libraries

Veilamp, an open source music player, is drawing attention for a feature that lets users stream their personal music libraries to friends. The project combines local playback with social sharing, appealing to people looking for alternatives to commercial streaming services. Early reactions online are positive, with interest focused on the self-hosted, community-driven approach to music listening.

Veilamp, a cross-platform open source music player, is drawing attention for doing more than playback. Beyond detailed listening and audio tweaks, it can run as a headless music server on a home network and stream a user's music library to friends. Early reactions online highlight how much functionality is packed into the free player.

Game developer Alfred Baudisch shared a project connected to Pardall Games, a website offering a library aimed at retro and retrogaming fans. Other users on Mastodon praised it as a cool tool and said they were adding its feed to their RSS readers to follow new content.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, her free book gifting program for young children, is expanding following her death, according to The Washington Post. The program has long mailed free books to children, and its growth is now being framed as a continuation of her legacy. Details on which regions are being added were not provided in the coverage.

The Jackson-Madison County Library in Tennessee has been awarded a $19,762 grant to support its technology services. The funding comes from a technology-focused grant program and will help the library update or expand the digital resources it offers to residents of Jackson and the surrounding county. The announcement was made by local news outlets, drawing attention to the library's role in providing public access to technology.

The Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library are holding their semiannual book sale, with tens of thousands of books available to browse and buy. The event is a regular fixture for readers in the Charlottesville, Virginia area, drawing bargain hunters and book lovers twice a year. Local news covered the sale as it got underway, highlighting the scale of the collection on offer.

A theatre in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine is holding a screening of the classic comedy '9 to 5' to raise support for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, the singer's book gifting programme for young children. The event ties the film, starring Parton, to local fundraising for childhood literacy in the region.

The 2009 BBC documentary The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu, narrated by Scottish-Sierra Leonean writer Aminatta Forna, is being shared again by viewers celebrating its account of Mali's manuscript heritage. The film follows African storytellers and scholars, guardians of a history long dismissed by outsiders as mere oral tradition, and explores Timbuktu's ancient libraries and their role in preserving African intellectual history.

The California Writing Project has received a literacy award from the Library of Congress, according to an announcement from UC Santa Barbara. The honor recognizes the organization's work in supporting writing instruction and literacy education across California. Further details about the award category, other recipients, or the ceremony were not provided.

Farmington Public Library has begun a garden seed lending program, allowing patrons to borrow seeds to plant at home. Borrowers can return saved seeds after harvest to keep the collection going. The initiative promotes gardening, self-sufficiency and community sharing, and local residents are taking note of the library's new role beyond books.

School Library Journal has published a roundup of 16 middle grade and young adult novels that put mental health at the center of their stories. The list highlights how children's and teen publishing continues to expand honest portrayals of anxiety, depression, grief and other struggles, offering young readers books that reflect their experiences and give educators and librarians starting points for conversations.

The Jacksonville Public Library is hosting a Movie Night, an evening film screening open to the community. Local coverage highlights it as a free, family-friendly way for residents to gather and enjoy cinema in a public space. Libraries across the country have increasingly used film nights and similar events to draw visitors and reinforce their role as community hubs.

Xbox is now rolling out its Disc To Digital feature to all users, letting players convert their physical game discs into digital licenses. Owners can dust off old disc boxes and claim digital copies without needing to keep swapping discs. The news, reported by Kotaku, is drawing attention from gamers interested in preserving and digitising their physical game libraries.

New Paltz's Elting Library went ahead with its 69th annual book fair even as a storm hit the Hudson Valley, drawing book lovers to the long-running community event. The fair, a fixture in the village for decades, offers used and donated books to raise funds for the library, and organizers pressed on with the tradition rather than cancel.

The Greenville Public Library is relaunching its movie matinee program with a screening of the 1998 film Practical Magic. The event marks the return of a community film series at the library, offering local residents a free or low-cost way to gather and watch movies together. Details on additional scheduled screenings were not immediately available.

The St. Louis County Library and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership have announced the winners of their Small Business Launchpad program. The initiative supports local entrepreneurs with resources to start or grow businesses in St. Louis County. The announcement highlights continued local efforts to boost small business development in the region.

EveryLibrary, a library advocacy organisation, is arguing that reading does more than support learning: it makes people more empathetic. Citing the idea that readers show less hate, the group links the claim to ongoing efforts to ban books, suggesting bans may target reading's empathetic effects. The message has resonated with librarians and readers discussing literacy, censorship and the social value of books.

The Nintendo 64 marks its 30th anniversary, and fans are marking the milestone by revisiting the console's library, including a self-styled '30 Game Shuffler' picking thirty N64 titles to celebrate. Released in Japan in 1996, the console remains a favourite of retro gaming communities, who are sharing memories of classics like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The Friends of the Library in Pacific Palisades will hold a book sale on October 3 and has announced plans to publish a Palisades cookbook. The sale is expected to raise funds supporting the local library, while the cookbook project aims to celebrate the community. Further details about the event or the cookbook's contributors and release date have not been provided.

CERN has released a VHDL library for FPGAs, making its hardware description code publicly available to developers and researchers. The move gives engineers working on field-programmable gate arrays free access to code developed at the European physics lab. The release is being picked up by the open-source hardware community, which welcomes greater sharing of scientific institutions' engineering work.