James LaRue - myliblog

I don’t mean to brag, but since about 5th grade, I have developed — dare I say? — a superpower. I can read and walk at the same time. I’m not just talking about audiobooks. I mean I can stroll along busy streets, through intersections, and around natural hazards, all while actively reading a book in my hands. I can follow the story. I have trained my peripheral brain to alert me to physical threats. Why did I need to develop this skill? To put it simply: some books I just can’t set down. It’s not a surprise that I can still follow the story while strolling. Sometimes I can’t get out. The first books to completely capture my attention were science fiction. I discovered Robert A. Heinlein somewhere around 5th grade. I got so into that story (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel) that I was glued to it from my first awakening to final, heavy-lidded blink. I learned that there are very few things you actually have to stop reading to do: showers and sleep, mainly. Walking to school and back was easy...

My partner and I just finished co-teaching a leadership institute for librarians in the Western States. But I keep thinking about it. Some people, I know, think leadership is all about power. But I always wonder: power to do what? To make or to break? Over my 40-odd years of administrative experience — and some of them have been very odd indeed — I’ve boiled my idea of leadership down to three things. Know thyself . That is, have a relatively clear-eyed assessment of your strengths. Build on those strengths. But also learn how to recognize in other people the strengths that you do not have. Play well with others . Leadership begins with listening and paying attention. Then it moves into emotional intelligence — the ability to read and respond appropriately to human communication. The good news is that emotional intelligence is a skill set. It can be learned. The bad news is that a lot of people don’t bother. Make it better . There’s no point in leadership that makes things worse. Good ...

Librarians are generally a deliberate lot. We keep calm and gather information. But many of us are genuinely alarmed about recent actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Back on March 20, DOGE and Department of Homeland Security officials showed up unannounced at the headquarters of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). They appointed a new Acting Director in the lobby — Keith Sonderling, who is also the Secretary of the Department of Labor. By March 31 all the employees were placed on 90-day administrative leave, with no access to their government email. What is IMLS? IMLS was established in 1996 by a Republican-led Congress. Its mission is to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.” It was actually the merger of two previous government agencies, including the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and the Institute of Museum Service...

I know you do. Everything changed in 2010. Patrons handed library staff their shiny Christmas present: Kindles. “Make them work!” Despite the many predictions of a paperless society, eBooks really hadn’t caught on. But suddenly it was possible to carry 15 or 20 or 100 books around with you in your preferred font type and size. That same year, 2010, also marked the beginning of a big shift in the publishing landscape. At that time, there were about 300,000 new titles published a year by “the Big Five” (Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster). There were roughly 60,000 new titles per year published by small and independent publishers who just couldn’t match the distribution system of the major publishers. There were about 10,000 so-called vanity press titles a year. Today we call them “self-published,” even though the platform usually belongs to someone else — Amazon, Apple and Barnes and Noble, probably. Almost overnight regional, small and ind...

Years ago now, (2008) the international library corporation OCLC conducted a surprising study. They interviewed some 4,000 people to find out what they really felt about libraries. The issue was a weird contradiction. The use of the library was growing sharply over the past 25 years. Many patrons enthusiastically admitted “I love my library!” But at the same time, support for libraries — measured by the ability for the library to get on the ballot, or win the election when they did — was falling. The study, which was replicated 10 years later, surfaced all kinds of interesting and non-intuitive findings. Here’s the big one: library use, all by itself, simply doesn’t have much to do with support. That is, the folks who check out 40 books a week to feed the curious minds of their toddlers were no more likely to vote for a library mill levy than people who didn’t use the library at all. There was, however, a group of super supporters. They shared some characteristics that seemed important...

I was a philosophy major in college. (Actually, I got a double major: philosophy and creative writing, with a minor in business law.) When I graduated my father asked me what I was now qualified to do. “Argue eloquently in bars,” I told him. And I have. But, in fact, philosophy is a wonderful tool to tackle almost anything. What I learned from my readings was that clear thinking comes down to three things. First, what are your premises? Can you identify them? Second, how reasonable are they? Is there evidence? How trustworthy is it? Third, can you get from those premises to a justifiable conclusion? Does the chain of your reasoning follow the rules of logic? In this, the Age of Misinformation, we see many people whose premises are not just made up but strongly contradicted by the data. Once the false problem is set up they offer a ludicrous solution. An example. Premise: “There is a burgeoning public health crisis of sexual crime and misbehavior!” Evidence: In fact, like violent crimes...