Melinda Gates opened her talk at the 2019 American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Seattle January 25 with effusive praise for her hosts. Her admiration for libraries is well documented: As cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she has been at the forefront of philanthropic funding for libraries. The Gates Library Foundation, … Continue reading The Moment of Lift
Start with what you have The first step in any design project, big or small, is intense self-reflection. Brian Lee, architect and design partner at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, has designed libraries around the world, including the award-winning Chinatown branch of Chicago Public Library (CPL), which opened in 2015. He stresses the importance of research … Continue reading Design on the Cheap
What made you want to write this book? ALA Editions published the first version of the book, Creating the Full-Service Homework Center in Your Library, in 2001 after I went around the country researching public library homework centers—something that no one had done before. I thought once the original book came out, nobody would ever … Continue reading A Conversation with Author Cindy Mediavilla
Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Canada La Biblioteca Móvil, Guatemala Suzhou Library, China Inner Mongolia Library, China The recipients were selected by a team of IRRT members in consultation with then–ALA President Jim Neal, who recognized them at the 2018 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans during the IRRT International Librarians Reception … Continue reading 2018 Presidential Citations
After discussing definitions of whiteness (a way of thinking, both intentional and unintentional, that privileges the values of white people over those of non-whites) and implicit bias (the unconscious and conscious stereotypes that we ascribe to others), Hathcock broke the near-capacity crowd into small groups to discuss an example of implicit bias and whiteness in … Continue reading Battling Racism Below the Surface
Daardi Sizemore Mixon, university archivist and special collections librarian at Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU), and her colleague Monika Antonelli, outreach librarian, explained how, as part of the university’s 150th anniversary celebration, the MSU library produced a 50-minute documentary titled Two Weeks in May. The basis for the film was Out of Chaos (Minnesota State University Mankato Foundation, … Continue reading Lights, Camera, Libraries!
Nicole Cooke, assistant professor and MS/LIS program director at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences, opened the session by detailing how she became a target after the right-wing publication Campus Reform published a story about her research project, “Minority Student Experiences with Racial Microaggressions in the Academic Library,” which received a 2017 … Continue reading Bullying, Trolling, and Doxxing, Oh My!
That will soon change with the publication of her forthcoming autobiography, In Pieces (Grand Central Publishing, 2018). It’s an unflinching, honest account of a life shaped by Hollywood—one marred by childhood abuse at the hands of her actor stepfather but uplifted by perseverance, artistic success, and the love and respect of her family and peers. … Continue reading Putting the Pieces Together
She discussed this trait and her own journey with the presidents as part of the Auditorium Speaker Series on June 23 at the American Library Association’s 2018 Annual Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. Like Kearns’s books, her talk was dense with colorful, fascinating anecdotes that humanized our nation’s leaders while revealing how their leadership … Continue reading Leading a Troubled Nation
What made you want to write this book? I had to write this book—libraries are hungry for information on how to better serve their homeless patrons. I provide training in libraries around the world, and everywhere I go, library staffers ask for tools to help. It is exciting to meet so many allies in the … Continue reading A Conversation with Author Ryan J. Dowd
