Circulating Ideas

Steve chats with Becky Spratford, author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, about RA for All’s origin story, why people read scary books, the importance of promoting diversity in the horror genre, and which book Steve should read next to scare the bejesus out of him.

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Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

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The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror (shipping August 26!)

Steve chats with Lori Berezovsky, vice-president / president-elect of the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services, about her path to librarianship, their upcoming virtual conference, and how outreach has changed in COVID times.

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Lori Berezovsky is the outreach Librarian at Salina Public Library, Salina, KS and is the current Vice President/President-Elect of the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

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Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services

Steve chats with Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, authors of The Personal Librarian, about their early childhood experiences in libraries, why they found Belle da Costa Greene’s story so compelling and relevant to our modern times, and why they’re writing soulmates.

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Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator. A graduate of Boston College and the Boston University School of Law, she is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and Lady Clementine. All have been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

Victoria Christopher Murray is an acclaimed author with more than one million books in print. She has written more than twenty novels, including Stand Your Ground, an NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Fiction and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

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Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

The Personal Librarian
Marie Benedict
Victoria Christopher Murray

Steve chats with Judi Moreillon, editor of Core Values in School Librarianship: Responding with Commitment and Courage, about why equity, diversity, inclusion, and intellectual freedom are core values for school librarians, the work of her contributors, and why this is her last book.

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Judi Moreillon, PhD, is an editor, author, literacies and libraries consultant, and a former school librarian educator. She began teaching preservice school librarians in 1995. Her research and publications focus on school librarian leadership and classroom teacher – school librarian instructional partnerships. A former classroom teacher, literacy coach, and classroom teacher educator, Judi served as a collaborating school librarian at all three instructional levels. She is the editor of Core Values in School Librarianship: Responding with Commitment and Courage (Libraries Unlimited 2021) and the author of four other professional books for school librarians and four books for children and families. She earned the 2019 Scholastic Publishing Award. Judi currently serves on the Advisory Council for the SLIDE research project and as co-chair of the Teacher Librarian Division of the Arizona Library Association. She earned both an MLS and a PhD in education at the University of Arizona. Judi’s homepage is storytrail.com. She blogs at schoollibrarianleadership.com and tweets @CactusWoman.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

Subscribe (FREE!) to the Circulating Ideas newsletter!
Core Values in School Librarianship: Responding with Commitment and Courage

Steve chats with Gene Ambaum and Willow Payne, the writer and artist of Library Comic, about the transition from Unshelved to Library Comic, integrating spiders into the strip as much as possible, creative Kickstarter merch ideas, and Gene’s terrible taste in books and movies (according to Willow).

Gene Ambaum is a library guy who lives in the Pacific Northwest. In his spare time he reads and dreams of having more spare time. He co-created and wrote Unshelved.

Willow Payne is a Florida-based artist who has worked with Gene on Unshelved Book Club comics and their as-yet incomplete epic Barbarian Girl: The Burning Blade of the Badlands. She graduated from The Center for Cartooning Studies in 2014 and will inevitably take over the comics world. Her favorite authors include Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, and Philip Pullman. She took over as the artist for Library Comic in June of 2019 with strip 581.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

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Library Comic
Barbarian Girl
Fiends of the Library
Bookstabber podcast

Steve chats with David Lankes, author of Forged in War: How a Century of War Created Today’s Information Society, about his new position at the University of Texas at Austin, whether or not libraries are neutral (spoiler: they’re not), knowledge infrastructure, and how the wars of the 20th century shaped propaganda, how data is collected and used, and the development of our information society, from telegraphs to the internet.

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R. David Lankes is the director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science, soon-to-be Full Professor and Virginia & Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin, a Visiting Researcher at the French National Library School ENSSIB,  and recipient of the American Library Association’s 2021 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award for distinguished contribution to reference librarianship and the 2016 Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship. His book, The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. Lankes is a passionate advocate for librarians and their essential role in today’s society.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

Subscribe (FREE!) to the Circulating Ideas newsletter!
“Lankes to join Texas iSchool as Virginia & Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship”
“Are Libraries Neutral?” American Libraries
Forged in War: How a Century of War Created Today’s Information Society | audiobook
Information Hunters by Kathy Peiss
Libraries Lead the New Normal podcast

Steve chats with Tracie D. Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association, about her path to librarianship, her role as ALA’s Executive Director, what ALA has done and can do for library workers, libraries working for social justice, and accepting ourselves as members of the human race.

In February 2020, Tracie D. Hall was appointed the American Library Association’s 10th executive director in its 143-year history. In her new role, Hall oversees the oldest and largest library association in the world, made up of 57,000 members and more than 200 staffers. Hall is the first female African American executive director in ALA’s history.

Upon Hall’s appointment ALA President Wanda K. Brown observed that “Her unique combination of philanthropy and library know-how position her to be the leader ALA needs today. She is optimistic, energizing, and innovative, qualities that will serve the association well as it continues its investments in advocacy, development, and information technology.” Hall is no stranger to libraries, or to ALA. Over the years she has worked at the Seattle Public Library, the New Haven Free Public Library, Hartford Public Library, and Queens Library. In 1998, she was among the first cohort of ALA’s Spectrum Scholars, a grant program to diversify librarianship, and she served as the director of ALA’s Office for Diversity in the early 2000s and has served on advisory councils for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and written for the field’s major publications. She was highlighted as a “Mover and Shaker” in the field by Library Journal  early in her career. Most recently, Hall directed the culture portfolio at the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, developing new grant programs designed to foster greater equity and diversity in arts administration, catalyze and scale neighborhood-based arts venues, cultural programming and creative entrepreneurship. Prior to that she worked as Deputy Commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and as community investment strategist in Global Corporate Citizenship at The Boeing Company. A civic leader in Chicago, Hall was appointed to serve on the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council at the beginning of 2020. Hall has also served in multiple roles in academia, including as assistant dean of Dominican’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science in River Forest, IL and as visiting professor at Wesleyan, Southern Connecticut State, and Catholic Universities among others. In addition to her MLIS from the Information School at the University of Washington, Hall holds an MA in International and Area studies with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa from Yale University and dual bachelor’s degrees in Law and Society and Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Hall has also studied at the Universities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in East Africa. Hall was born and raised in Los Angeles.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

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Steve chats with John Ballestro, editor of The Library’s Guide to Graphic Novels, along with many of the contributors, to discuss the ever-changing ways that graphic novels are created, packaged, marketed, and released, exploring such topics as the history of comics, collection development, cataloging, and specialized resources.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

The Library’s Guide to Graphic Novels
ALCTS
Fantagraphics
“The Differences Between Manga, Manhwa & Manhua, Explained” [CBR.com]
Graphic Medicine
The Comic Book Collection (Library of Congress)
Cataloging Graphic Novels (Library of Congress)
LCSH 1430
DC Archive Editions

Recommendations:

Digger by Ursula Vernon
Graphic Medicine – Penn State Press
Graphic History Series – Oxford University Press
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Guy Delisle
Joe Sacco
East Asia Comics Collection – University of Pennsylvania
Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fries
The Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
Epileptic by David B.
Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor by Lynda Barry
What It Is by Lynda Barry

Steve chats with Imbolo Mbue, author of How Beautiful We Were and Behold the Dreamers, about how a library display helped inspire her to start writing, the characters and themes she tackles in her work, writing as catharsis, and what it’s like to get a phone call from Oprah.

IMBOLO MBUE is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries.

Her new novel, How Beautiful We Were, was published in March 2021.

A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

Steve chats with the three 2021 candidates for American Library Association President: Stacey Aldrich, Ed Garcia, and Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada.

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Stacey Aldrich has more than 20 years of library experience, and is currently the State Librarian of Hawaii. Prior to Hawaii, she served as the Deputy Secretary for the Office of Commonwealth Libraries in Pennsylvania and State Librarian of California. Stacey has also worked in public and academic libraries. In between, she took a detour to work as a Senior Associate at the futuring think tank of Coates & Jarratt, Inc., where she began to sharpen her futurist thinking skills. She was selected as a Mover and Shaker in the 2003 Library Journal Annual Movers and Shakers edition, and she received a LINK AMERICAS Foundation Knowledge Award for vision and leadership in the area of Digital Literacy in 2012. Always curious and always learning, she believes we all should have a little futurist in us so that we can create our preferred futures. Visit her Instagram to learn more about her campaign.

Ed Garcia is the Library Director at the Cranston Public Library in Cranston, RI, a position he has held since 2012. Ed is a proud graduate of the University of Rhode Island and received his MLIS in 2008. He is currently serving as a member of the Executive Board of the American Library Association and is a 3 term Councilor-at-Large on the ALA Council. He is a former ALA Emerging Leader (2010) and Library Journal Mover & Shaker (2010). Ed is very involved in library advocacy and is the current Legislative Action Chair for the Rhode Island Library Association. He is happily married with 16 year old twin sons. To learn more about his candidacy for ALA President visit www.edforala.com.

Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada is the Adult Services Assistant Manager at the Palos Verdes Library District in Southern California. She serves as the Executive Director and is a Past President of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA). Much of her professional work focuses on services to youth and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries, librarianship, and her local community. She lives in San Pedro, California with her poet husband, Chrisitan Hanz Lozada and their menagerie of pets. Find out more about Lessa and her vision for ALA at lessaforlibraries.com.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.