Emerging Leaders Poised for Action at Midwinter

March 3, 2014

Whether you braved the weather for the 2014 Midwinter Meeting or not, we’ve got you covered in the March/April issue of American Libraries. Our wrapup gives you the highlights, with links to interview videos that help bring the meeting alive. In addition, you can check out more of the Midwinter coverage on our Inside Scoop blog, right here on AmericanLibrariesMagazine.org.

The cover story for March/April features the latest class of Emerging Leaders. The group met at Midwinter to break into work groups and begin their projects. Projects will be presented in June at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas. This class of 56 includes up-and-coming library stars—those new to the library profession with fewer than five years of experience as a professional. School, college, public, and special librarians are part of the class of 2014. American Libraries, with University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee School of Information Studies and OCLC, will be offering trading cards of the Emerging Leaders again this year at the annual conference.

If you think librarians tend to be compulsive, well, maybe you’re right. At least, that’s the theory behind the success of Melvil Dewey, a decimal obsessive and compulsive innovator. America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Build a Nation (Grand Central Publishing, 2013) by Joshua Kendall called out Dewey, so American Libraries called on Kendall to tell us more about this famous—and sometimes infamous—librarian. Dewey edited a quarterly journal, Library Notes, which promised “improved methods and labor-savors for librarians, readers and writers” in the late 1800s. A copy given to me during a visit to OCLC features Dewey’s oddball spelling system, with an offer to send printed reasons for this system free to anyone interested. Reads like a form of texting, but less intuitive.

Finally, we end the March/April issue with Will Manley’s last column for American Libraries. The former library director, several years retired, has decided to focus on writing a novel, and to retire his back page column. Expect a surprise new feature on the magazine’s back page in the May issue.

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