diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index d70f74e..8930ae9 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 ### Fixed
 - Frontend fetch calls now check `response.ok` before parsing JSON, so HTTP error responses surface as error states instead of being parsed as data (#27).
 - `/rows` with unknown column names and `/vector/preview` with a missing or non-vector column now return 400 as intended; the error was previously masked as a generic 500 (#28).
+- `/datasets` uses `list_tables()` on lancedb versions that have it, falling back to the deprecated `table_names()` on older ones (#54).
 
 ### Docs
 - README refresh: corrected the supported-data-types section (variable-length float vectors render fully since #14; no 2048-dimension limit), documented the release image tags from #46, added test suite instructions, made 0.29.2 the recommendation throughout, and linked CONTRIBUTING.md and CHANGELOG.md (#51).
diff --git a/backend/app.py b/backend/app.py
index e399d54..288c50f 100644
--- a/backend/app.py
+++ b/backend/app.py
@@ -174,7 +174,12 @@ async def health_check():
 async def list_datasets():
     try:
         db = get_lance_connection()
-        table_names = db.table_names()
+        if hasattr(db, "list_tables"):
+            table_names = db.list_tables().tables
+        else:
+            # table_names() was deprecated in favor of list_tables(),
+            # but older lancedb versions only have table_names()
+            table_names = db.table_names()
         valid_tables = [name for name in table_names if validate_dataset_name(name)]
         return {"datasets": valid_tables}
     except Exception as e: