James LaRue - myliblog

Today I talked with the staff of the Kenosha (WI) Public Library about intellectual freedom issues. (Thank you, director Barb Brattin, for the opportunity!) There is a sense - not just in Kenosha - that things (our society, our norms of political contest) are changing. There are some things we thought we knew that are suddenly not so certain. So, the role of the library is .... ? I said that we should do what we have always done, what is still most urgently required: gather, organize, and present to the public the intellectual content of our culture. That content comes from several sources. Mainstream publishing has been the key pipeline for at least a generation of library users. But I also pointed out that there are now far more numerous and potentially more powerful wellsprings of content production. Small, independent, and self-publishing now completely overwhelms the 350,000 annual titles of our Big Five publishers and three or four distributors. Today, there are over 1 mi...

I've been an Earthlink customer - for home internet, for home networking, for web hosting - since 2002. But for the past few months, I've been unhappy with that relationship. The big problem was that my DSL connection just started pooping out. I called it in, spent lots of time troubleshooting it, and even replaced the modem. I could never get EarthLink to even admit that there was a problem. Nonetheless, the internet connection became unusable. As far as web hosting is concerned, things have gotten cheaper. $10 a month wasn't bad, but some folks charge half that or less. I bought a domain name, jlarue.com, a long time ago, through another company. Then, a few years back, I moved to Google for email, which required some odd gyrations with EarthLink mail server settings. Then I got to thinking: my website had been whittled down to a few links and just a little text. Why not just move that content over to my blog, and make my blog the website? Advantages: the ...

I've created this post for folks who bring me in as a speaker. Typically, they want three things: a brief biography/blurb, a photo, and a description of the session I'm giving. Here's the blurb: LaRue is the former executive director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom , and the Freedom to Read Foundation . Author of " The New Inquisition : Understanding and Managing Intellectual Freedom Challenges," LaRue was a public library director for many years (including a 24 year tenure as director of the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado), as well as a weekly newspaper columnist and cable TV host. He has written, spoken, and consulted on leadership and organizational development, community engagement, and the future of libraries. Photo The session description, of course, varies! Contact information: Please direct all communications to jlarue [at] jlarue [dot] com. Phone: 7 2 0 . 5 3 0 . 4 2 9 4 No spam, please! ...

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...

[What follows is the work of my friend and colleague Rick Ashton. It's a powerful story about a subject that isn't well known or talked about these days. But it's worth telling. I am very proud to "publish" it here.] HARVARD COLLEGE CLASS OF 1967 VIETNAM ERA MEMOIR AND REFLECTIONS OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR RICK J. ASHTON MAY 27, 2016 I have told the story of the Vietnam War era and my part in it to many people who have heard it with blank expressions.  My children, my younger colleagues and acquaintances, and even my contemporaries have received my story as an object of antiquarian curiosity.  This has led to a certain reticence on my part.  I have become reluctant to experience the incomprehension and wonderment of my listeners. Nevertheless, I hope the present telling will have a different reception.  While many of the particulars will be unfamiliar, I think most readers of this report will at least recognize the general outline.  I have ...

Starting a new job is humbling. I used to be the founder of a well-respected library district where I knew (almost) everybody and everything. Now I'm the new guy in an association where I sometimes forget which floor my boss is on. The late Missy Shock, a very insightful training coordinator I hired for Douglas County Libraries many years ago, told it like this: we go from unconsciously incompetent (we don't know that we don't know), to consciously incompetent (OMG, I know NOTHING), to consciously competent (OK, I need to do this, then that), to unconsciously competent (you're done with the task before you realize you started). My own phases as the new director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) have gone more like this: exhilaration. What fun to learn! New city, new building, new people, new issues. It was thrilling. This lasted about four weeks. humiliation. "I know I've asked this before, possibly twice, but how do I..." "In the 29...