David Giles and Story Bellows: BPL’s Strategy Team Looks Ahead; Library Journal, 2/3/16

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; David Giles and Story Bellows: BPL’s Strategy Team Looks Ahead:

"In Fall 2015, the Brooklyn Public Library’s (BPL) strategy team gained two codirectors, David Giles and Story Bellows—urban innovators with strong backgrounds in government policy. Giles joined the library as chief strategy officer in November 2015, after serving as research director at New York’s Center for an Urban Future (CUF), which in 2014 published Re-Envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries, a report examining the physical and economic challenges facing the buildings that make up New York City’s three library systems. In his new role, he will provide strategic leadership around program development, partnerships, advocacy, and capital planning, among other aspects of BPL’s mission.

Leading the strategy team with Giles is Bellows, who became BPL’s chief innovation and performance officer in October. Before arriving in Brooklyn, Bellows cofounded and directed the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics in Philadelphia, an in-house research and development lab aimed at supporting innovative approaches to civic problem solving.

LJ recently caught up with Giles and Bellows to talk about their previous work, aspirations for BPL, and thoughts on what 21st-century libraries can accomplish."