People

Despite the proven benefits, strategic planning services can be cost-prohibitive, particularly for small and rural libraries. The process itself can also feel daunting, making it easy to defer. Library Strategies, a consulting group of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, in partnership with Montana State Library, has designed a program to address those barriers.

I’ve been delighted to watch the ambitious program in Ohio in which 137 of the state’s 251 library systems (and counting) have chosen to help distribute about 2 million at-home coronavirus testing kits. At press time, libraries had already distributed nearly 60,000 tests through about 365 locations.

Vartan Gregorian, president of the New York Public Library (NYPL) from 1981–89, died on April 15 at age 87. Gregorian took leadership of the library during the tail end of the fiscal crisis that pushed New York City to the brink of bankruptcy and left NYPL facing a $50 million deficit, helping restore the library to solvency through substantial fundraising efforts and advocacy.

Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson, vice provost for digital initiatives and dean of university libraries at the University of Washington (UW), recently announced that she will retire on June 30. Wilson has served as dean since 2001; in 2013 she took on the vice provost role as well, leading the libraries’ strategy on digital scholarship, data stewardship, and open access. The network of 16 libraries—one of the largest academic research libraries in North America, with the largest collection in the Pacific Northwest—serves UW’s Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell campuses and Friday Harbor Laboratories.

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2021 virtual conference, taking place April 13–16, started off on a strong note with Tressie McMillan Cottom’s opening keynote. Her thoughts on how to center human rights and justice within an academic framework gave attendees much to think about as they continued on to the many panels, sessions, exhibits, and other offerings.

Jackie Gosselar is a Systems and Discovery Services Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley. They shared their experience as a bisexual, nonbinary librarian, and provided some insight into the value of being part of an organizational culture that makes space for all identities.

The challenge for libraries is, first, to obtain and spend federal funding, and second, to parlay that temporary help into a permanent paradigm shift. The new equipment will outlast the emergency. It is up to library leaders to document its ongoing impacts, so that when breakage and age take their inevitable toll, funders will find it unthinkable not to replace and upgrade the gear.

LJ caught up with Dr. Nicole Cooke, Augusta Baker endowed chair and associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina, to ask what librarians need to know about how misinformation and disinformation work in the modern era and how they can be combated effectively.