James LaRue - myliblog

Here are my remarks at today's American Library Association Midwinter Conference. Jim Neal's Presidential Program was "Are libraries neutral?" I was first on the "pro" side of the debate. In 1938, a time with an eery resonance to today, some citizens in Des Moines, Iowa protested a book we would now call hate speech: Hitler's Mein Kampf. Director Forrest Spaulding drafted "A Library's Bill of Rights" to establish for the first time the library's endorsement of intellectual freedom -- the right to access even uncomfortable or offensive content. Maybe, Spaulding said, we needed to know what was going on in the world. In 1939, ALA Council approved the statement for the entire association. Implicit in intellectual freedom is the principle of neutrality. Let me make two things clear. Neutrality does not mean that librarians have no values. We do. It doesn't mean that institutions don't exist to advance certain goals. Libraries...

I was speaking with my boss, Mary Ghikas, about the recent ALA conference in Orlando. She said some things I hadn't heard of or thought about before. Many people, particularly their first time through an ALA conference, get totally overwhelmed, particularly if they find themselves traveling to a mix of programs and committee meetings. In that case, they find themselves dashing around a city in cabs or buses. They wonder, "Why can't we put everything in one place?" The answer is pretty simple: we have way  more concurrent meetings than most associations. While ALA works hard to get all the programs in the conference center (where there is a speaker, not just a discussion group or committee meeting), ALA typically has between 350-370 meetings going on at the same time. Nobody has a conference center that big, so we have to team up with hotels to get the necessary rooms. That adds costs, too, because hotels love to tack on charges for wifi, projectors, cords and cabl...

Some of you know that I moved from Colorado to Chicago this year. It was January. Then, I discovered that I had moved not just next door to, but just above the main floor of a very popular, and very loud, dance club. To be fair, most days of the week (Sunday-Wednesday) the apartment is very quiet. But it's also dark, pointing east toward a tiny box of brick between two skyscrapers into which little light falls. But my landlords gave me a six month (as opposed to a full year) lease, and let me out a little early to move up from the first to the 16th floor. The new apartment has a pretty spectacular view of Lake Michigan. The new apartment is more expensive, of course, but I do like the Near North neighborhood. From my address, it's an 11 minute walk to work, and two blocks away from almost anything else. So I've spent my day, in a leisurely way (I strolled to a terrific breakfast place in the morning, I walked along the shore this afternoon), preparing 12 boxes, 6 piec...

Yesterday, American Library Association (ALA) President Courtney Young issued a statement  about the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" (RFRA) approved by the Indiana General Assembly, and signed by Governor Mike Pence. Since that action, Indiana has come under a lot of fire. President Young's comments are right on, in my view. But I find myself wondering just what this law is supposed to do. Why is it needed? Thus far, these are the cases I've heard of where people feel their religious faith compels them to deny service to someone: a Knights of Columbus group doesn't want to rent its hall for a gay wedding. a pharmacist doesn't want to sell birth control pills to an unmarried woman. a cake decorator doesn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding. a photographer doesn't want to take pictures of a gay wedding. You can't help but notice that three of the four are about denying commercial services to gay people. Discrimination appe...

A couple of days ago I attended the retirement party of my friend and colleague Rochelle Logan. Rochelle was one of my associate directors at Douglas County Libraries for 14 years, and wow, she was a good one. After I left (in January of 2014, after 24 years there!), I entered the world of writing, speaking and consulting. Much of the time, that meant talking about leadership. And it turns out I was not alone. A lot of people make a living talking about leadership. But I was surprised by some of the people who wanted to hire me.  Often, they had their own talkers - university professors and professional speakers. Why didn't they just use their in-house talent? The reason, it turned out, is that although those people could talk about it, they hadn't actually done it.  At Rochelle's party, I found myself thinking about the practice of leadership.  Before and during our time together, we built and grew a team (many teams, really). We made plans, saw them throug...

On February 6, 2015, I gave an interview on "Libraries as Agents of Change" for Gale Geek. You can find the audio here . Afterward, I was given the opportunity to blog about it. You'll find that here . Fun!

[As published in the March/April 2015 issue of American Libraries .] Librarianship is at a tipping point. We have challenges. But there has never, not in human history, been a time so thrilling to be in our field.  A new generation of librarians - more diverse, more tech-savvy, bringing a new kind of social energy - is joining us and our colleagues at just the right moment. Every day, we are working together to make a difference to our larger communities - school, academic, public, and an emerging global culture. I have spent my career as librarian, community leader, newspaper columnist, radio and TV show host, writer, teacher, and a leader of statewide, regional, national, and even international efforts in positioning the library for tomorrow . If we are to survive and thrive in that tomorrow, we must shift public perceptions of our roles.  As ALA President, I will not only communicate the services we provide, but also highlight our value in strengthening our communiti...

So I'm running for ALA presidency. And I'm trying to listen, and trying to make sense of what I hear. One of the big, recurring issues I heard at midwinter was a sense of a fragmented membership . ALA is a large, complex institution serving members with a multitude of highly specialized interests. How then, can they communicate not only to and from ALA leadership, but coordinate their activities with other divisions, committees, and roundtables? Yet there's also a lot of duplication in ALA. Almost every group I talked to mentioned "advocacy." But to frank, we have different understandings of that word. Effective advocacy, in my view, is based on three things: marketing strategy (reach and frequency); the findings of neuroscience (emotional appeal); the importance of planning (pulling it all together). Let's break those apart. Reach and frequency means getting a message to a target audience (that's the reach ), as many times as possible (that...

Shortly after I got my library degree, I joined the American Library Association (ALA) and went to my first conference. It was, for a young man of my modest means, insanely expensive. I don't mean registration and membership dues, I mean travel, lodging, and meals. I got a little help from my employer, but not much. And ALA was big . It was impossible to catch everything I wanted to, and I spent a lot of time running between things. In retrospect, I think I could have planned better. But at the time, I concluded that ALA activity, particularly involving conferences, was simply out of my reach. So I paid my membership, read the magazines and a couple newsletters, and that was about it. I focused my attention on local, then statewide and regional professional groups. I wound up in leadership positions in many of them (the state chapter's public library division, the state library association presidency), which was terrific experience. I came back to ALA in a big way when tw...

Listening is not waiting for the other person to stop talking. It's paying close attention both to the person and the topic. I'm just back from American Library Association's midwinter 2015 conference. It was in Chicago, which happens to be not so far from where I was born and raised (Waukegan, to the north).  I am a candidate for the presidency of the ALA. I met with some 30-odd groups in my time there, as well as speaking with dozens of conference attendees in the halls. My spiel (the 10 second intro) was something like this: "here come my flyers , articulating my background and platform. But I believe that leadership begins with listening . So I won't read to you what you can read for yourself. My question to you is this: what do you want your next ALA president to know about your key issues or initiatives?" And then I shut up. And I listened. It turns out that there are a lot of insightful and articulate people in the association, well wo...

I am thrilled to announce my candidacy for the 2016-17 Presidency of the American Library Association. Those of you who know me, know of my deep and abiding passion for libraries. You also know that I've worked -- with many others! -- to make them better. As I've often said, this is the most exciting time in the history of our profession, and we need every live mind and spirit we can find. But the more I have thought about the state of libraries in the US today, the more concerned I have become. Support for public and academic libraries - measured in terms of public willingness to fund them - has been falling for decades. In too many states, our school libraries are in a state of crisis. Many are on the brink of extinction. I know most librarians to be conscientious and thoughtful stewards of public funds. Too, I know them to be, in many, many ways, staggeringly effective. Why then, are we losing support? And more importantly, what can we do about it? Here's what do...