The Art of the Trade: A New/Old Take on Resource Sharing

The Salem Public Library had been awarded a grant from the American Library Association and FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The award included a six-week installation of a traveling exhibit called Thinking Money, designed to introduce basic concepts of financial literacy to teens, tweens, and young adults. The 50 libraries that received the Thinking Money grant were charged with partnering with community organizations to create at least four programs based on the exhibit’s theme. Finding community partners was not at all difficult. Credit unions and financial planners were only too happy to conduct classes and give presentations, but I wanted to have at least one program that approached the topic a bit more obliquely, something that would soft-sell the benefits of good money management skills. Marion County Environmental Services turned out to be the perfect partner for this endeavor. MCES’s basic charge is to keep materials out of the waste stream. Through their innovative outreach activities, they challenge residents to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Their program director, Jessica Ramey, and I hatched a plan for a back-to-school blue jeans swap, reasoning that conservation of resources applies as much to the environment as it does to families’ wardrobes and bank accounts, and that people who would come to the library for free back-to-school clothes might not be the same people who would sign themselves up for a class on budgets or investments. Our theory was that if we could get people into the building for free jeans, they would discover the fabulous Thinking Money exhibit and perhaps learn something new

Volume 24 Issue 2 Introduction

Lots of Ways to Be a Leader Or: I Am a Library Leader, and So Can You! People tend to have a fixed mindset about who “librarians” are and how library staff should act, represent their profession, and lead. When I say “people,” I am envisioning every public official, captain of industry and Lyft driver who has ever asked me how many people I shush in a day, and then I am envisioning a rain of cartoon anvils. To be fair, I’m also thinking of a younger version of myself, picking out the dowdiest clothes in my wardrobe for my first day as a circulation clerk at my college library. Thirteen years and many burritos later, I’m still a loudmouth slob who routinely cracks wise and writes policies galore but enforces the only rule that makes sense to me: don’t be a dick (Wheaton, 2007). I’m also the Assistant Director of Library Services at Crook County Library, and someone who wears the title “librarian” with pride. I got here through the guiding example of peers and bosses who showed me that “librarian” is not synonymous with “lame-o” and that in fact the best library leaders—the ones who do the most to effect positive change in their institutions and their communities—are the ones who embrace their strengths and dreams without compromise. This was the central thesis around which the inaugural Leadership Institute of the Oregon Library Association (LIOLA) was built, but it wasn’t entirely news to me