Library Quips and Tips

Hello (branch manager),

I have noticed that one of the recent challenges in libraries is fake news.  Misinformation has risen as an issue since the last election. There was a Donald Trump quote last fall attributed to People magazine that never existed. 

I propose a workshop to help patrons evaluate news sources.  One idea is to have a workshop class showing examples of both questionable and more established news site.  Review the “it must be true if it’s in print” fallacy and give examples.  Part of the class could be having patrons search the internet for news that interest them and have them evaluate the sources.  A while ago I created a YouTube video on evaluating Web pages.  Maybe even just a handout/

Fake news sites is a  recent threat to literacy and knowledge.  Our brains still need to be re-programmed to realize that not everything in print or on the Web is true.  Here are a couple of resources I’ve found:

Trust Project 

The latest issue of Public Libraries features stories of learning failures by librarians.  Here’s my own story…well, one of them.

Right after college I was hired by a clothing chain to be part of their traveling store.  A tent was erected in a city in a parking lot near one of the  tores.  Clothes racks sporting merchandise were then setup. I was the assistant manger of this traveling clothing circus and about the same age as the teens and students we hired as temporary staff.

I found it hard to take a stand.  Maybe I was afraid of being too overbearing.  Maybe I was afraid of people not liking me if I gave any command.  Whatever the reason, I deferred to the manager for almost any decision.   The twins we hired where both hungry?  I asked the manager if they could  grab a bite during busy hour.  

The worst was when a difficult customer wanted to try clothes on in the store. We had a rule—no trying on clothes in our sibling stores since the inventory could be mixed up.  When I mentioned this she shot back “I see all the pretty girls getting to go in!  I want to see the manager.”  This shocked me.  Instead of saying “that’s me” and working with her I brought her over to the actual manger who was on break (he let her go in the store).

Not long afterwards he took me to lunch and politely explained that I was not cut out for this job.  I would be re-assigned to a lesser position back in our hometown.

I was devastated.  I had failed my first job out of college.  What good was my degree?   How could I be successful in the future?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  Words of the poet Emma Lazarus associated with Ellis Island and the Statute of Liberty.

It is not too far a stretch to see how these words apply to a public library with some creative manipulation of words.  “Give us your hunger for knowledge,your digitally confused, your need for information.”

I read two articles in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries News:

1.  Creating the Leadership You seek

2.  The Way I See It (leadership isn’t for everyone)

Let’s look at management from a business franchise-to-library perspective.  In the latest issue of American Libraries, Jimmie E. Epling compares management at places such as Walmart and McDonalds to those of libraries. Epling states that leadership tends to be more fractured at the local level of libraries because of factors such as llack of funding and interest.  A manager at one library may need to deviate from standards to accommodate their community.  Local mangers of corporations tend to be unified in goals.