Dispatches - Kate Hall and Kathy Parker

Covering Your Bases

January 3, 2023

Public liability insurance. This covers the building and grounds, the contents of the building, library vehicles, and any accidents involving patrons on library property. It’s important to have adequate coverage in the event of a major claim. It’s also important that a library not be under- or overinsured. If underinsured, the library will have to … Continue reading Covering Your Bases


Back row, from left: Thanos Giannakopoulos, Anthi Katsirikou, and Jim Church. Front row, from left: Edward Junhao Lim, Vasiliki Rigakou, Ifigenia Vardakosta, Sotiria Salappa, Ageliki Oikonomou, and Aggeliki Giannopoulou

IFLA: Libraries, Data, and the Global Financial Crisis

August 28, 2019

“How can libraries best serve populations during a global economic crisis or make sense of government data?” was the question posed by Jim Church, librarian for economics and international government information at UC Berkeley and chair of IFLA’s Government Information and Official Publications section, which sponsored this program. Thanos Giannakopolous, director of the United Nations … Continue reading IFLA: Libraries, Data, and the Global Financial Crisis


Mark Miller (left), chair of the Loudoun County (Va.) Public Library board of trustees, and Koran Saines, Sterling district supervisor at the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Budget Bedfellows

June 24, 2019

Koran Saines, Sterling district supervisor for the Loudoun County (Va.) Board of Supervisors, asked the question at the beginning of “A Successful Budgeting Process,” a June 23 panel at the American Library Association’s 2019 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., to illustrate a simple but important point: Librarians should be having ongoing conversations with … Continue reading Budget Bedfellows


Karen Muller

Businesslike Management

May 20, 2014

  In Recognizing Public Value, Mark H. Moore, professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, uses seven case studies to highlight the problems of recognizing and measuring social value. Publicly supported agencies and institutions gain social value not just for the good they do but because the public has agreed … Continue reading Businesslike Management