This is an excerpt from “Creating Space for Agency,” Knowledge Quest, Sept./Oct. 2017. It’s easy to imagine no LGBTQ students are at a given school, and therefore no need exists to court controversy by providing LGBTQ materials, but LGBTQ students are everywhere. I loved to read as a kid, but when I looked inside the books on … Continue reading Creating Space for Agency
Hosting a large variety of library programs may be easy when you have enough money, staff members, and space, but what do you do when that’s not the case? How can you stretch your offerings? Self-directed programming is a great way to provide value while mitigating costs. We’ve all experienced that patron who seems to … Continue reading Self-Directed Programming
We all know that the best libraries are the ones that have the strongest connections with their constituents and make all members of their community feel that they belong and are welcome and represented. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, however. It’s not unusual to be screamed at during a community meeting, or to be … Continue reading Leadership and Vision
With regard to leadership, people have passed down wisdom through storytelling for many generations. In Fables for Leaders, John Lubans brings together fables from several traditions with thoughtful commentary to help readers identify new ways to approach the modern workplace. Lubans mines the work of fabulists Abstemius, Aesop, La Fontaine, and Odo of Cheriton. Many … Continue reading How We Lead
In that first professional job, at a small library, all librarians—from the director to the systems librarian to the head of technical services—taught classes. None of us had been prepared by our coursework to teach, and no on-the-job training was provided. While my initial efforts to teach information literacy were cringeworthy at best, I learned … Continue reading Learning to Teach
A process of review must incorporate the perspectives, interests, and contributions of a wide variety of stakeholders and affiliated groups. It must be mission-driven and embrace our core values. It must focus on member development and engagement, and on encompassing the complexity of voices that enrich ALA. ALA’s governance structure includes a web of units: … Continue reading Your Thoughts Needed
Teens sometimes talk loudly, run around the building, or harass peers and those younger or older than themselves. They may get into fights or act carelessly with library materials. One way schools and libraries are working to help teens effectively manage these behaviors—and lessen behavior problems overall—is through restorative justice. In a May webinar on … Continue reading Undoing Harm
Revisions have advanced the profession and addressed educational and technological innovations of the day. Standards have moved from a concern for the library facility (1920s) to a focus on defining effective access services (mid-20th century) to describing the roles of school librarians as teachers, instructional partners, information specialists, program administrators, and school leaders (since the … Continue reading Rewriting the Standards
Integrated library systems (ILS), as well as the new genre of library services platforms, are offered to libraries primarily as proprietary products controlled by a single vendor. Libraries that use these products remain dependent on that vendor for ongoing software development, solutions to systemic problems, and service enhancements. While proprietary software remains the dominant approach, … Continue reading Open Source Software
When I was in library school 14 years ago, I didn’t hear anything about workload, emotional labor, self-care, or burnout. What I did hear a lot about was how librarians are creative, resilient, and good at doing more with less. My first job as a librarian was at a small library where we were constantly … Continue reading Less Is Not More
Why should we do this? Because information is power. In Missed Information: Better Information for Building a Wealthier, More Sustainable Future, authors David Sarokin and Jay Schulkin argue that knowledge is central to human activity. We gather information to make decisions at almost every waking moment, both personally and in the work environment, depending on … Continue reading Serving Diverse Populations
But I found myself wondering the other day: The cloud is a new kind of information territory, so where is the open, public space within it? Where are the libraries? What if libraries offered truly free, no-strings-attached cloud storage to their communities? That would provide security, privacy, permanence, and continuity—just the kind of foundation that … Continue reading Gathering in the Clouds
