Empowering Diverse Voices

I was asked to participate in the video series for the "Empowering Diverse Voices" initiative. This is part of ALA President Molly Raphael's Diversity Leadership Initiative and "seeks to expand and enhance leadership development opportunities for our more diverse workforce, ensuring that the library leaders of tomorrow, at all levels and in all types of libraries, are as diverse as communities we serve." I encourage you to watch all the short videos in this series.

ALA BARC spring meeting 2012

I attended the Budget Analysis and Review Committee spring meeting at ALA Headquarters in Chicago. This is my second year as one of two Executive Board liaisons to the committee. In this role, I am a liaison to one division, LITA, and four round tables, NMRT, RMRT, GGRT, and SORT. Our meetings were very productive and we finished up more or less on schedule.

One of our agenda items was the Financial Learning Series webcasts. I am proud of the start we've made to educate the Association membership on ALA finances. The question now is what should be added next? What other financial webcasts should BARC plan and create? If you have ideas, please send them my way or comment below. Thanks in advance for suggestions!

Take the ALA Membership Meeting agenda topics survey

The ALA Committee on Membership Meetings is asking members what topics they would like to see addressed during the 2012 Virtual Membership Meeting on June 6th.  Your opinion is important, and we invite you to reply to a short survey of agenda topics at http://american-library-association.vmm2012.sgizmo.com. In addition to the topics selected here, the Virtual Membership Meeting agenda will include presentations and question-and-answer sessions with ALA President Molly Raphael, Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels, and Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC) chair Clara Bohrer.  Members will be invited to submit resolutions after registration opens on May 7th.

The survey will be available through April 9^th, and all responses are anonymous.  Thank you for taking a moment to help set the agenda for this important ALA membership event.

Best,  

Loida Garcia-Febo 

Chair, ALA Committee on Membership Meetings

Library Thought Leaders Q&A

I am thrilled to be featured as part of the Library Thought Leaders Q&A on the Text A Librarian blog. I really enjoyed the opportunity to think about and respond to some great questions. Check it out, as well as the Q&A with some other great librarians.

Hack Library School: Advice from a hiring manager

On November 4, 2011, I had the opportunity to speak with MLIS student Ashley Wescott about my experience in academic libraries. One of the requirements for Ashley's Academic Libraries course was to interview an academic librarian. I'm very glad she picked me. We had a lively conversation via Skype that lasted almost two hours! It probably would have gone on longer had her dog not started giving her "the look".

In mid-December Ashley contacted me about writing a blog post for Hack Library School based on the job hunt portion of the interview. My response was "of course!" That post went live today. Ashley is a great writer and an enthusiastic University of North Texas MLIS candidate. My thanks to Ashley and the Hack Library School team for the opportunity, and I look forward to collaborating with Ashley again in the future.


Follow Ashley on Twitter @2TheLibrary and on her blog, which documents her journey through children’s and young adult literature.

Coming soon: ALA Elections

The ALA Governance Office has put together "Your Guide to the 2012 Elections". This guide is also available as a PDF. It includes information about this year's ALA Presidential candidates, the role of ALA Council, and a link to all the candidates for councilor-at-large.

I am one of the candidates for councilor-at-large, and hope you will consider voting for me.

The ALA polls open on Monday, March 19 at 9 a.m. Central time, and close Friday, April 27 at 11:59 p.m. Central time. All individuals with ALA memberships in good standing will be eligible to vote and should receive an email notification with a link to the ballot and a unique passcode.

I hope you will vote in this year's election.

Library Day in the Life: February 3

Friday! My calendar was pretty open, so I spent a lot of time working through the VHS collection spreadsheet my LIS intern has been putting together. A frustration of trying to format modernize the film collection at my library is the surprising number of titles that are not available in DVD or BluRay. I was amazed to discover that The Spirit of Crazy Horse is not available on DVD. Don't even get me started on recordings produced by local historical societies. It's an interesting process.

I also spent some time reading though tweets and blog postings by other Library Day in the Life participants. It's always fun to get a glimpse into other library professional's lives. It is inspiring and encouraging. Best of all, it's an opportunity to start a dialogue with others. I'm all about making connections, collaborating, and learning. This project provides me with a real opportunity to have that experience in a new way.