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Material that supports the study of how libraries and knowledge professionals are trained, how they share their skills, and how their peers view them.
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“Librarians as Agents of Transformation” Informatie aan Zee 2015. Oostende, Belgium.
Abstract: What can be learned from the U.S. librarians’ response to the economic crisis, and the importance of hope and optimism in librarianship.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2015/Belgium.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2015/Belgium.mp3
Major Points: Major points
It makes sense. Great bosses create workplaces where staff want to be. Lousy bosses make staff miserable so they quit and go elsewhere and try to recover. What exactly does a superboss do?
Have you ever known a superboss? A superboss is more than just a good leader who runs the type of library where staff members want to work and community members want to be. A superboss creates a library legacy primarily through two actions: First, there is a unique ability to identify top talent, staff members who exhibit tremendous potential to do great things. Second, there is leader development at a high level that produces a next generation of library leaders who go out and do great things on their own. To be a superboss means putting the future career success of the library’s executive team or unit heads ahead of one’s own selfish desires to keep subordinates under control and in place. The superboss takes pride in knowing she has given staff opportunities for leadership development, and may be sorry to see good people go on to new jobs but does so knowing they deserve their chance to take the reins and deliver on their own library leadership vision.
FINDING THE SUPERBOSSES
Superboss is hardly the term I would have come up with for the type of leader described above. I might go with the familiar “remarkable leader,” but perhaps there needs to be a more distinctive way to describe a leader who is particularly skilled at developing staff, or whose track record demonstrates an ability to produce subordinates who go out and do great things on their own. A good case is made for the superboss in Sydney Finklestein’s article “Jon Stewart, Superboss.” Finkelstein became interested in the track records of leaders who could be linked to the rise of an industry’s top leaders. He did this by examining fields where the top 50 most prominent or influential individuals could be connected back to one or two leaders who had employed a disproportionate share of those 50. He came up with a group of superbosses across industries and found that “although their personalities varied, these bosses all demonstrated an unusual, even legendary ability to develop the best talent in their industries.” These superbosses are a diverse group, from Lorne Michaels and Oprah Winfrey in entertainment, to Ralph Lauren in fashion, and Bill Walsh in professional sports. One individual in particular has a truly impressive track record.
LAUNCHING CAREERS AND LOVING IT Read more…
Walter Benjamin in Paris. Image © Gisèle Freund
Welcome to The Long(ish) Read: a new AD feature which uncovers texts written by notable essayists which resonate with contemporary architecture, interior architecture, urbanism or landscape design. In this essay, written in 1931, Walter Benjamin narrates the process of unpacking his library. All in boxes, he takes the reader through elements of his book collection: the memories attached to them, the importance he placed on the act of ‘collecting’ and the process of accumulation, and how objects like books inhabit a space.
Walter Benjamin in brief
Born in Germany in 1892, Benjamin was known as a ‘man of letters’. Having been educated in Switzerland he had a short career in the lead up to the Second World War, which saw him carve a niche as a literary critic. In the 1930s he turned to Marxism, partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht and partly due to the rise of extreme right-wing politics in Europe. He spent much of his professional life in Paris, where he wrote this essay. Benjamin died in 1940 having committed suicide at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the Nazis. Read more...
By Laura McMullen Aug. 19, 2015 | 11:07 a.m. EDT + More
(Getty Images)
Next: Observe and learn.
Ellen Mehling: Where did you go to school? What degrees and/or certificates do you hold?
Krissa Corbett Cavouras: I attended Sarah Lawrence for my undergraduate degree and earned my masters from Pratt School of Information and Library Science (SILS) in 2011.
EM: Were you employed elsewhere when you applied for this job? For how long had you been job hunting?
KCC: I was working for a small e-commerce company, as a knowledge manager on their marketing team, for two years prior to starting at Brooklyn Public Library. I had probably been actively looking for about three months when I had my first interview here.
EM: How did you learn about the position? Did you have any connections via your network to that workplace?
KCC: I heard about the position on a couple of fronts — first, because I’ve had Brooklyn Public Library’s job page bookmarked for years, ever since I graduated from library school! Second, my manager Robin and I have several mutual friends from our early days as bloggers, so I saw the job shared around that mutual circle on Facebook. (I do think that’s how I knew it was in serious recruitment, because sometimes you don’t know from a website job posting if it’s a really open position.) I also have several library school colleagues who now work in the system, although I don’t think I saw this specific posting on my library school listserv. http://metro.org/articles/what-went-right-a-case-study-of-a-successful-hiring-part-1/
Stephanie L. Gross, MSLIS 