buyout program treated as operational and a full-board briefing after the offer. The president had been informed. What does this record establish about delegated authority, and what does it leave open?
GovernancePublic records
Twelve management FTE came out of the FY2026 staffing table and twelve went back in under different titles. Net change in full-time equivalents: zero. The table did not reveal that change, though. Board minutes had been carrying the new titles for eight months already.
GovernanceStaffing
Libby is a vendor product, not a public library. A short guide to who owns it, why the ownership record matters, and what to ask before renewal.
EbooksOwnershipVendors
Why an ebook that costs a consumer $14.99 costs your public library $60 for 24 months, and what three of the Big Five raised in 2024.
Ebooks
At this year's Library Insights Summit, a librarian named the reason small-press books rarely make it onto library shelves. The diagnosis was sharp. The advice stopped one step short of it.
Library systems
A chronology of digital lending, ownership, licensing, and public records. Source notes identify both the evidence and unresolved retrieval work.
EbooksOwnership
Part of the Libby, ownership & ebook terms
Explore cost per loan using a license price and loan count. Example inputs are scenarios, not observed library spending.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
Built mostly out of Baker & Taylor's own bankruptcy filings, signed under oath and filed with the court. What the documents say, what they do not say, and the questions libraries may want to ask next. Disclosure: I worked at Baker & Taylor, on the software side, years before these events.
EbooksOwnershipVendors
Part of the Libby, ownership & ebook terms
OverDrive built a new product out of how reading happens inside Libby and Sora.
EbooksVendors
Part of the Digital lending record
Library values and financial fluency belong in the same room. Here is what leaders and boards can examine before business language starts driving public decisions.
ManagementPublic service
What changes when a public library adopts business measures, management language, and staffing logic—and what boards can examine before services shrink.
ManagementGovernance
KKR, Francisco Partners, and the businesses behind familiar library platforms. A selected ownership map, with the limits of D.C.’s licensing law.
EbooksOwnership
Part of the Libby, ownership & ebook terms
An exploratory title-level forum analysis, followed by a historical interpretation. The sample does not measure profession-wide departures.
LaborResearch methods
The thing that makes librarians irreplaceable is not what they know. It's what they decide you should encounter.
CurationProfessional judgment
A patron asks why she can't save the ebook she borrowed from Libby. You explain it disappears when the lending period ends. She asks why. You realize you've never fully explained why. Here's the answer.
Ebooks
Part of the Digital lending record
MarcForge is an open-source experiment in a standalone MARC workflow. Here is the gap it tests, what exists, and what remains unproven.
CatalogingExperiments
L/30 is an open-source sandbox for testing what a library can control when the code, data model, and deployment are inspectable.
Open infrastructureExperiments