Keynote: Sustainable Thinking for the Future of Libraries

Session Description

Library leaders must mobilize to ensure libraries take an active, visible role in building sustainable and resilient communities. Our future depends on citizens who are able to work together with empathy, respect, and understanding to adapt to the many challenges facing society. In 2019, the American Library Association adopted sustainability as a core value of librarianship. We will explore the importance of infusing the new core value of sustainability into everything we do, and demonstrate how libraries that lead into the future using “sustainable thinking” fulfill our mission as libraries in new and innovative ways. “Sustainable Thinking” is a concept that aligns the core values of libraries with the “Triple Bottom Line” definition of sustainability (i.e. the intersection of economic feasibility, environmental stewardship and social equity) to inspire investment and build support for your library in the future.

Presenter(s)

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Executive Director, Mid-Hudson Library System (MHLS)

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich
Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, a powerful advocate for public libraries, is the executive director of the Mid-Hudson Library System (MHLS) in Hudson, New York. In addition, she is a certified sustainable building advisor (CSBA) and is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional (LEED AP). Smith Aldrich holds an advanced certificate in Public Library Administration from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University, where she is also an adjunct professor. She is a founding member of ALA’s Sustainability Roundtable and helped to pass the ALA Resolution on the Importance of Sustainable Libraries in 2015. Smith Aldrich was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2010 and writes a sustainability column for the journal. A prolific writer, Smith Aldrich is the author of Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World. She has also contributed chapters to Better Library Design (Rowman and Littlefield) and The Green Library (Library Juice Press). Like Drabinski, Smith Aldrich has given numerous presentations and keynote addresses at venues that include IFLA, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries Conference, the US Embassy in Peru, the American Library Association Annual Conference and the New York Library Association Conference.

Keynote: Making Power, Making Change

Session Description

Librarians make the future every day: we select and acquire, catalog and classify, circulate and preserve, determining along the way what is worth accumulating, sharing, and keeping forever, and what is not. Every time we decide to purchase one book and not another, we use our power to shape the library of the future. But what happens when we want to use that power for transformative change and not just tinkering? How do we upend our own systems and structures in order to produce more just futures? How can librarians change the world? Drawing on lessons learned from the labor movement, this talk develops an analysis of power as something library workers can build with and for each other. Using tools and techniques we already have in our repertoire, we are well-positioned to make another world possible.

Presenter(s)

Emily Drabinski, Interim Chief Librarian at Mina Rees Library, Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

Emily Drabinski
Emily Drabinski is the Interim Chief Librarian at Mina Rees Library, Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She is also the liaison to the School of Labor and Urban Studies and other CUNY masters and doctoral programs. Drabinski’s research includes critical approaches to information literacy instruction, gender and sexuality in librarianship and the intersections of power and library systems and structures. She currently serves as the series editor for Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies (Library Juice Press/Litwin Books). Additionally, Drabinski serves on the editorial boards of College & Research Libraries, The Journal of Critical Library & Information Studies and Radical Teacher, a socialist, feminist and anti-racist journal devoted to the theory and practice of teaching. Drabinski has given numerous keynote addresses and presentations at the Big XII Teaching and Learning Conference, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference and the Digital Library Federation.

Managing Change From The Inside-Out: The Library as Catalyst for Transformational Change

Session Description

Located in downtown Denver, Colorado, the Auraria Campus is home to three institutions of higher education – University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Community College of Denver – the latter two are Hispanic-Serving Institutions. The Auraria Library serves the campus’ approximately 43,000 students, including many first-generation, underrepresented, and non-traditional students, and sees more than 750,000 visits a year. In 2018, I was hired as Auraria Library’s director. In addition to the challenges of serving three institutions with differing needs, I quickly realized that the library itself was in a state of transition and seeking answers for what was going to come next for the organization.

Library employees are incredibly passionate and dedicated, and it was important to build on the existing work that had happened, while redirecting efforts in respectful and productive ways. This session will provide participants with a practical application of change management elements and approaches including:
 
Internal perspective:

  • Discussing the main elements of transformational change which takes an ecosystem approach and where there is a shift in organizational attitudes, beliefs, and cultural values
  • Preparing for strategic change by establishing trust and transparency in leadership
  • Creating new policies and processes in areas such as hiring, workforce planning, and budgeting
  • Building internal capacity through training, recognition, and mentorship
  • Considering the human aspect of change management by addressing reactions to and anxiety about change (both at the employee as well as at the administrative levels)
External perspective:
  • Developing a robust stakeholder engagement framework to assist with strategic planning
  • Telling the library story and raising awareness about its impact for our faculty, staff, and students

Presenter(s)

Cinthya Ippoliti, Director and University Librarian, University of Colorado, Denver

Cinthya Ippoliti
Cinthya Ippoliti is the University Librarian and Director of the Auraria Library at University of Colorado Denver. Previously, she was the Associate Dean for Research and Learning Services at Oklahoma State University where she provided administrative leadership for the library’s academic liaison program as well as services for undergraduate and graduate students and community outreach. Other past work includes Head of Teaching and Learning Services at the University of Maryland where she was in charge of the spaces, services, and programming offered by the Terrapin Learning Commons in addition to coordinating the libraries’ First Year instruction program.