Chad Helton, a pioneering black librarian, will be new head of Hennepin County Library; Star Tribune, May 29, 2020

David Chanen, Star Tribune; Chad Helton, a pioneering black librarian, will be new head of Hennepin County Library

"As a black kid growing up in the South, Chad Helton rarely used the library because he never felt he belonged in one.

Few patrons looked like him, and the programs at the Mount Airy, N.C., library didn’t reflect his community. Little did he know then that a job delivering books in a golf cart after he dropped out of college would lead to a pioneering career as a library administrator.

Helton, the first black top administrator at several college libraries and the Los Angeles library system, was named director of the Hennepin County Library system last week. He will face the challenge of reopening libraries that have been shut down by COVID-19 and also working with communities wounded by the police-involved death of George Floyd.

“The pandemic just highlighted the important role that libraries play in people’s lives,” said Helton, 42. “This is something we’ve never experienced. It certainly will be interesting.”...

Helton had been a college dropout for eight years, working three jobs at a time and relying on friends for a place to live, when he got on the library track. While delivering books at the University of North Carolina, he ran into a former professor and mentor who stressed how working in a library can change your life.

Helton returned to UNC, earning a bachelor’s degree in African-American Studies and then master’s degrees in library and information studies and public administration."

Libraries have spent years reinventing themselves. Will they have to do it again?; Marketplace, May 14, 2020

Kai Ryssdal and Alli Fam, Marketplace; Libraries have spent years reinventing themselves. Will they have to do it again?

"Over the past 15 years, public libraries across the country have been rethinking their role as a public space. They’ve evolved from just a place to check out books into community hubs, and the transformation has come with a lot of new initiatives and programs...

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal talked with Jennifer Pearson, director of the Marshall County Library in Tennessee and president of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries about how her library, and libraries across the country, are continuing to adapt and serve the needs of their patrons."

Why CEOs Should Model Vulnerability; Harvard Business Review (HBR), May

Jeffrey Cohn and 

U. Srinivasa Rangan

, Harvard Business Review (HBR); Why CEOs Should Model Vulnerability

"Set the Right Tone at the Top

Some CEOs still view vulnerability as a weakness. That’s too bad. Long gone are the days when CEOs can pretend to be omniscient. A crisis will quickly expose a leader’s weaknesses and blind spots. If he or she pretends to have all the answers and is reluctant to admit mistakes or ask for help, others in the leadership pipeline will almost assuredly adopt this same perspective. Because the leader casts a long shadow, this kind of obstinacy will inevitably create a downward spiral of succession failure, like it did at General Electric, Wells Fargo, and Boeing. On the other hand, CEOs willing to embrace vulnerability and transparency will create a uniquely fertile culture in which thinking deeply about one’s blind spots and development needs is not only tolerated, it’s encouraged and rewarded."

A Library Redeploys in COVID-19: Another Reason to Love Librarians; Nonprofit Quarterly, April 22, 2020

Ruth McCambridge, Nonprofit Quarterly; 

A Library Redeploys in COVID-19: 

Another Reason to Love Librarians

"Kim Edson, the head of reader services at the Rochester Public Library, says the staff have reorganized in consultation with local government to become an information hotline during the pandemic. This is part of its commitment to the city’s Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP), “a system of disaster planning that lays out guidance for how specific critical services will continue.”

“One of the special skills we’re able to provide in times of crisis is access to information,” Edson says:

We answer all kinds of questions as part of our normal business. Everyone has a place that they trust, or where they go to get community information. The library serves that purpose for many people.

We are constantly working on the list of resources in the community and sharing those resources so everyone’s getting a consistent message."

The queries run the gamut from medical questions to access to resources, from employment concerns to travel. In many cases, the questions are relayed to various other community partners.

“We’re averaging about 60 calls a day,” Edson says."

Movers & Shakers: The People Shaping the Future of Libraries; Library Journal, May 2020

Francine Fialkoff, Project Manager & Cofounder, LJ Movers and Shakers, Library Journal; Movers and Shakers: The People Shaping the Future of Libraries

"Welcome to LJ’s 2020 Movers and Shakers 

It is my great pleasure to congratulate and welcome the 46 individuals named 2020 Movers and Shakers. They join a distinguished group that is now nearly 1,000 strong. Reading any of these profiles will surely bring a little light into our COVID-19–quarantined days.

The 2020 Movers, like so many librarians and library workers, are passionate about what they do. They’re transforming their communities, schools, and colleges and universities in myriad ways. They’re changing education for children and adults, with innovative approaches to literacy, learning, and teaching. They’re lowering barriers to access for English language learners and those who aren’t connected to the internet—and creating opportunities. They’re empowering voters. They’re redefining archives to include groups that have been marginalized, erased, or misrepresented. They’re devising strategies to make libraries, and our society, more inclusive for everyone.

With most schools, colleges and universities, and public libraries closed due to COVID-19, they’re delivering formerly inperson services virtually and expanding online services on the fly, like so many reading this. For more on what librarians are doing now and insights on what the “new normal” must include, see Meredith Schwartz’s editorial, “Don’t Settle for Normal.”"

Don't Settle for Normal; Library Journal, May 5, 2020

Meredith Schwartz , Library Journal; Don't Settle for Normal

"We all know this COVID moment is not normal. It can be hard, in the grip of nostalgia for simple pleasures such as meeting with our colleagues or greeting patrons at the door, to remember that second part. But it is vital. Normal wasn’t so great for our unhoused patrons. It wasn’t so great for the people who had to turn to the library for help navigating the health-care insurance exchanges, unemployment, or Social Security because the rest of the safety net had worn thin and too many agencies assumed a digital access and knowledge that is far from universal. Normal wasn’t so great for the kids who only get a square meal at school or the library, or the ones who can’t talk to their parents in prison unless a public library has stepped up with something like Telestory, because access to the phone—and the books and the soap—is being run as a for-profit business.

These may not sound like library issues. But they are, and that’s been driven home by the pressures many systems faced not to close libraries completely in spite of the danger to patrons and staff. If they are library issues when it comes to stepping into the gap, then they’re library issues when it comes to closing that gap for good.

Public library leaders have a place at the table in practically every city and county in America. They have unique insight into the broad spectrum of needs across the whole community, and a unique mandate to meet those needs. It’s clear that it will take extraordinary measures to get this country through the pandemic and back on its feet afterward, and that libraries will need to be an integral part of that. What’s less clear is what will happen next. If we give in to the desire to get back to normal, we are in grave danger of re-creating the conditions that led to so much suffering, and squandering the opportunity to build a better new normal for all. We must keep moving forward, and look to the latest crop of Movers & Shakers to inspire by example."

'The Great Equalizer': Why Some Arizona Libraries Offer Curbside Service Amid COVID-19; KJZZ.com, May 6, 2020

Christina Estes, KJZZ.org; 'The Great Equalizer': Why Some Arizona Libraries Offer Curbside Service Amid COVID-19

[Kip Currier: Next week I launch a new required course -- The Information Professional in the Community -- in the MLIS degree program at the University of Pittsburgh. One of the topics we will be investigating and debating over the course of the term is the upshots and downsides of information professionals serving as "first responders" and "second responders" in various situations, like the Covid-19 pandemic.
This article and audio story provides a tale of two Arizona library systems' divergent approaches on whether To-Curbside-Or-Not-To-Curbside...]

"Maricopa County Library District

About 40 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, customers at Queen Creek Library get the curbside treatment.

Rob Scott, digital marketing officer for Maricopa County Library District, recorded audio last week at KJZZ’s request as a library employee directed a driver to a numbered space where the driver would pop open the vehicle’s trunk...

Phoenix Public Library

Sixteen libraries in the state’s most populous county offer curbside pickup but not libraries in the state’s most populous city. 

“It has been a topic of discussion for Phoenix Public Library,” said Lee Franklin, community relations manager.

She said Phoenix is erring on the side of caution by not offering curbside service. 

“We don’t see an ability for us to do that and still prioritize maintaining that safe environment for our staff, our customers and our visitors,” Franklin said."

For Jeffrey Epstein, MIT Was Just a Safety School; Wired, May 4, 2020

Noam Cohen, Wired; For Jeffrey Epstein, MIT Was Just a Safety School

"The MIT and Harvard reports are most illuminating when read together. They overlap in revealing ways and share certain observations...

In part, we can chalk up the difference to bad timing. Harvard came first in Epstein’s mind, which, I suppose, says something about its reputation among status-obsessed faux-intellectuals. When Harvard was accepting Esptein’s donations, it was dealing with a disreputable character; MIT, by contrast, was dealing with a convicted sex offender...

What remains is the hard-baked irony that MIT, which got relatively little from Epstein, drew the bad headlines; whereas Harvard, which took 10 times as much of Epstein’s money, could almost claim its hands were clean. MIT announced last year that it would be donating to a charity benefiting sexual-abuse survivors all of its Epstein monies ($850,000 collected before and after his conviction). Harvard on Friday announced that it would be donating to organizations that support victims of human trafficking and sexual assault exactly what was left over from Epstein’s multimillion-dollar donations: $200,937."

Harvard’s Epstein corruption deserves a full airing — even amid a pandemic; The Washington Post, May 4, 2020

Charles Lane, The Washington Post; Harvard’s Epstein corruption deserves a full airing — even amid a pandemic

[Kip Currier: Fortuitous to see this story -- and the call for this "cautionary" real world case study to be investigated  -- as I’ve included this as a case study in the syllabus for my new graduate course, The Information Professional in the Community, launching next week.

In one of the course’s weekly units, we'll be exploring Harvard's deeply concerning ties to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and, in columnist Charles Lane's parlance, "the cutting of ethical corners", within the broader context of critically examining Fiscal Considerations, Legal/Ethical/Policy Issues, and Risk Management in Collaborations and Partnerships.] 

"Such grotesque money-grubbing at the pinnacle of U.S. academia — a school, to be sure, that has positioned itself an ethical leader, especially in the movement against sexual assault and gender bias on campus — deserves a full airing, even amid the novel coronavirus pandemic...

It joins a lengthening list of cautionary tales of fundraising excess, such as the admissions-for-cash episode involving athletic teams at Yale, Stanford, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and Georgetown, among others...

The need for cash is probably at or near an all-time high, and so is the risk, reputational and otherwise, of cutting ethical corners to raise it.

Professors and administrators can ill afford the moral arrogance that characterized the dealings of some at Harvard with Epstein, or their sloppiness, or their cluelessness...

Not everyone at Harvard — much less everyone in higher ed — is to blame for this sorry episode. Every college and university can learn from it."

Leaders Are Crying on the Job. Maybe That’s a Good Thing.; The New York Times, May 3, 2020

Jessica Bennett, The New York Times; Leaders Are Crying on the Job. Maybe That’s a Good Thing.

"“The days when a politician cried and it was over for them — that’s over, ” [Pam Sherman, a leadership coach based in Rochester, N.Y.] said. “Things like empathy, vulnerability, emotional connectedness — these are the things that define today’s leaders.”

In other words: the leadership traits that, traditionally, have been associated with women."

Has COVID-19 changed the face of tech ethics forever?; IDG, April 23, 2020

Pat Martlew, IDG; Has COVID-19 changed the face of tech ethics forever?

"So, are the more heavy-handed approaches worth implementing if it leads to lives being saved? Prominent technologist and tech ethics expert Anne Currie says that while she wouldn't necessarily advocate for China's approach, there is a degree to which ethical considerations must be eased if we are to save a considerable number of lives.

"Tech ethics in the good times and tech ethics in the bad times are extremely different. When you've got hundreds of thousands of lives on the line, we all do occasionally need to suspend some of our privileges. That is just the reality of the situation," she says

"Right now, we are in a battle. We're in a battle with an implacable other. We're not battling with a competitor at work and we're not battling with another country, as difficult as that may be. We are battling with a virus that doesn't care at all about us. It doesn't care about fairness, diversity, privacy, or any of the good things that we generally value. It will just kill us if we don't act and that has changed where our priorities lie, which is the right thing to happen."

5 Questions That (Newly) Virtual Leaders Should Ask Themselves; Harvard Business Review (HBR),

Melissa Raffoni, Harvard Business Review (HBR); 5 Questions That (Newly) Virtual Leaders Should Ask Themselves

"First, it’s important to be aware of the factors that make working together virtually such a challenge:

• For some, it’s uncomfortable. Every day, I watch my teenagers laugh and chat with their friends on Facetime, as if they were just another person in the room. But for many of us adults, who didn’t grow up with that same technology, it can still be quite uncomfortable. This lack of comfort makes it harder for some to open up, connect, trust, and communicate with each other virtually. If you are a leader today, in a virtual setting, you may be struggling to display the same level of authenticity and provide your team with the same sense of safety as you did in person.
• Interpersonal dynamics are harder to manage. Both for technical reasons and because people are harder to read over video, the appropriate affect, tone, pacing, and facial expressions that we rely on for effective communication in person are more difficult to give and receive virtually, especially in group settings.
• You can easily lose people’s attention. It’s challenging enough to engage people in a face-to-face meetings, but virtual meetings often come with a plethora of new distractions that you have little control over.
• New skills are required, from you. Whether it’s managing tech, maintaining strong facilitation skills, or rethinking agendas, virtual is different than in-person. Knowing that is half the battle.

With these factors as a backdrop, ask yourself five questions to ensure you are being the best leader you can be as you manage your team from home."