New Orleans Library Foundation Board Members Resign in Funding Scandal; Library Journal, 5/26/15

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; New Orleans Library Foundation Board Members Resign in Funding Scandal:

"Only days after a definitive victory at the polls, the New Orleans library landscape was making news again—but this time it was the Foundation, not the library itself, and the news was not good. On May 5, an investigative report by correspondent David Hammer for local New Orleans station WWL-TV revealed that between 2012 and 2013 Irvin Mayfield and Ronald Markham, who then served on the board of the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) Foundation as chair and president, respectively, gave the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) at least $863,000 in funding originally given to the NOPL Foundation. At that time both Mayfield and Markham were also drawing annual salaries of $100,000 apiece from the nonprofit NOJO, Mayfield as its founder and artistic director and Markham as president and CEO.

The money was redirected to NOJO as an investment in the Peoples Health New Orleans Jazz Market, a renovated retail building in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood that opened in April. The space currently serves as NOJO’s headquarters, a learning center, and a performance venue. The funds, Markham told Hammer, were earmarked for a satellite library installation within the Jazz Market."

Serving Two Masters | Library by Design, Spring 2015; Library Journal, 5/21/15

Ian Chant, Library Journal; Serving Two Masters | Library by Design, Spring 2015:

"Joint-use libraries, especially partnerships between public libraries and colleges, are rare but not unheard of. In an era of belt-tightening, pooling resources with a partner that shares many of your institution’s goals can be a tempting proposition for schools and cities alike. It’s complex, but as seen at the Tidewater Community College/City of ­Virginia Beach Joint-Use Library, opened in 2013, it can also be extremely rewarding.

While their missions are broadly the same, academic and public libraries differ in important details of their practices, from collection development to peak hours of operation. Where populations with varying needs collide, tensions can arise between students seeking study time and families coming for story time. Those differences mean that many such operations, says Virginia Beach Public Library (VBPL) director Eva Poole, don’t live up to their potential, becoming “roommates rather than partners.” That’s just what the staffers at the joint-use building are working to avoid, and the building was designed to make that teamwork easier to accomplish."

Getting Back on Track After a Leadership Failure | Leading from the Library; Library Journal, 5/6/15

Steven Bell, Library Journal; Getting Back on Track After a Leadership Failure | Leading from the Library:

"Fail often to succeed, we are told. Good advice, perhaps, if we are exploring new services or products. When leaders fail often, or perhaps even just once, recovery is difficult if not impossible. Leaders can learn from their failures and move on.

A colleague contacted me to ask if I would contribute to her book project. Targeted for emerging managers and leaders, the book would present a series of scenarios or case studies of difficult leadership situations. The contributors would write responses in which they offered solutions or suggestions to address that particular scenario. It reminded me a bit of the “How Do You Manage” case studies that Library Journal used to publish in every issue. My scenario related the sad tale of a rising leader who takes on a team project for the first time. It’s a dismal failure. For sure, this leader made multiple serious errors in managing colleagues and timelines. But my verdict was that the administrator who put our new leader in charge was guilty of negligent mismanagement and absentee leadership. How often this actually happens is a mystery, but I suspect it’s more often than we think. Owing to space constraints I had no room to continue with the next logical challenge. How does that administrator help get their emerging leader back on track after what is sure to be a confidence weakening experience? That’s why a report on leader failure and what to do about it caught my attention."

Oh, Those Clever Librarians and Their #Bookface; New York Times, 5/1/15

Rachel Kramer Bussel, New York Times; Oh, Those Clever Librarians and Their #Bookface:

"Yes, even libraries are thinking about rebranding in the digital age.

“When you think about the library, you think about written text, but what we’ve shown here is that we have a vibrant visual side,” said Johannes Neuer, the director of digital engagement at the New York Public Library.

Social media’s plays on book covers are, in part, a marketing gambit, library employees said.

It’s “a fabulous way to show how fun we are,” said Liana Flumiani, a library technician at the public library in Brantford, Ontario. That perception matters, she said, because too many people do not use libraries because they still think of them as places where people are welcome only to read and be quiet.

“We want you to ask us questions,” Ms. Flumiani said. “We’re not cranky and doing more important things. It’s not our space, it’s everyone’s space.”"

What the Dalai Lama Taught Daniel Goleman About Emotional Intelligence; Harvard Business Review, 5/4/15

Andrea Ovans, Harvard Business Review; What the Dalai Lama Taught Daniel Goleman About Emotional Intelligence:

"Two decades before Daniel Goleman first wrote about emotional intelligence in the pages of HBR, he met his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at Amherst College, who mentioned to the young science journalist for the New York Times that he was interested in meeting with scientists. Thus began a long, rich friendship as Goleman became involved over the years in arranging a series of what he calls “extended dialogues” between the Buddhist spiritual leader and researchers in fields ranging from ecology to neuroscience. Over the next 30 years, as Goleman has pursued his own work as a psychologist and business thinker, he has come to see the Dalai Lama as a highly uncommon leader. And so he was understandably delighted when, on the occasion of his friend’s 80th birthday, he was asked to write a book describing the Dalai Lama’s compassionate approach to addressing the world’s most intractable problems. Due out in June, Force for Good, which draws both on Goleman’s background in cognitive science and his long relationship with the Dalai Lama, is both an exploration of the science and the power of compassion and a call to action. Curious about the book and about how the Dalai Lama’s views on compassion informed Goleman’s thinking on emotional intelligence, I caught up with Goleman over the phone. What follows are edited excerpts from our conversation."