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. Read the transcript! 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 bestsel...
Jul 27, 2021
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. Read the transcript! 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 an...
Jul 13, 2021
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 art...
Jun 29, 2021
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. Read the transcript! R. David Lankes is the director of the Universi...
Jun 15, 2021
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 assoc...
Jun 01, 2021
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 dis...
May 04, 2021
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, adapte...
Apr 06, 2021
Steve chats with the three 2021 candidates for American Library Association President: Stacey Aldrich, Ed Garcia, and Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada. Read the transcript! 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 to...
Mar 02, 2021
Steve chats with Noah Lenstra, author of Healthy Living at the Library, about the Let’s Move in Libraries initiative, why it’s important to work with community partners, examples of health literacy programming, and how libraries have adapted their programming due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Noah Lenstra started Let’s Move in Libraries in 2016 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s School of Education, where he is an assistant professor of library and information science. His research ...
Feb 02, 2021
Steve chats with Callan Bignoli and Lauren Stara, authors of Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries: a User Experience Approach, about how they met and decided to write a book together, how the New York Public Library lions guided their thinking, and the myriad issues libraries need to consider to prepare for future change. CALLAN BIGNOLI is the director of the library at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. She gathers inspiration from everywhere to inform user-centered pract...
Jan 05, 2021
