Q. I was recently teaching my students about the various literary awards for children’s writers and was asked an interesting question by a student. I have looked on your website as well as on the internet in general and cannot find a complete answer. I am hoping you can help me.

In the design for the Coretta Scott King Award, there are five religious symbols that are in line underneath the child reading the book… . My student asked me what they are. And his whole class is now fascinated with knowing about the design. Can you verify for me what these symbols actually are? Thank you so much for your help.

Today is the perfect day to join the American Library Association and your state library association, especially since ALA offers three categories of joint memberships: Joint Student Membership, Joint Library Support Staff Membership, and Joint Trustee Membership.

As you may know, the ALA Library has several pages in its section of the ALA website called “ALA Library Fact Sheets,” which answer fairly common questions about libraries, with sources noted. At some point in our history (and on September 30, we turned 88-years-old!), someone asked what were the top 100 libraries in the country, and we decided to use existing national surveys to respond, ranked by collection size.

Last week, I led an ALA delegation to New York City to meet with publishers to discuss the many concerns of the library community about ebook publishing. Uppermost in our minds were the ebook concerns that have come to us from ALA members across the country—especially about pricing and availability (or the lack thereof) and the slow pace of progress in finding solutions.