Libfocus Link-out for November 2025

Welcome to the November edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

Images from the articles featured in this month's linkout

Manuscript submissions are up! That’s good, right?
Tim Vines on The Scholarly Kitchen argues that journals focusing on increasing article submissions are doing themselves a disservice. From the article: "When ‘number of manuscripts submitted’ is treated as a key performance indicator, any initiative that might deter authors from submitting is deemed too risky."

Fraud, AI slop and huge profits: is science publishing broken?
This Guardian Science Weekly podcast summarises the challenges in academic publishing and of the Open Access movement. Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay what has gone so wrong, and Dr Mark Hanson of the University of Exeter proposes some potential solutions.

Internet Archive reaches new 1-trillion page landmark almost 30 years after it started backing up the WWW.
Wayne Williams reports in Techradar that the Internet Archive reaches a new 1-trillion page landmark almost 30 years after it started backing up the web. An astonishing 100,000TB of data, or around 21.3 million DVDs, is available through its Wayback Machine.

The Future of Libraries – 2035.
Thomas Frey looks at what the library of 2035 might be like in this article for Futurist Speaker.

Shaping the Library’s Future.
This Liber Quarterly article by Cécile Swiatek Cassafières and Marion Brunetti focuses on how academic & research libraries should clearly articulate their identity, vision and engage stakeholders.

In praise of librarians in dangerous times.
Lithub has published an excerpt from Sarah Weinman's keynote address at the American Librarian’s Association annual convention. She discusses librarians' roles as keepers of truth and defenders of their patrons' rights to privacy and to uncensored information. 

The Children's Booker Prize.
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced that the first Children's Booker Prize will be awarded in February 2027. The shortlist for the award, which celebrates the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to twelve, will be announced in November 2026.

Honour the university library as a creative space with an artist residency.
Darlene Maxwell, Corinne Noble and Alexandra Genova from the Royal College of Art Library, London, discuss the RCA Library's artist residency project. They look at its potential and impact on their collections and space.

‘People have had to move house’: Inside the British Library, two years on from devastating cyber attack.
Staff tell Athena Stavrou of the Independent they’ve faced abuse because of ongoing issues at the library, where dozens of services remain unavailable, and why they have taken strike action.

Agentic AI: Nine essential questions.
In this MIT Sloan Management Review article Laurianne McLaughlin provides answers to key questions about agentic AI. The term “agentic” refers to an AI models with agency, that have the capacity to act independently and purposefully when accomplishing goals.