Lisa Peet

New directors include Joslyn Bowling Dixon at Newark, NJ; John Herron at Kansas City, MO; and Joan R. Johnson at Milwaukee; Dana Canedy and Lisa Lucas bring fresh faces to big publishing; Urban Libraries Council elects its 20–21 executive board, with DC Public Library Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan to serve as Chair; and more library people news for August 4, 2020.

Ry Moran, founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba, Canada, will become the inaugural Associate University Librarian for Reconciliation at the University of Victoria (UVic), BC, this fall. LJ caught up with him recently to hear more about his plans and thoughts on helping create institutional equity.

Ry Moran is the founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, Canada. For the past five years Moran, a member of the Red River Métis, has led the creation of a permanent home of a national archive for all materials gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. LJ caught up with him recently to learn more about what it took to build an archive of such a critical chapter of Canada’s Indigenous history.

On July 2, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan Library Stabilization Fund Act in both chambers (S.4181 and H.R.7486, respectively). The legislation, introduced with 13 cosponsors on both sides of the aisle in the Senate and 27 in the House, would establish a dedicated $2 billion fund to be administered by IMLS that would address the financial losses incurred in the pandemic shutdown and bolster library services going forward, with priority given to the hardest-hit communities.

Siobhan Reardon, who served as president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) since 2008, has resigned in the wake of accusations of systemic racism throughout the library. The library has been accused of discrimination for several years, including in public discussion during City Council budget hearings in April 2019.

UNC Chapel Hill Libraries has received a collection valued at $6.2 million from rare book collector and alumna Florence Fearrington, the Panorama Project has released a custom version of Panorama Picks spotlighting antiracist titles, the Library Freedom Institute has announced its fourth cohort, and more News Briefs.

As they anticipate hits from lowered enrollment and decreased endowments, as well as declines in state funding for public universities and community colleges, and potential rollbacks of money that has already been authorized, academic institutions have begun hiring freezes and reductions, including furloughs, layoffs, and reduced hours for non-tenured faculty and staff. Many campus libraries are seeing reductions in workforce that threaten to affect their ability to serve students, faculty, and researchers.

In summer 2016, four librarians—Jessica Anne Bratt, Amita Lonial, Sarah Lawton, and Amy Sonnie—created Libraries 4 Black Lives (L4BL), an online space for libraries to support the Movement for Black Lives and develop a support community for advocates doing racial justice work in libraries. While L4BL is no longer active, Bratt, youth services manager at the Grand Rapids Public Library, MI, has continued her advocacy and social justice work. LJ recently caught up with her to find out more about what she’s been doing.

Chicago Public Library's Merlo Branch and Indianapolis PL's Martindale-Brightwood Branch have opened to the public, while work is proceeding—after some delays—on St. Louis County PL's Eureka Hills Branch, the new North Branch of Clinton-Macomb PL, and Carroll County PL's Exploration Commons.