Library Journal: Adopting a Founder’s Mindset: Leading like an Owner | Leading from the Library

By Steven Bell

February 23, 2017

It’s good when library leaders talk about having a start-up mentality or entrepreneurial spirit. One thing is missing though: Ownership. These leaders have little of their own to lose if things go bad. Thinking like an owner may make a difference.

A running theme of this column is the value of learning from leadership stories. Some of the best ones profile entrepreneurs. What makes the stories so compelling is the personal commitment, investment, and sacrifice these individuals make for their ideas and dreams. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say they risk it all. Take the case of Alex Andon: After being laid off from his biotech job he decided to start a business selling and maintaining jellyfish aquariums. Even after acquiring a few customers, it was unclear if the business would overcome the many hurdles to achieving an affordable home aquarium where the jellyfish survive. While Andon eventually obtained Kickstarter funding, it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to go deeply into personal debt for the sake of a startup. These stories may even take on a “root for the underdog” dimension when they involve an against-all-odds entrepreneur who succeeds in taking on an entrenched industry that long ago forgot about caring for its customers.

ABOVE THE WATERLINE

When library leaders innovate, they do so to improve services, eliminate problems, or increase the library’s value to the community. While it may involve some risk to the library as an organization, the leader’s level of personal risk is minimal. In the event of failure, other than a loss of funds, wasted staff time, or some reputation damage, library leaders survive such incidents personally unscathed—except perhaps for a bruised ego. In today’s prototype and fail fast environment, leaders may get support, and possibly even kudos, for taking risks, experiencing failure, and learning to do better. Leaders must be mindful of what Jim Collins called the “waterline” principle. Using a ship as a metaphor for the organization, as long as leaders’ failures resulted in damage above the waterline, they and the ship would survive. Below the waterline, a leader could expect their career to sink like the ship. Though most library leaders will stay safely above the waterline, might they improve their organizations by leading and practicing as though there was much more at stake?

DIFFERENT MINDSET

No one expects library leaders to invest their personal savings in any new idea, but perhaps there is something to learn from understanding the experience of someone like Andon. Thinking, deciding, and acting as if one were the developer and owner of an enterprise could make for a surprisingly different approach for the leader and library workers. Adopting this completely different mindset is the subject of the book The Founder’s Mentality (Harvard Business Review Press), by Chris Zook and James Allen. In their research for the book, Zook and Allen studied 8,000 organizations over a five year period to identify the factors that most contributed to “inner health” rather than the bottom line. Not surprisingly, the healthiest organizations had the strongest performance. The authors offer a three-part formula for leaders who want to adapt this mentality to their leadership style and philosophy:

Insurgent Mission: Founders are driven by wanting their organizations to break new ground and achieve something that is both different and valued. They are willing to try new tactics and strategies that are unconventional and untested. For library leaders that might mean abandoning a long accepted practice, such as subscribing to bundled journal packages, in favor of pay-per-article journal fulfillment. That’s why it may help for library leaders to view themselves as insurgents, fighting against industry practices, on behalf of their community members.

Frontline Obsession: Inner health depends on organization’s ability to meet and exceed the expectations of customers and clients. Founders pay close attention to service quality and employee satisfaction. According to Zook and Allen, owners who build their organizations from the ground up know every workflow and job—and likely performed many of them themselves. That leads to a laser-like focus on details and getting things done right. How many library leaders could claim to understand the frontline operations of their libraries in great detail? They can start learning by asking questions, not to micromanage, but to assure every aspect of the library experience benefits the community member.

Owner’s Mindset: Bureaucracy, rules, and unnecessary procedures are as damaging to organizations as fat is to our arteries. They clog workflows, slow projects, and ultimately hurt what happens on the frontlines. Founders are quick to identify and acknowledge problems, take responsibility for them, and rally library workers to fix what’s broken—and they work to eliminate bureaucracy and rules that hurt inner health. When staff knows that their leaders fight for them and do everything possible to clear obstacles that hamper their individual success, they too will feel more like owners with an investment in the organization’s success.

BE BOLD

Having three core practices to adopt in pursuit of the founder’s mentality seems eminently doable for library leaders:

1) Think and act differently.
2) Focus on the frontlines.
3) Avoid allowing bureaucracy to strangle the organization.

What surprised me about the founder’s mentality is that it has less to do with risk taking than I expected. In some sense, there is an element of risk in being an insurgent, in paying as much attention to the frontline as the administrative office, or attempting to break free of rule-bound practices. When the parent organization is in poor health and encases the library in bureaucracy and rules, library leaders need to take greater risks to break through those barriers. Adopting a founder’s mentality need not require library leaders to operate as though they must routinely test the waterline principle. What appears to matter more than risk is boldness. When leaders are willing to do those things that promote the inner health of their organization, they should expect to see results in engaged staff and satisfied community members.

NOT OWNERS BUT WE CAN THINK LIKE THEM

Of course library leaders don’t own the library. None of this is to suggest that any library leader should operate under the assumption that they and they alone are ultimately in control of the organization’s fate and future. Nor should the burden for achieving outcomes fall to one person. Leading the library is, to an extent, a shared responsibility; all library staff play their role in contributing to its success. The point is that thinking more like an owner may give us all an added incentive, beyond wanting to be helpful, competent, and productive, to accept that we occasionally need to take chances and decide on actions that only an owner, fighting to survive and thrive in a competitive environment, would take. None of us who work in libraries will ever know what it’s like to have another library open up across the street from us whose expressed mission is to put us out of business. What if we operated as though we were in that situation? It might change how we think about our work, how we respond to the need to do things differently, and how we support our leaders when they adopt the founder’s mentality.

About Steven Bell

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, is the current vice president/president-elect of ACRL. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his website.

Source: Library Journal 

fastcodesign.com: A Public Library That's Nicer Than The Fanciest Tech Offices

Books are scant, but there are plenty of reading nooks, comfy furniture, and a rooftop garden.

By Diana Budds
February 07, 2017
[Photos: via Dominique Coulon and Associates]  

Libraries are like the Madonnas of the architectural world—changing, evolving, and morphing with the times. Now they're in the midst of a technological reinvention. And as they shed their physical media and go digital, libraries' most significant contribution to a community is often not as a repository of books—but a beacon that draws people together.

Thionville—a city in Northeastern France near the Luxembourg border—opened a new library last year that embodies this shift. Designed by the Strasbourg-based firm Dominique Coulon and Associates, the space is brimming with details designed to foster a sense of community. The architects hope it becomes the city's collective living room; to appeal to the different types of people who might use the library, they filled it with lots of unique moments, like rooms that have distinctive personalities, differing furniture, and plenty of outdoor spaces.

 

 

Short Film / ‘PZZL’ Cultural space [Third-Place] in Thionville, France

 "This project has the ambition of becoming a new model for media libraries," the architects write in their artistic statement. "The program calls the functions of a media library into question, lending it the content of a ‘third place’—a place where members of the public become actors in their own condition, a place for creation as well as reception."

There's a sense of unexpectedness throughout the building, which begins with the structure's footprint. It's sinuous and amoeba-like, so from the sidewalk you never really know where the building will meander. As people walk around and inside the library, the structure's entirety comes into focus and they encounter hidden courtyards and garden spaces. Inside, there are more moments of discovery: Reading nooks built like cubbies into the walls, music-practice rooms covered in tactile (and sound insulating) materials like carpet and cork, couches where multiple people can recline, and space-age Lucite lounge chairs suspended from the ceiling. People can have lunch at a cafe, or sit individually with a book. Every new discovery and spatial aberration encourages even more exploration. All of these elements seem more apt for fancy tech office than a musty public library.

 "There is no unequivocal reading of the space," the architects write. "The perception one has of it reveals a complexity and an unexpected richness. It is a place of freedom."

Libraries have long been bastions of creativity and free thought. Technology—which allows us to get virtually every book, movie, or song on our Kindles and smartphones, no matter the time or place—might have seemed like the nail in the coffin for libraries, but as the Thionville design shows, cleverly reinventing these spaces might make them more popular than ever.

Source: fastcodesign.com

CBC.ca: Standing room only: Central library's chairless main floor a hit with patrons in downtown Calgary

Central branch removed chairs, increased security, in bid to reduce 'inappropriate activity'

CBC News 

Feb 21, 2017

The Calgary Public Library removed all of the chairs on the main floor of its central branch in an effort to make the location a safer place for patrons. (CBC)

The main branch of the Calgary Public Library has become a safer, more family-friendly environment thanks to a redesigned main floor and some extra security, according to the library's CEO.

More than a year ago, the library removed most of the chairs on the ground floor, which were often being monopolized by disruptive visitors.

Calgary Public Library CEO Bill Ptacek says the inner-city location of the main creates particular challenges, but the new open concept layout, and added security, have helped the branch achieve a 12-per-cent decrease in "drug and alcohol-related incidents."

Video: Fewer chairs and fewer problems at Calgary's central branch library

"We decided that we need to figure out how to deal with this, these different populations in this urban environment, in this building before we moved to the new building," Ptacek said.

The library worked with Mount Royal University and the Calgary police to identify the types of physical changes they could make within the building to make it comfortable for lots of people to be there while making sure the library wasn't the centre for "inappropriate activity."

Randy Pages, a Calgary homeless advocate, says he used to spend up to eight hours a day at the library when he himself was homeless.

"When they had all the chair and tables, it was just insane here," he said. "You'd have a table with 12 people hanging around it ... and they were getting louder and louder," Pages said.

Pages says despite the lack of chairs and added security to keep a watchful eye on homeless people who are known to congregate in the library, he agrees with the changes.

"I do feel a little bit safer because they are dealing with a certain type of riff raff that needs to be dealt with," he said.

The main source of noise in the library now comes from a fire truck installation where fire fighters and sometime Mayor Naheed Nenshi come by once in a while to read books to kids.

Parent Falak Shekir's says she's more comfortable bringing her children to the library since the changes.

"It's become much safer to come with the kids, I've noticed this." she said,

Ptacek said last year, the entire library system has gotten a boost in popularity, having been visited about 400,000 more times than the year before.

He expects that number to grow even more when the new Central Library location opens next year in the East Village.

With files from Kate Adach

Source: CBC.ca

Livescience.com: Coders Race to Save NASA's Climate Data

Coders Race to Save NASA's Climate Data

By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | February 14, 2017 11:02am ET

A group of coders is racing to save the government's climate science data.

On Saturday (Feb. 11), 200 programmers crammed themselves into the Doe Library at the University of California, Berkeley, furiously downloading NASA's Earth science data in a hackathon, Wired reported.  The group's goal: rescue data that may be deleted or hidden under President Donald Trump's administration.

The process involves developing web-crawler scripts to trawl the internet, finding federal data and patching it together into coherent data sets. The hackers are also keeping track of data as it disappears; for instance, the Global Data Center's reports and one of NASA's atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) data sets has already been removed from the web.

By the end of Saturday, when the hackathon concluded, the coders had successfully downloaded thousands of pages — essentially all of NASA's climate data — onto the Internet Archive, a digital library.

But there is still more to be done. While the climate data may be safe for now, many other data sets out there could be lost, such as National Parks Service data on GPS boundaries and species tallies, Wired reported.

"Climate change data is just the tip of the iceberg," Eric Kansa, an anthropologist who manages archaeological data archiving for the nonprofit group Open Context, told Wired. "There are a huge number of other data sets being threatened [that are rich] with cultural, historical, sociological information."

Originally published on Live Science.

Etobicoke Guardian: Two Toronto libraries casting light on depression

Two Toronto libraries casting light on depression

Pilot program at two library branches casts light on depression

Light therapy lamp

Justin Greaves/Metroland

Ensar Sehic uses a light therapy lamp at the Toronto Public Library Malvern branch on Monday, Feb. 13. Toronto Public Library is conducting a pilot project to allow library users to use two light therapy lamps on a first-come, first-served basis at its Malvern branch in Scarborough, and at its Brentwood branch in Etobicoke. The lamps are used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Canadian Mental Health Association research indicates two to three per cent of Ontarians have SAD, while another 15 per cent have a less severe experience.

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Etobicoke Guardian

By Tamara Shephard 

Gabi Kresic eagerly basks in the bright lamp’s light at her neighbourhood Brentwood library branch.

Toronto Public Library (TPL) is shining its own light on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) by introducing light therapy lamps at Brentwood branch in Etobicoke and Malvern branch in Scarborough, as part of a pilot project launched last week.

The lamps mimic natural sunlight to treat SAD, a type of depression related to lack of sunlight, particularly in winter.

“It has been an impossible winter,” Kresic said, of Toronto’s dark and dreary days throughout January and into February. “I think everyone suffers from SAD. Some of us, it affects us more.”

In Canada, millions of people suffer from a degree of SAD due to lack of sunlight. Between two and three per cent of the population has full-blown SAD, with symptoms that include fatigue, decreased energy, sleep disorders, weight gain, irritability, and feelings of anxiety and despair. Another 15 per cent have a less severe experience, the Canadian Mental Health Association reported.

Daily, Kresic sits beneath the bright lamp for half an hour, ever since reading a newspaper article about it last Friday. Normally, she visits the library monthly.

“For me, it’s not about the winter; it’s not about the length of the days. It’s the sunlight and the blue sky,” Kresic explained of her need for sunlight. “You may not have sun on 40 C days in summer. For me, sunlight is essential.”

Kresic is such a fan — she once had a light therapy lamp at home — she has offered to purchase and donate a third lamp to Brentwood branch.

Each library branch has two lamps. After a three-month pilot and feedback from users, the lamps could be expanded to other branches, TPL officials said.

Kresic suggested library staff start a sign-up sheet, and consider hosting public lectures given by experts “not just about light therapy, but also other things you can do (to combat depression)”.

Lillian Galati is also a fan of the lamps, and urges TPL to expand the program.

Since Friday, Galati has trekked twice to the Brentwood branch to read beneath the lamps, despite the fact her neighbourhood library is Richview branch. She plans to make use of the lamps twice a week.

“It’s nice to get the heat and the light on you, especially when there is none (outside),” Galati said, while reading The Nest, a novel by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney.

Dr. Robert Levitan, a professor of psychiatry and physiology at the University of Toronto, who is the depression chair at U of T and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, welcomes the idea.

Last year, TPL reached out to Levitan to inform him of the proposed service. Levitan told TPL officials no such service existed in Toronto, and that he supported the idea, said Alex Carruthers, manager of learning and community engagement for TPL.
TPL paid $240 for each therapy lamp, giving people who might not otherwise afford one to try it out.

Information is available at each library branch outlining the therapy lamp's use, who should avoid it and how to use it. It is recommended users sit or read in front of the lamp between 20 and 30 minutes. Users should sit two feet away and not stare directly into the light.

People with retinal disease, macular degeneration or diabetes, and those taking melatonin, thioridazine or lithium, should consult a doctor before using light therapy lamps, TPL advised.

Although the program is only in its second week, Tiziano Vanola, who heads the Brentwood branch, said users’ feedback has been positive. Some people have asked if the program will be expanded and even if they can donate a lamp to the branch.

“Some people actually said they experience the ‘winter blues,’ and they plan on using the lamps on a regular basis,” Vanola said.

It is the first time the light therapy lamps are being used in libraries in Ontario.

TPL considered the program after learning of the lamps’ use in libraries first in Edmonton, then in Winnipeg.

In 2014, Robin Mazumder, an occupational therapist and MacEwan University instructor, donated three light therapy lamps to the Stanley A. Milner Library in downtown Edmonton.

The Awesome Edmonton Foundation had awarded Mazumder a $1,000 prize for his bright idea to bring light therapy to public spaces. Mazumder found a willing partner in Edmonton Public Library.

TPL selected the Brentwood and Malvern branches because both are busy locations, Vanola said.

The pilot program runs until the end of April. Library staff encourage users to provide feedback by filling out a form at each branch or online https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/lighttherapylamp.

“At the end of the pilot project, we’ll collect all the data, see what feedback users gave us, and evaluate if we continue the project, expand it to other branches, and if we do expand, to which branches,” Vanola said.http://www.insidetoronto.com/community-story/7139500-two-toronto-libraries-casting-light-on-depression/

East Tennessean: Fight Fake News with the CRAAP Test

By Dean Pfeiffer
February 6, 2017

In an age where information inundates us constantly and access to thousands of news sources is readily available at our fingertips, it has become difficult to distinguish between what is fact and what is opinion.

In the wake of the recent election, information consumers have become increasingly aware of the growing problem of fake news. Opinions blown up to look like journalistic reporting are liked, shared, and tweeted constantly from either side of the political aisle.

Understanding how to successfully identify fake news is important for the future of our country, so we turned to Pat Van Zandt, Dean of University Libraries at ETSU, for advice.

“Librarians are always interested in helping people find correct information: it’s part of our job,” Van Zandt said.

Van Zandt said one of the tools librarians use and teach is the CRAAP test when verifying information.

“I know it sounds kind of jokey, but when librarians teach information literacy we teach about the CRAAP test,” Van Zandt said.

Each letter of the acronym corresponds to an important element in the process of determining the legitimacy of a news source.

“C is for currency and it reminds you to make sure that what you are reading is up to date,” Van Zandt said. “R is for relevance which asks if the news is relevant. A is for accuracy which requires that the reader evaluate the truthfulness of the information. The second A is for authority which makes sure that whoever is writing knows what they are talking about. For example, I could write a paper on astrophysics but I would have no idea what I was talking about. And P is for purpose because you have to determine if the purpose of the article is to persuade or to inform.”

Aside from the CRAAP test, Van Zandt believes that there are a few key things to look for when examining your sources.

“Fake news tries to appeal to your emotions, so you should be skeptical of anything that produces a strong emotional response,” Van Zandt said.

She also warns against only paying attention to news and news sources that you already know you agree with.

“Some sites like Politifact and Snopes are almost always reliable, but I try to stay wary of other sources that I really like, especially stories suggested by Facebook as it will bring up stories that are similar to things you have already clicked like on,” Van Zandt said.

Ultimately, Van Zandt believes that it is the responsibility of the individual reader to make sure that the information they are consuming is reliable.

“You can’t really avoid fake news, so we all need to take it upon ourselves to be more discerning consumers.”

Source: East Tenessean

PBS Newshour: Can librarians help solve the fake news problem?

By Donald A. Barclay

Imagine, for a moment, the technology of 2017 had existed on Jan. 11, 1964 – the day Luther Terry, surgeon general of the United States, released “Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States.”

What would be some likely scenarios?

The social media noise machine explodes; conservative websites immediately paint the report as a nanny-government attack on personal freedom and masculinity; the report’s findings are hit with a flood of satirical memes, outraged Facebook posts, attack videos and click-bait fake news stories; Big Tobacco’s publicity machine begins pumping out disinformation via both popular social media and pseudoscientific predatory journals willing to print anything for a price; Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater characterizes “Smoking and Health” as a “communist-inspired hoax.”

Eventually, the Johnson administration distances itself from the surgeon general’s controversial report.

For me, the recent spate of stories about large segments of the population falling for fake news stories was no surprise.
Of course none of the above actually occurred. While Big Tobacco spent decades doing all that it could to muddy the waters on the health impacts of smoking, in the end scientific fact triumphed over corporate fiction.

Today, thanks to responsible science and the public policies it inspired, only 15 percent of adults in the United States smoke, down from 42.4 percent in 1965.

One might ask: Would it have been possible to achieve this remarkable public health victory had today’s social media environment of fake news and information echo chambers existed in 1964?

Maybe not. As a long-time academic librarian, I have spent a good part of my career teaching college students to think critically about information. And the fact is that I watch many of them struggle with the challenges of discovering, internalizing, evaluating and applying credible information. For me, the recent spate of stories about large segments of the population falling for fake news stories was no surprise.

Making sense of information is hard, maybe increasingly so in today’s world. So what role have academic libraries played in helping people make sense of world bursting at the seams with information?

History of information literacy

Since the 19th century, academic librarians have been actively engaged in teaching students how to negotiate increasingly complex information environments.

Evidence exists of library instruction dating back to the 1820s at Harvard University. Courses on using libraries emerged at a number of colleges and universities after the Civil War. Until well into the 20th century, however, academic librarians largely gave library building tours, and their instruction was aimed at mastery of the local card catalog.

Since the 19th century, academic librarians have been actively engaged in teaching students how to negotiate increasingly complex information environments.

Beginning in the 1960s, academic librarians experienced a broadening of their role in instruction. This broadening was inspired by a number of factors: increases in the sheer size of academic library collections; the emergence of such technologies as microfilm, photocopiers and even classroom projection; and such educational trends as the introduction of new majors and emphasis on self-directed learning.

The new instructional role of academic librarians was notably reflected in the coining of the phrase “information literacy” in 1974 by Paul G. Zurkowski, then president of the Information Industry Association.

Rather than being limited to locating items in a given library, information literacy recognized that students needed to be equipped with skills required to identify, organize and cite information. More than that, it focused on the ability to critically evaluate the credibility and appropriateness of information sources.

Changes in a Complex World

In today’s digital world, information literacy is a far more complex subject than it was when the phrase was coined. Back then, the universe of credible academic information was analog and (for better or worse) handpicked by librarians and faculty.

Students’ information hunting grounds was effectively limited to the campus library, and information literacy amounted to mastering a handful of relatively straightforward skills, such as using periodical indexes and library catalogs, understanding the difference between primary and secondary sources of information, and distinguishing between popular and scholarly books and journals.

Today, the situation is far more nuanced. And not just because of the hyperpartisan noise of social media.

Today, the situation is far more nuanced. And not just because of the hyperpartisan noise of social media.
Thirty or 40 years ago, a student writing a research paper on the topic of acid rain might have needed to decide whether an article from a scientific journal like Nature was a more appropriate source than an article from a popular magazine like Time.

Today’s students, however, must know how to distinguish between articles published by genuine scholarly journals and those churned out by look-alike predatory and fake journals that falsely claim to be scholarly and peer-reviewed.

This is a far trickier proposition.

Further complicating the situation is the relativism of the postmodern philosophy underpinning much of postmodern scholarly thinking. Postmodernism rejects the notion that concepts such as truth and beauty exist as absolutes that can be revealed through the work of creative “authorities” (authors, painters, composers, philosophers, etc.).

While postmodernism has had positive effects, it has simultaneously undermined the concept of authority. If, as postmodernist philosophy contends, truth is constructed rather than given, what gives anyone the right to say one source of information is credible and another is not?

Further complicating the situation are serious questions surrounding the legitimacy of mainstream scholarly communication. In addition to predatory and fake journals, recent scandals include researchers faking results, fraudulent peer review and the barriers to conducting and publishing replication studies that seek to either verify or disprove earlier studies.

So, what’s the future?

In such an environment, how is a librarian or faculty member supposed to respond to a bright student who sincerely asks, “How can you say that a blog post attacking GMO food is less credible than some journal article supporting the safety of GMO food? What if the journal article’s research results were faked? Have the results been replicated? At the end of the day, aren’t facts a matter of context?”

In recognition of a dynamic and often unpredictable information landscape and a rapidly changing higher education environment in which students are often creators of new knowledge rather than just consumers of information, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) launched its Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the first revision to the ACRL’s standards for information literacy in over 15 years.

The framework recognizes that information literacy is too nuanced to be conceived of as a treasure hunt in which information resources neatly divide into binary categories of “good” and “bad.”

Notably, the first of the framework’s six subsections is titled “Authority Is Constructed and Contextual” and calls for librarians to approach the notions of authority and credibility as dependent on the context in which the information is used rather than as absolutes.

This new approach asks students to put in the time and effort required to determine the credibility and appropriateness of each information source for the use to which they intend to put it.

Real progress in information literacy will require librarians, faculty and administrators working together.
For students this is far more challenging than either a) simply accepting authority without question or b) rejecting all authority as an anachronism in a post-truth world. Formally adopted in June 2016, the framework represents a way forward for information literacy.

While I approve of the direction taken by the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, I do not see it as the ultimate solution to the information literacy challenge. Real progress in information literacy will require librarians, faculty and administrators working together.

Indeed, it will require higher education, as well as secondary and primary education, to make information literacy a priority across the curriculum. Without such concerted effort, a likely outcome could be a future of election results and public policies based on whatever information – credible or not – bubbles to the top of the social media noise machine.



Source: PBS Newshour

MTV.com: In Trump's America, Activist Librarians Who Won't Be Shushed

Librarians are getting ready to fight fake news, hate crimes, and whatever lies ahead.

Jaime Fuller
January 19, 2017

Our next president has not spent much time in libraries. Reading is unnecessary, Donald Trump told The Washington Post, because he always makes good decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had.” These wise choices include spreading conspiracy theories borrowed from respected sources such as “many people are saying.” And his favorite book, The Art of the Deal, is less a window than a slab of stained glass commemorating himself, through which the outside world is only dimly visible.

As someone who believes that truth goes to the victors — and specifically those unashamed to chip away at facts with a million @s — Trump won’t be speaking much about the power of libraries over the next four years. That won’t eliminate their power, however; in a world where faith in American institutions is crumbling, people still trust libraries. And just as they have with every other monumental development in American history — whether technological, cultural, or existential — librarians are already preparing for how to evolve to serve us best.

Encouraging Americans to teleport outside their own lives has always been libraries’ most impressive superpower. To that end, Michigan librarian Jessica Bratt puts out books that help fight Islamophobia, a focus given the city’s refugee population. “I have stories,” she adds, “where kids had never met anyone from the LGBT community until they read a particular book. And that shaped and opened up their whole world.” Of course, libraries have also found themselves at the center of battles over censorship or privacy, as when parents complained about the pernicious influence of Harry Potter, or when the Patriot Act threatened to make the government privy to our reading lists. And there are plenty of smaller, constant fights over what knowledge children should be steered toward while they’re learning about the world for the first time.

Every year, the Grand Rapids Public Library in Michigan sends out one book to every fifth grader in the city as part of the “One City, One Book” program. In 2015, it chose One Crazy Summer, which follows young sisters who move to Oakland in 1968 and learn about the Black Panther Party. There was some pushback about how the book portrayed the police, Bratt says, but her colleagues defended the choice, saying that kids needed to read it. There were several meetings in which the choice was discussed, and attendees got quite emotional. It had not been long since Trayvon Martin was murdered. But, Bratt says, “the schools took a chance. It was all worth it,” and the students loved it.

Bratt’s also one of the founders of Libraries 4 Black Lives, a group trying to get librarians across the country to take a stand on racial justice, and knew she wanted to be a librarian ever since she was a kid growing up on the South Side of Chicago. “Libraries have a long history of social action,” she says. “We can take a stand — don’t need to be on the tail end of history anymore.” Now living in Grand Rapids, she’s trying to make her career into a case study of how librarians can advocate for social justice at the local level.

But when states or school districts need to slash budgets, libraries are often targeted. This means the school librarians often have fewer qualifications, and students end up learning less about how to find good information — a major problem in a world requiring everyone to sift through reams of questionable facts and figures every day. “The public schools needed support,” Bratt says. “Some schools still [have] Windows 98.” So she worked to create a virtual library card that let all students at Grand Rapids public schools access the public library’s resources.

Oregon librarian Diedre Conkling agrees that her colleagues have an important role to play in nearly every big fight happening in politics right now. “Everything is related to libraries,” says Conkling, who sits on the American Library Association’s Social Responsibilities Round Table. “You could name almost any topic, and I could tell you how it’s related to libraries.” Take fossil fuels, for example: SRRT is trying to convince ALA to divest, while individual libraries try to become more sustainable. Or gun violence: The SRRT wants the organization to take a stand on guns in libraries, especially as open carry laws proliferate.

Convincing librarians nationwide “takes a while, but we’re persistent.” Sometimes it takes a very long time, Conkling says, alluding to libraries’ slow progress on civil rights. Shortly before Obama was inaugurated, Representative John Lewis told Terry Gross that he “was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins — I was only 16 years old — we went down to the public library, trying to check out some books. And we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. ... I never went back to that public library until July 5, 1998 ... for a book signing of my book, Walking with the Wind. And they gave me a library card after the program was over.”

Of course, libraries can still be sites of intolerance and hate today. Julie Todaro, president of the American Library Association, says “it’s startling” how many hate crimes branches around the country have endured lately. A woman studying at the University of New Mexico library was shocked when a man came up behind her and tried to remove her hijab. Someone drew swastikas inside a copy of the Koran at the Evanston Public Library in Illinois, and another person wrote “The White Man Is Back in Power” on the wall of the Reed College library in Oregon. Todaro says a similar spike in hate crimes happened after 9/11, but that staffers everywhere have had to consider security in a way they never had to before. Many librarians are even taking part in active-shooter training now, Todaro says, and seminars on security are commonplace. “We want people to feel like libraries are safe havens,” she says. It just takes some extra effort sometimes.

WE WANT PEOPLE TO FEEL LIKE LIBRARIES ARE SAFE HAVENS.

And although our new president may not argue that the effort is worth it, many a powerful person has cited libraries as the secret ingredient that made their rise possible. Thomas Jefferson said he couldn’t live without them; Ben Carson, Sonia Sotomayor, and countless others had formative experiences in these public spaces — including Barack Obama, who told a roomful of librarians in 2005 that “the library represents a window to a larger world.” At the time Obama gave his speech, the only thing America knew about him was that he loved words and understood their power.

He also knew that those who disagreed with him were equally conscious of the power of books: “Since ancient antiquity, whenever those who seek power would want to control the human spirit, they have gone after libraries and books.” He mentioned the texts cremated at the Library of Alexandria and in communist block countries, and the copies of Huckleberry Finn kept from the shelves. They were moments “worth pondering,” Obama said, “at a time when truth and science are constantly being challenged by political agendas and ideologies, at a time when language is used not to illuminate but, rather, to obfuscate.” Twelve years later, the speech still feel fresh, even if the past year has left many of us questioning Obama’s belief that “libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.”

Libraries know that it’s getting harder to find the right information in the sinkhole that is the modern media environment, so they’re doing what they always do — evolving to find new ways to give users what they need. Plenty of libraries have already found a way to be relevant in 2017 — Bratt and Todaro both said that their libraries were planning on hosting fake-news panels in January. The latest cover of the School Library Journal includes a headline asking if librarians are the best hope against fake news. The unemployed go to libraries to apply for jobs or food stamps. The Pima County Public Library in Arizona hired a nurse who gives flu shots and other care to visitors who might be homeless, or just need extra help.

And despite the fact that we have an exponentially growing list of ways to access information just sitting there in our pocket — and a president who seems to be a personified Glade PlugIn for ignorance — librarians aren’t worried about disappearing from the American ethos. “Public libraries are in a good place,” says Wayne Wiegand, a library historian and a fellow at the Library of Congress Kluge Center. “There are more libraries than McDonald’s.” Conkling remembers when a journalist sat down next to her on a bus during the 1976 ALA conference in New York. He asked if she thought that CD-ROMs meant that libraries would soon be obsolete. “I don’t see that happening,” she said.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t individual branches — rural and urban — worried about their future, or places where books aren’t an endangered resource, especially when profit comes into play. In 2016, the nearly 1.5 million people who live in the Bronx lost their last bookstore. On the Sunday before inauguration this year, writers gathered on the steps of the New York Public Library to protest Trump. Those assembled carried signs with quotes from James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, but the biggest sign of all hung from the building itself, announcing perhaps the most effective way to fight back against those who use words to confuse and hide. In unavoidable red and yellow, it read, “GET A LIBRARY CARD.”

Beneath the sign, an army of winter coat–clad clipboard-holders were gathering signatures for Citizens Defending Libraries, a group that fights closures and sales of libraries across the city. The petitions noted that Stephen Schwarzman, the businessman whose name graced the library branch everyone had gathered in front of, was a Trump adviser. “Libraries are a bulwark of democracy,” co-founder Michael D.D. White said while handing the petition to another protester. “If we protect libraries, they’ll protect us.” And since Americans trust so few institutions to explain the world or make it better in 2017, librarians will have a lot of protecting to do if the right information is ever going to beat out the loudest again.

Source: MTV.com