Be a Catalyst, a Provocateur, and a Ripple of Hope

I recently listed to the audiobook, Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope: Kerry Kennedy in Conversation with Heads of State, Business Leaders, Influencers, and Activists about Her Father's Impact on Their Lives. In this book, Kerry, a human rights activist and RFK’s seventh child, talks to a number of interesting and notable people who shared their thoughts on Robert Kennedy’s impact on their life and the world.

I well remember the night RFK was shot and now, more than 50 years later, this book shows the impact that he had on many people, regardless of their political affiliation. The book highlights, among other things, the speech that Robert Kennedy made in South Africa in 1966 during the very difficult days of Apartheid. In this speech, he shares words that in today’s fractured political environment we need to both hear and heed.

"We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do."

He also talks about the powerful impact that a single individual can make and how together we can change the world.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Even though I grew up in Canada and came of age in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I remember the Summer of Love in 1967, the death of Martin Luther King in 1968, Woodstock in 1969, and the shootings at Kent State in 1970. These showed a troubled time for many youths as they protested against the Vietnam War and for some, the seeming senselessness of modern life, with its phrase of “tune on, tune in, drop out.” It was a period of passion, angst, unrest, and ennui. In many ways, the zeitgeist or ethos of today is the same.

One of the privileges in working in higher education is getting to work with students, most who are at a point where they are excited about life and its possibilities and also when many of them are passionate about making the world a better place. Their optimism, energy, and passion gives me hope.

One of my interests is the role that academic libraries can play in creating intellectual discourse and engagement on campus. While libraries build collections and offer programming that is broad and aims for diversity, it is important to acknowledge that our historic collections and practices reflect a Eurocentric, Christian view of the world, and that we have systematically ignored minority views and materials that provide perspectives of billions of people whose experience of the world is different. This has increased the marginalization that students from underrepresented groups have felt, has limited their research opportunities, and also has kept the dominant group of students and faculty from learning about people and cultures unlike ourselves.

One of the key parts of almost every university’s mission is to prepare students to be productive citizens in today’s global world. Today, at least here in the United States, we are suffering from anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, racism, and a lack of tolerance for anyone’s view but our own. While we cannot quickly and easily fix all of past wrongs, we can, going forward, be more inclusive and create a dialog that leads to better understanding. Because Libraries belong to the entire intellectual and social endeavor of the university, we are uniquely positioned to play a role that facilitates at least some of the important, difficult, and challenging questions and conversations on campus.

Librarians and libraries play a number of roles on campus. We are collectors, distributors, teachers, planners, stewards, creators, etc. Two roles, that I like, are not often referenced; namely those of catalyst and provocateur. Dictionary.com defines “catalyst” as a person whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, or energetic. - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/catalyst and “provocateur” as a writer, artist, political activist, etc. whose works, ideas, or activities are regarded as a threat to accepted values or practices https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/provocateur.

On the surface, these may seem to be strange roles for libraries/librarians but they are, I believe, roles we should play in order to use our spaces, collections, services, and staff to engender intellectual conversation in our libraries and on campus. Our collections, our programs, our exhibits should push the boundaries and make us think, reflect, and at times, change our minds.

I think libraries should celebrate events like Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and LGBT History Month, especially when the celebration goes beyond a mere book display. We should be using these opportunities to both make our libraries safe spaces but also brave spaces where we engage in difficult conversations that move our cultural understanding forward.

Here are some examples to consider in engaging the campus in ways that engender dialog.

• Host a Native American spirit dance with a follow-up discussion on NA spirituality
• Ask a political science professor to talk about protests in the modern era
•  Invite the student groups that represent Muslim countries to host a conversation on the Muslim faith and what it means to be a Muslim in the western world
• Host a conversation on changing gender roles
• Sponsor a social justice day
• Ask the diversity office to offer a workshop on microaggressions
•  Have an education faculty talk on language shaming and the effect this has on students
• Mount an exhibit on any topic that will challenge peoples beliefs
• Create a competitive exhibits program that invites faculty to propose an exhibit and accompany a lecture on an interesting/controversial topic
• Create a faculty lecture series that allows faculty to present their research to their colleagues and students
•  Host a voter registration event, complete with information on how students can register in their home state or where they are attending school
• Host at least one event that challenges the status quo either in society, on campus, in higher education, or globally
•  Have librarians participate in student learning communities or in camps one book programs

 There are no right or wrong ways to make your library a center for intellectual engagement on campus. Pick some ideas and try. Be a provocateur and challenge people to change the world. Be a catalyst for individual and community change. And with the spirit of RFK, be a ripple of hope.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." - RFK

Risk-Taking and Academic Libraries

When I pulled into my local Starbucks yesterday, I parked in a space that had a message lettered on it. It read “Take a Risk Today”. A message like this either smacks you upside the head or you quickly read the message and walk away: thinking the message is for someone else. But perhaps it was for me; time will tell.

Risk taking in the U.S. is both lauded and disparaged. Many of us hear about adrenaline junkies who seemingly risk life and limb climbing some sheer rock cliff, skyscraper, or just running through a city participating in parkour. From our comfortable armchairs we sometimes make disparaging comments or shake our heads in disbelief, or perhaps we secretly wish we had the courage to do something so dangerous. On the other hand, we hear from our parents, friends, and almost every commencement speaker to be bold, to take risks, and change the world.

Regardless of where you fall on the risk-taking continuum, we live in a world that tends to reward the bold. Many believe that many Native Americans migrated from Asia across the Bering Strait upwards of 20,000 years, while others believe that humans arrived in a variety of ways, most likely by some sort of boat across one or more oceans. We do know that Europeans arrived by boat after risking life and limb in tiny boats on the open ocean for months at a time. These were bold and risky moves.  

Universities, especially in the United States, are often described as risk-averse organizations. In many ways this is true but this seems to be a more recent part of university history. Looking back at the early history of universities across the US, there have been many risky ventures to get our university system to where it is today.  I’m sure during the late 1800’s and during the two World Wars, many universities were taking risks in order to stay alive and thrive.

While libraries, especially academic libraries, have had times of not being bold or embracing risk, this has not been true of the last two decades.  More and more library leaders are being called on to reinvent/re-envision their library and to take on new roles in the academy. If this is going to be more than just lip service, then it is going to mean being bold and taking risks. The profession does recognize this. Library Journal every year publishes its list of “Movers and Shakers” and ACRL gives out annual awards for “Excellence in Academic Libraries” and the ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year.

Self-help guru, Dean Bokhari, has an interesting post on risk-taking (https://www.meaningfulhq.com/risk-taker.html) entitled “7 Habits of Highly Successful Risk-Takers.” While the post is geared towards career growth and doing meaningful work, he does have five points that I think are applicable to risk-taking in academic libraries.

Be Ridiculously Irrational. Being ridiculously irrational is probably one piece of advice that you’re unlikely to hear in a very rational profession like librarianship. While there are librarians who are risk-takers, for many years we were a “plan to plan” profession where we would spend a year of committee work to get to an idea that then would take 6 months to a year more of planning to implement.

While I would not advocate throwing all caution to the wind and throw out the strategic plan, I think that moving to the next level of moving the 21^st-century academic library requires dreaming so big that what we want to do is beyond belief; a project that some may say is crazy or irrational. For me examples of this type of thinking would include the 2CUL collaboration between Columbia and Cornell (http://www.2cul.org/), SCOAP3 for particle physics (https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/), walking away from the Elsevier big deal (the Netherlands, Germany, and now University of California- https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/university-california-boycotts-publishing-giant-elsevier-over-journal-costs-and-open), establishing an artificial intelligence lab in the University of Rhode Island (https://web.uri.edu/ai/), and the Shared Print Strategy in the State of Maine (http://www.maineinfonet.org/mscs/). Each of these projects, agreements, decisions would be viewed by many, when they were first suggested, to be impossible, out of scope, and perhaps even plain crazy.

A Successful Risk Taker Is A Short Term Pessimist And A Long-Term Optimist. We often think of risk-taking as a short-term thing with immediate gratification or soul-deadening or body-damaging results. While there is a sense of immediacy in some risk-taking, in most cases leaders are proposing something that is going to take to develop and mature; something that needs time to fly, perhaps crash but then fly again. Using flight as a metaphor for this type of risk-taking the Wright Brothers subjected themselves over and over again to some failures and tragedies before making history. They were both wildly irrational and took the long view.

Within the library world there are numerous examples. Fred Kilgour, in developing and launching OCLC as a shared cataloging utility, certainly saw both ups and down, but in the long-term OCLC became the largest bibliographic database in the world, and continues to grow. In 1994, Bill Bowen, President of the Andrew W Melon Foundation envisioned JSTOR as a way for university libraries to reclaim stack space from paper journals, by providing long-term secure digital access. Starting out small JSTOR has grown to a powerhouse in the scholarly world. It is one of the most common academic database and one of the few databases that most students can name. It provides access to more than 10 million academic journal articles, 50,000 books, and 2 million primary source documents in 75 discipline.

Radical projects are long-term efforts.

Don’t Listen To Dream Killers. Dream killers are probably the biggest problems in the world of risk takers. We’ve all encountered people on our staffs or at our universities who always see the glass as half-full or even only one-quarter full. For every new and interesting idea, they have a wide of reasons why it won’t work or why we shouldn’t do it or why they’re not willing to help with. While every good leader wants to have someone on staff who plays the role of asking hard questions, the glass-half-full people are sometimes difficult to overcome.

Throughout history, there have been people who have refused to listen to dream killers. Martin Luther King had a dream as did Rosa Parks. They were certainly subject to many naysayers but yet they did not give up. ALA’s Spectrum Scholarship program began as a dream by Dr. Betty J. Turock and Elizabeth Martinez and now more than 20 years later the program has helped hundreds of racial and ethnically diverse students achieve an MLIS degree and enter the library profession. Creating a sustainable scholarship program of the size and scope that Betty and Elizabeth envisioned was not without its challenges. Who would give enough money to make it happen and would it be sustainable? Big dreams and big dreamers look past the naysayers and do the impossible.

Learn From Making Mistakes, Rather Than Letting Mistakes Make You. Many times I’ve been asked in an interview about my biggest professional mistake and what I learned from it. While I won’t bore people with the details of what I consider my biggest mistake, it is something I learned from and what I learned shaped how I approached similar issues in my next position. Your biggest mistake is not learning from each and every mistake.

Learn To Deal With Your Fear Of Failure. Fear of failure is something that keeps most of us venturing beyond the ordinary. As a library leader, it not only behooves us to overcome our own fear of failure but to build a workplace culture that librarians and staff can be risk-takers. We must build a workplace culture that emboldens all staff to contribute at their full potential and to try new things and fail without penalty and to raise issues that need to be addressed without fear of repercussion or censure.

BE BOLD AND TAKE A RISK TODAY!

Libraries as Safe Spaces/Brave Spaces

In a recent job talk at an interview, I talked about the need to develop the library as a safe space/brave space. I framed this broadly to include the idea that all students should feel comfortable and at home in the library, and also that the library should foster difficult conversations that challenge our boundaries, our understanding of ourselves and others, and our racist and cultural basis. Certainly, a big challenge.

A review of the literature and the popular press will show that “safe space” and “brave space” are concepts that have been both widely promoted and widely disparaged. In some cases, people are using the same terms differently and in others, they push back against the concepts because they raise issues that we do not want to confront.

Several years ago, John Jay Ellison, Dean of Students, at University of Chicago, sent a letter to the incoming class of students stating that the University of Chicago does “not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own”.

Around the same time, Northwestern University’s president, Morton Schapiro, noted that experts tell him “that students don’t fully embrace uncomfortable learning unless they are themselves comfortable. Safe spaces provide that comfort. The irony, it seems, is that the best hope we have of creating an inclusive community is to first create spaces where members of each group feel safe.”

These two examples show “safe space” being used somewhat differently. I believe that John Jay Ellison is stating that coming to university is to enter a “brave space”; a space where one encounters ideas and people different from themselves, and navigating that space and growing culturally, intellectually, and socially is a type of bravery.

Safe spaces and brave spaces are terms that have been used in a variety of ways, specifically in Western countries. Safe spaces in the US grew out of the women’s movement and was later adapted and widely used in LGBTQ circles. In both cases the idea of safe space was to provide a space of intellectual and emotional safety; a place for individuals who were members of these communities can be themselves. First used in 2013 in a publication by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens brave space was described as safely having difficulty and challenging dialogues in the classroom. I want to expand that idea from the classroom to the academic library.

When I speak of the idea of “Library as a safe space”,  I am not thinking of the library as an intellectual hiatus or intellectual milquetoast. Rather I’m thinking of the library as providing a space where individuals can be their own true selves. This would mean that Chinese or Hispanic students would feel free to speak their own language without castigation or language shaming. Muslim women would proudly wear an hijab and Muslim students would feel comfortable rolling out a prayer rug. Jewish students would comfortably wear a yarmulke or kippah. African American students would not hear racial slurs or be subject to any number of microaggressions. Native Americans, Asians, gay, lesbian, and trans students would feel accepted as equal members of the community. International students would feel welcome.

While “Library as safe space” may seem outside the realm of possibility, it is an ideal which we strive towards.

In order to get past the all too real racism, exclusion, privilege and cultural normativity that is Western society we must find ways to create dialogue and understanding and move beyond lip service to diversity and inclusion. I think the Library is perfectly poised to serve as a “brave space”; a space where difficult conversations around intellectually and culturally challenging ideas can happen. This will take the work of the community; not white people telling the story or concerns of the other but allowing those who have been marginalized and discriminated against to teach all of us. “We must build a community where “we really do need each other”.

If the library is truly to be this type of hub on campus then it must also wrestle with its own culpability in promoting a white heteronormative view of the world to the detriment of the many. The Library must be both a safe space and a brave space.

View from 39,000 feet: Reflections on the 2019 American Library Association Midwinter Conference

While airplane trips make some people anxious, they make me reflective. As I write, I’m flying back to Los Angeles from Seattle, having been to Seattle for the American Library Association Midwinter Conference. Once again I was privileged to have my daughter Rachel with me: her 6^th time to an ALA conference. She is building a network of colleagues as she starts her career as a librarian.

While some people in the library profession do not enjoy going to ALA Midwinter or ALA Annual, I have always found the conferences interesting, provocative, and an opportunity to build a network of interesting, informed, and sometimes raucous colleagues. As always, the conference provided an opportunity to catch up with other library leaders from across the country and to meet new ones. I was able to attend sessions on Virtual Reality, research support, and building 3-D exhibits, the FOLIO library services platform, as well as half day,  catching up with a variety of shared print initiatives across North America. Meeting with vendors, as well as participating in the ARCL Leadership Council and the International Relations Committee, rounded out the conference.

One of the wonderful things about both ALA Midwinter and Annual are the major national/international speakers that come to speak. This year, with a bit more flexibility in my schedule I was privileged to hear four speakers. Here are a few reflections on this year’s speakers.

Melinda Gates, provided the opening keynote, sharing some of the work she has been doing to create transformational improvements in the area of global health. In a conversation with noted librarian and bestselling author, Nancy Pearl, Melinda shared from her forthcoming book “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World”; personalizing her perspective on the role that women have in the world, and how by supporting women and giving them a full voice, raises the whole of humanity. For me, the most poignant point was Melinda’s struggle with her own Catholic faith, and the need to provide contraceptive help for millions of women in the developing world. This needed contraceptive help allowed women to not have babies they could not support and feed.

The most difficult and challenging talk was by Robin DiAngelo, the author of the New York Times best-seller “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism”. This challenging talk challenged me and others to exam how my own white race has shaped my world view and the view of others. No one wants to think of themselves as racist. DiAngelo helped us to see how racism is built into our social and government system and that we must work to break down those systems to give people of color and other marginalized people a chance at full participation in our society. Certainly, much to think about.

One of our favorite events every Midwinter is the early Monday morning (6:30 am) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance and Sunrise Celebration. A time of reflection on MLK’s work, but also the continued need to work on overcoming the systemic racism that still marginalizes and oppresses African American’s and other minorities in the United States. This year’s speaker, Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, shared from the research of her latest book, "A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History", which details the ways in which we have created a hero myth around MLK and Rosa Parks. This hero myth simplifies MLK’s role to showing the US the problem of racism and in the spirit of American Exceptionalism, the white majority solved it with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965. Not only is this untrue (eliminating racism), it ignores the real and sometimes very violent and uncomfortable struggle that was the Civil Rights movement. Theoharis shows that when white leaders try to downplay the activism of current groups, like Black Lives Matter, by appealing to MLK, they ignore the historical MLK and the activist struggle that he led. Just like today’s members of Black Lives Matter, MLK was asked/told to be quiet, to be more circumspect, to accommodate. Today’s appeal to MLK’s nonviolence ignores both King’s actions and how he and his work struggled against white dominance and hatred. Once again this celebration was a clarion call to action to combat racism in all of its forms.

Noted British CNN journalist Isha Sesay closed this year’s ALA conference. Born and raised in Sierra Leone, a daughter of professional parents, educated at Cambridge, worked 13 years as a front-line correspondent for CNN International, often reporting from difficult and dangerous places. She talked about her forthcoming book “Beneath the Tamarind Tree”; the story of the 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls in the Nigerian village of Chibok by the Boka Haram. She was captivated by the story of the kidnapped girls, and the fact the government was doing little if anything to find them. She worked to keep the story alive and when half of the girls were released she visited them to provide help for them to re-establish their lives. Since the return of the girls, Isha has stepped away from her career at CNN and established a foundation to work with girls in Africa; providing leadership training so that girls have opportunities to flourish and change their world.

In spite of the strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion at the conference, I was disappointed to hear of the ways that people of color attending the conference were mistreated and their contributions minimalized. We still have much work to do.

Seattle, also known as the Emerald City, is a fascinating city with its mix of historic and new; the Pike Place Market and the ultramodern Seattle Public Library. It is also a city of Coffee, with a Starbucks on almost every corner, including the very first Starbucks store. While known for its gloomy weather and copious rain, our five days in Seattle sported not a drop of rain, and on our final day, there was not a cloud in the sky.

At the end of the conference, we went to the University of Washington to visit the Research Commons and tour the libraries. Visiting the Research Commons was a way to discover how the UW was providing research support for graduate students. Certainly an interesting space and set of services.

After our meeting with the Research Commons manager, we took time to visit the Suzalo Library, UW’s main research library. Visiting the historic reading room one can easily see the manifestation of the metaphor “library as temple of knowledge. It was interesting to see students in that grand and reflective space and how moving out from the reading room, the library merged into more active and social learning spaces.

Our visit later in the day to Seattle’s iconic glass and steel Central Library provided an interesting juxtaposition of library metaphors. The library’s glass and steel structure provide open and interesting public spaces, living rooms of sorts, while the print collection is showcased in a multi-story book spiral that allows users to interact directly with the collection. The library is a mixture of “library as living room” and “library as public square”; allowing the city to see the library as a central intellectual hub.

Next up: ALA annual in Washington DC!!!. Hope to see you there.

Not only through a rearview mirror: Martin Luther King, American Library Association, and Diversity

“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last”. I was only 7 years old when Martin Luther King made this famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I do remember many of the news reports on his work and clearly remember the news bulletin of his death on April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King raised the consciousness of the nation with his plea for civil rights and his commitment to non-violence. While MLK galvanized the work on civil rights, there was a legion of individuals, some well-known, such as Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), others who have faded from history’s spotlight. Even in my home town of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada, a courageous black businesswomen, Viola Desmond, refused to leave the “whites only” section of the local movie theatre. Long, seemingly relegated, to the dust bin of history, her story, like Rosa Parks, has been told, and Viola now appears on the Canadian ten dollar bill.

We are now almost 56 years past MLK’s famous speech, and while some progress has been made, we all too clearly see the overt racism that is part of our society; more clearly since Trump became President. Our cultural institutions, schools, libraries, and museums should be forces that speak out against racism in all of its forms. While I cannot speak for schools and museums, I can, I hope, say that libraries should, and often do play a positive role in combatting racism. While the American Library Association, in the past did not speak out about segregated libraries, in the past 25 years has been making a conscious attempt to combat racism and be more diverse and inclusive. We certainly have work to still do, and I hope, that members of the Association who are from underrepresented and marginalized groups will hold us all responsible.

I am looking forward to heading to the American Library Association Midwinter meeting in Seattle (January 25-28, 2019). For me, one of the highlights of every Midwinter meeting is the Martin Luther King Sunrise celebration on the Monday of the conference. This year’s speaker is Jeanne Theoharis, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College. Her book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks won a 2014 NAACP Image Award and the 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. I love to see the wide diversity of the audience, each person, in their own quiet or insistent way, making a difference in their libraries, and in their communities. We always end the celebration by singing the “Black National Anthem” – Lift Every Voice and Sing.

On this Martin Luther King Day when we are called to remember, I don’t want to see Martin Luther King only through a rearview mirror; incomplete, distant, in the past. Too much is at stake for the United States and the 327 million citizens, and the myriad of visitors, immigrants, and asylum seekers. American society will continue to become more diverse, and unless we want another civil war, we must learn to understand, live, and love each other. A diverse United States is not something to be feared, but something to challenge our preconceived notions of the other. We must forge a United States where we all are respected and have the same rights.

We may not see another Martin Luther King Jr. in our day, but we can each make a difference in our families, our communities, and our country. We must not see our democratic values, and the cherished words of the constitution “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to be ideas only seen through the rear view mirror. They must be in front of us and empowering us to change the world for the better.

The Job Search for Library Deans/University Librarians: Advice to Provosts and Search Committees

The “Sound of Silence” is a somewhat haunting song and one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel tunes from the 1960s. “Hello darkness my old friend” and “sounds of silence”, poignant words from the song, are certainly appropriate and telling phrases that sometimes describe the job search and the love/hate process it invokes.

I don’t think I have ever met a person that said they love looking for a new job. For many people, the job hunt is one of those activities that are approached with fear and loathing. Some of this fear and loathing comes from the actual interview process, but the whole process can have steps that cause anxiety for the job seeker.

Having been involved in a large number of job searches, I have some advice for Provosts and Search Committees that can be helpful in making the process better for potential job candidates.

Advertisements: Crafting job advertisements that reflect the breadth and complexity of the position while also satisfying the requirements of campus HR is difficult. As some online ads charge by the word, there is also pressure to be precise.

·         Most job ads for Library Deans/University librarians have an aspirational tone and information about the library and the university. Include URLs for specific things like the library or university’s mission and strategic plan. Provide a link to a more complete description or position profile if there is one.

·         Education: Be clear on the educational requirements, especially as they related to an ALA-accredited MLIS. Be specific if other related education is in addition to the MLIS or can be substituted for it. If a having a doctorate is important, specify if it is required or preferred. Be upfront at what point academic transcripts will be required.

·         Experience: Be clear on the number of years of leadership/management are expected as a minimum. Be specific if the leadership is within an academic library or if leadership/management experience from other areas will be acceptable.

·         Soft skills: All job ads include at least some soft skills. Be as concrete as possible as to how candidates might demonstrate these.

·         Diversity and inclusion: A request for a statement on diversity and inclusion is becoming more common. Be specific if this is part of the documentation that should be submitted.

·         Submission requirements: Some job ads require submission of application materials to the Search Chair as well as applying on the university HR site. Make it clear to candidates what is expected.

Repostings: Jobs often get reposted for a variety of reasons. It is helpful to potential candidates to know that an online ad they see is a reposting, especially if the deadlines for the application have been extended or changed in some way. This can be made clear in the reposted advertisement with a simple statement.

Search firms: Many universities use search firms who create detailed position profiles. While it is not feasible to include that much detail in an online advertisement, providing a link to the full profile and the search firm is helpful. Provide detailed instructions for applying, especially if the materials are submitted to both the search firm and the university.

Nominations: Often job advertisements for Deans/University Librarians and other such high-level positions, invite nominations from the larger library community. Make the nomination process clear, whether that is through the search firm, or through the campus search chair.

Deadlines: Include deadlines for receipt of applications and a date when the committee will start reviewing the applications. If the application is opened ended, then a preferred by date should be used.

Visas: Be clear, in the advertisement, if the institution is providing Visa assistance for applications outside of the US. The visa statement often appears in the universities HR system, and not in the job advertisement. If the University is not providing Visa support it is helpful for potential applicants to know that upfront before they take the time to write a cover letter, update their CV, etc.

Airport interviews: Search firms and some campus run searches will use an airport interview for the first round of candidates. Contrary to the name, the interviews are not at the airport but at a nearby hotel. While this method involves a fair amount of expense and logistical planning, it is, from the candidate’s point a view, a valuable option. Meeting with the search committee in person and being able to see body language and how you are connecting with members of the search committee gives a candidate a richer experience.

Video interviews:  It is common to conduct preliminary interviews via Skype, BlueJeans, Zoon or another video technology. My experience with video interview is quite uneven, due to poor planning, poor location, and technical issues. Most often the glitches are caused by poor or inadequate microphones, a less than adequate camera, and arrangement of the search committee in the room. Search Committees should test all the components of the planned system ahead of time, using someone to play the remote interviewee to ensure that search committee members can be seen and heard.

Confidential interviews: A third option for a preliminary interview is an on-campus interview that is confidential; an interview with the search committee and a few selected others but with no announcement to the campus community. These interviews are about 6 hours or more so give both the candidate and the search committee more information.

Interview questions: Search committees often create very complex and multipart questions. While these questions may get at aspects of the candidate’s experience and philosophy that the search committee wants to explore, they can be difficult for the candidate to remember and answer effectively. It is, in my opinion, appropriate at the begging of the meeting with the search committee for the committee to hand a printed copy of the questions to the candidate. This allows the candidate to refer back to the question if needed while still allowing for a spontaneous answer. This is especially helpful if there are multi-part questions or if a question contains a scenario that a candidate is expected to respond to.

Search committee: In more than 30 interviews I have seen a wide variety of committee structures. Being a member of a search committee requires a significant investment of time, so it is critical to form a committee that is broad, diverse, and highly engaged. For a position such as University Librarian/Dean of Libraries/Director of Libraries, the committee should include librarians and library staff, classroom faculty, someone from student affairs, and one or more students. Chair of the Search Committee should be another Dean or Department Chair from outside the Library, preferably one who is regularly engaged with the library. Make the search committee makeup available to candidates, either directly or via the Library website. This helps the candidate understand who they will be interviewing with.

I have seen a few search committees for such positions where the campus administration has refused to include any librarians or library staff members on the committee.  This is a grave mistake and sends the wrong signal to potential candidates. This stance says that the campus administration does not value its librarians, and it also says that anyone, who may or may not have any expertise or knowledge of modern academic libraries, is totally qualified to judge potential candidates. I personally would not accept an invitation to interview at these institutions.

Campus interviews:

·         Include a tour of the library early in the interview schedule. I have been in interviews that have not included a tour of the library or have put it the very end as part of the wrap up of the interview. Both of these strategies puts candidates at a disadvantage. Seeing the library facility early on, with its various services, technologies, and building challenges gives the candidate time to ask the search committee and Provost informed questions.

·         For candidates that are coming from outside the geographic area of the university, provide time for the candidate to explore the area. This can be accomplished by allowing the candidate to rent a car and provide a half-day for them to visit the area and understand if this would be a city/area they can see themselves living in.  The institution should also have a realtor provide a real estate tour of the area so that the candidate can get a sense of housing options.

·         Interview schedules often include names of groups that the candidate will meet with; e.g. Dean’s Council, Academic xxxx. If possible provide links to the potential people in these groups, especially if it is unclear to the candidate who these people might be.

Presentation: Most interviews require candidates to make a presentation: usually 20-30 minutes followed by a question and answer period. Often these are recorded so members of the larger university community and members of the search committee can review it after the interview is over. If possible the search committee should give candidates a short prompt for the presentation so that all candidates can respond to the same issue.

Interview wrap up: At the end of the interview, the search chair should layout the decision-making process and the approximate time frame for a decision. Let the candidate know the role the search committee plays in the final decision as in many cases the search committee does not make a recommendation but only gives information to the Provost on the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.

Notification: Perhaps the most frustrating part of the job search, other than hearing you did not get a job offer, is hearing nothing. The “sound of silence” from the university is one of those things that makes the job hunt more frustrating. Here are some strong recommendations.

·         After a Skype or phone interview, notify candidates if they are being invited to campus for an interview. By the time a search committee has narrowed down the pool to a group for a Skype/phone/airport interview, the number of candidates is usually under ten, and it is not an unreasonable burden for the search committee to inform candidates who are not moving to the next level. Notification by phone or email should come as soon as possible after the search committee has made its decision. DO NOT just leave candidates from the preliminary pool hanging without any type of response. This is rude and also gives candidates a negative view of the university. If this is how they treat potential candidates, it might not be a good place to work.

·         When search committees wrap up an on-campus interview, give the candidate a sense of the time frame when a decision will be made and how they can expect to be contacted. Again, DO NOT leave candidates hanging, and do not be so rude that a candidates never receives any response from the university. While this has not happened to me, my daughter and another colleague had on-campus interviews at least 6 months ago and they never heard anything at all after returning home from the interview.

The goal of all of these thoughts is to provide some guidance that hopefully can make the search process better for both the university and the individual applicants.

Libraries and Retail: Should Libraries Be More Like Retailers?

If you have worked in academic libraries for any length of time, you have heard people say that libraries should be more like a business, more like a bookstore, that we should learn from the retail trade. While I have thought of this in incidental ways, I had not given it serious consideration though I did recognize some “retail expressions” in how students interact with the library. I do know that students have picked up many expressions from the retail trade; bricks and mortar as well as online. It is not uncommon for a student to ask if they can rent a laptop, or rent a movie, even though they do not expect to pay. This terminology is direct from retail.

For the last several weeks I have been doing a seasonal sales job at Crate and Barrel (https://www.crateandbarrel.com/). If you’re not familiar with Crate and Barrel, it is a home goods store selling everything from glassware to sofas. It’s moderately upper-end in terms of its pricing and clientele. This retail experience has given me the opportunity to reflect on what academic libraries might learn from retail, and perhaps where, academic libraries are already ahead of the game.

In reflecting on this experience, I think there are many areas where libraries and retail intersect in interesting ways. Are there things we can learn from each other? Perhaps so. Here is a starting list of areas.

·         Customer/Guest/User/Patron: Libraries and retail use a variety of words to describe the people who use their services. Retail typically has used “customer”, though “guest” seems to be the preferred term by some. Libraries have often used “patron” or “user” when speaking in a generic sense, and students, or faculty, or community members when being more specific. I could suggest “customer”, “guest”, “user”, “patron” and someone (me included) would have an opinion on whether that is a good term. Some academic libraries have begun to use “customer” in recognition that the behavior of those who use our spaces and services, is shaped by the consumer marketplace. Personally, I find “guest” a somewhat insulting term to use in a context where the person is paying. I am not a “guest” at Crate and Barrel where money is expected for goods and services, nor am I guest in an academic library where I’m employed or paying tuition. As our culture becomes more diverse, I think both the library and retail need to think through the implications of the terms they use to ensure they are inclusive and not pejorative or insulting to particular groups.

·         Upselling/cross-selling: Upselling (getting the customer to purchase a more expensive product or one with more features) and cross-selling (selling an additional or different product to a customer) are very common in retail and often sales associates are evaluated based on their success or one or both of these strategies.

Before readers dismiss this as only a retail phenomenon, reference and instruction librarians, in fact, practice these skills every day. A student comes to the reference desk (physically or virtually) with a topic and sometimes one or two sources. Regularly librarians try to upsell the student on using more sophisticated search tools to get article or books that are better, or more information rich. We regularly try to move students from Google to Google Scholar, or the library’s discovery services as they have more sophisticated features and can usually provide better results. Librarians regularly cross-sell by introducing students to new databases/sources that they had not considered, all in an attempt to help the student be successful, and ultimately more satisfied.

·         Customer service: At one point in our history, academic libraries would have shied away from talking about “customer service” as it was considered too corporate and not academic.  Fortunately, the world has changed and many libraries have taken up the customer service mantra and are seriously looking at lessons from retail in how they interact with students, faculty, and staff. 

o   Chat: Online chat is very common in retail, often with a chat box popping up if the online system senses hesitation, or the user’s inability/unwillingness to make a decision. The user can then interact with a customer service representative who hopefully can answer the user’s questions or direct them to an information source for an appropriate answer.

Libraries were early to implement chat services in response to the online environment. While these usually have been operated out of the reference/instruction department, many libraries are also using support staff and sometimes student workers to provide longer hours of service.  A few libraries, like the University of Texas at San Antonio, have implemented context-sensitive chat systems similar to their retail counterparts. 

o   In Person: Libraries have historically provided a variety of in-person services. These typically are time and place-bound; assistance at a reference desk with set hours, library instruction, or workshops. Retail environments have depended on in-person assistance, with the amount and quality of that in person service varying over time and on whether the retail company was considered up-scale or not. Boutique establishments have taken a more proactive and nuanced customer approach that parallels the more personal approach that is available in some libraries.

o   Roving: With the advent of mobile devices, many libraries have experimented with librarians, staff, and sometimes student assistants roving the library, offering services, and helping students with information and research questions. While some have found this to be effective, it had not been widely adopted, perhaps to the detriment of students. More upscale retail establishments have a plethora of roving staff, with or without mobile devices to ensure that customers are within easy reach of help.   

·         Customer Questions/Reference Interview: I have been intrigued and impressed by how some of the interactions I see between experienced salespeople and customers mirror a reference interview. A customer comes in with a half-formed idea of what they need/want and after a conversation and probing questions, there is greater clarity and the customer goes home with a purchase that closely matches what they really needed. I have spent most of my time at Crate and Barrel in the Kitchen Department, and my colleague, Carlos, with more than 20 years’ experience is a wonder at helping customers understand the variety of options on coffee makers, or high-end chef’s knives, or cookware. What seemed like a straightforward question might involve a 20-minute conversation and demonstration until the customer makes a purchase that suits their needs. Unfortunately, many retail organizations who focus only on stock turnover and profit, never keep and develop their people to have this type of expertise. This is one place that libraries tend to excel – both in the development of their people, and helping students/faculty figure out what they really need in terms of information sources.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

·         Search/Find:  Libraries were early to the table in providing tools that allowed its users to search and find what the library owned by and about a particular author or subject. The library catalog, in some form, has been around for hundreds of years. The online catalog, which fully came into its own in the 1980s was precise in allowing someone to find a specific item, and access by subject worked reasonably well because of controlled vocabulary. Library discovery systems, now about 10 years old, provide access to the library’s virtual content as well as its print collection and uses new search algorithms that have tried to balance precision searching with broader discovery and post-search limiting.  In the retail environment, the ability to search and find what is in a particular store is also about 10 years old, and to date, in my opinion, retail search engines are sadly lacking in terms of precision searching.  

Libraries have a better understanding of metadata and its importance in both precise searching and in overall discovery. I am always frustrated and amazed when online retail systems, as well as Google, cannot provide a precise search. If I checked Crate and Barrel for “tires”, something Crate and Barrel does not sell, I get 8 hits; two where tires are mentioned ( a children’s fire engine, and trailer) and 6 where the word “tired” has been conflated with tires, where it is not linguistically or conceptually related to “tires”.  The retail search system has some “filters” but none specific enough to ensure precision.  While library discovery systems suffer from some of the same shortcomings, the metadata, the relevance ranking algorithms are more precise, and discovery systems offer more sophisticated filters to narrow results to something relevant to the users’ needs.

Some retail systems exceed the library search and discovery systems in the amount of detail that a user is provided when they get to an individual item. Where the library might provide a cover image and table of contents, the retail system often shows how the item can be used, how it is to be cared for, how it is related to other items in the store, and what others who looked at this item also looked for. Interestingly the return policy (the equivalent to a library’s circulation policy) for the item is also included: all relevant information in one place.  It also tells what other stores in the area have the item. As the library’s users increasingly come to our collections virtually, we might look to retail to see what metadata and enrichment data could be easily be given to our users. Perhaps Linked Open Data will provide an easy mechanism to integrate some desired new features into library search systems.

·         Displays/Inventory: I have often heard comments that libraries should arrange their books and services to be more like bookstores, or other retail trades. While libraries with very large collections could not entertain this in a large scale manner, they can certainly benefit from retail’s experience and knowledge of customer behavior and attitudes.

o   Browsing collections:  Bookstores do a relatively good job of creating collections that are meant to be browsed and not necessarily searched for a particular item.  The average bookstore will have sections on literature, romance, science fiction, business, history, art, cookbooks, children’s, etc.  These are certainly meant for people who are not necessarily looking for something specific but are arranged to show the breadth of what is available in order to entice a customer to browse through and pick up something that strikes her/his imagination. This works well if customers understand the basic categories, and there is a backup way to find and locate a specific item if that is what the customer wants. 

Some libraries do create browsing collections for new titles, or very specialized or small areas.  Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal classifications used by libraries provide detailed subject access and not a browsing collection similar to a bookstore. Someone coming to an academic library and asking to “browse” fiction or history will not find this easy to accomplish. Creation of even small browsing collections within an academic library is often made more difficult by the library’s integrated library system that is not set up to enable this level of creativity.

o   Dispersed inventory: One of the things that some retailers do (read Crate and Barrel and others) is to disperse the same item or group of items across the store, so that a customer has to wander throughout the store to get a full sense of what is available, and hopefully see some other interesting things on the way. For example at my store, wine glasses live in at least 10 different spots in the store. A customer can never come in and say I want to see your wine glasses and get a full sense of what is available to them and to easily compare them.  Libraries, on the other hand, tend to shy away from large-scale displays and a dispersed inventory, so it is easier to get a sense of what is available. The proliferation of e-books and off-site storage facilities makes this more challenging for library users to get a full sense of what a library has in any given subject area. They are having to change their approach from physical browsing to browsing the collection electronically and new systems are being developed and implemented to assist the user.

o   High-traffic displays:  Retailers excel at this – putting things that they want to be noticed/purchased in high traffic areas where customers cannot help but notice. High-end retailers will do this with more aesthetic appeal, but even mass retailers like Walmart make sure you see the items they are pushing.  Libraries, in general, do not do excel in this area. We often have galleries or display cabinets/spaces that are placed on the periphery, and users have to seek them out. While this may allow for a more thorough, well-thought-out, or comprehensive exhibit/display, it may be completely ignored by the audience we are hoping to attract. This is one place libraries can/should learn from retail. 

·         Marketing/Advertising: Marketing and advertising are key to helping people know about your organization and understand your services and events. While the retail world has been a child of Madison Avenue for decades, only in the past 20 or so years have libraries fully embraced marketing/advertising as a core part of their work they do.

o   Social Media: Most companies and many libraries were early adopters of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Most companies dedicated personnel (one to a whole team) to manage their social media presence and to respond to customer questions and complaints. While Libraries have flocked to social media, there are few examples where it is, in my opinion, really successful. Too often libraries don’t have a clear sense which channel is best for a particular audience, or how to best write of position messages to be effective. Most libraries lack the personnel to have a full-time person whose predominant role is marketing and can pay attention to social media in a strategic way. Social media, because of its seemingly “ephemeral” or “of the moment” bent, often strays from fulling its potential as a channel to advance the library’s strategic goals.

o   Personalized marketing: The business world has long excelled in “personalized” marketing. The personalization ranges from a “personalized invitation” for a credit card, or discount for an upcoming sale, to a more personalized newsletter that reflects a customer’s interests. With the advent of robust software programs like Constant Contact, or MailChimp, libraries have been able to do customized large-scale email messages as well as well-designed newsletters and advertising. As with social media, this takes dedicated staff in terms of messaging but also graphic design staff to make anything beyond a two or three line email look good.

o   Campaigns: Marketing campaigns have long been the purview of the corporate world, and for the most part they have done it quite successfully. Take for example Macy’s “I believe” holiday campaign, now in its eleventh year. Not only has this campaign each year told a story to millions of children and their parents, and resulted in decorations, merchandise, and media with the “I believe” logo and story, but they have also used it effectively to raise millions of dollars every year for education, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and others.

A good marketing campaign tells a story – a message that influences its hearers in a positive way. Academic libraries have seldom mounted a solid marketing campaign that is comprehensive and long-lasting. Marketing campaigns are expensive and libraries are usually strapped for cash. Academic libraries are part of larger colleges and universities and any marketing campaign must fit solidly within the university’s brand/marketing guidelines. Some libraries have managed to create positions and hire marketing librarians or they have gained the help of an on-campus marketing professor and her/his students to assist in marketing.

While there are certainly other areas of intersection that might be explored, these few areas do show that there are significant areas of overlap/similarity between libraries and retail. Because library user behavior and information seeking practices are strongly influenced by consumer practices from online as well as bricks and mortar retail, libraries should pay attention and adapt and adopt retail practices and strategies that advance their mission.