James LaRue - myliblog

In November of 2018, I left my position at ALA in Chicago to return to my Colorado-based writing, speaking, and consulting career. Today, I brought up my new website, created in Google Sites/new. For folks landing here before the DNS entries propagate around (tricky stuff!), I've included below some of the business services I will highlight in the new website. Speaking Looking for an inspirational talk? Looking for a workshop? Recent topics include: Intellectual freedom and social justice Transformational by design: a paradigm shift The first year: six strategies for being a successful library director Key trends (emergent literacy, library as place, ebooks, community reference, advocacy) Library building programs and processes: building for tomorrow Library as publisher: from gatekeeper to gardener Community reference: leaving Fort Ref, taking it to the streets Advocacy: Telling the library story Trustee and director training: making each other look good Succession p...

First, I want to thank my good friend and colleague Claudine Perrault for letting me have a mountain retreat for 5 days to work on my book. She and her daughter were vacationing, and Estes Park (where Claudine is library director) is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. I wound up writing a little over 8,000 words, which was mostly one full chapter. But I also had a chance to think about the whole structure and audience of it. I returned to three things: first, I'm stepping in to fill out Kari May's term as Past-President of the Colorado Association of Libraries . Kari is moving to Utah to become the Assistant Director of the state library there, overseeing Continuing Education and certification. Past-president is the best job of all. CAL seems to be recovering from its recession challenges, and there's a lot of energy in the group. As part of my position, it seems I'm also to be chair of the Colorado Library Educational Foundation or CLEF. Stay tuned for mo...

One of the challenges of my new consulting career is finding the succinct summary of just what it is that I do. Here's my latest attempt: I'm a full time public library thought leader. I've decided that the profession I love (librarianship!) is at a tipping point. With some attention on just the right things, I think we can earn long term mind share and support. The point isn't just to benefit libraries, it's to benefit the communities we serve. Libraries just happen to be an extraordinarily effective way to do that. So just what, exactly, are  the "right things" to focus on? Right now: planning. After PLA (where I offered some free consulting to the library world, and met some fascinating people), I spent some time thinking about processes to move quickly and precisely to true "strategic" planning -- not just a list of stuff to do, but a narrow focus on the things that matter most. trend tracking. Really, this is just a subset of plann...