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A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 12
by
Posted On September 1, 2024
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The Great Leader

Rebecca JonesRebecca Jones is the kind of person you want to be around and learn from. For the past 30 years, Rebecca’s work as one half of the dynamic duo of Dysart & Jones Associates has been helping librarians and libraries adapt, change, and grow to better assist their communities. These days, Rebecca’s the director and curriculum designer of LLEAD.

WHAT WORK DOES LLEAD DO, AND HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED?

It began as a Canada pilot project and (drumroll please) is now open to anyone from anywhere. It is the only leadership and management development program for those in supervisory roles in any type of library or information-intensive organization that we’ve been able to find anywhere in the world. The more all employees understand what’s involved in leading and managing a function, a department, or an organization, the more they will be truly engaged in the organization. People are smart, and they need to be treated as adults. Treating people as adults just means acknowledging that they manage their responsibilities within their role. Senior managers have different responsibilities from those working directly with users, but imagine how a library’s senior managers and customer service staff can relate to each other—and to how the entire library operates—when they see each other as leaders in different places.

In 2015, Dr. Ken Haycock, former dean at the iSchool at San Jose State University and the University of British Columbia, asked me to work with him to design and launch a pilot program for a public library federation in British Columbia. Haycock is brilliant, and I was amazed and terrified. But I learned from Jane Dysart that when you are afraid of something, just ask, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” and, if you can handle that “worst thing,” go for it.

In the pilot program, we welcomed students from both public and academic libraries. Fast-forward to today, with our fifth cohort: 26 students who work in public, academic, government, and information management functions. What’s more, LLEAD participants do not need to be librarians. Those responsible for IT, HR, marketing, safety and security, and other functions within the sector want to develop their leadership and management capabilities, and they do so by learning from and with each other.

WHAT’S THE NEXT BIG THING THAT’S GOING TO IMPACT WORK IN LIBRARIES THESE DAYS?

AI. No surprise there. I honestly think this is the opportunity for academic and public libraries to collaborate by figuring out—together—how to leverage AI and benefit their respective markets. Many in the library sector don’t agree with the term “market” because of its business connotation. I encourage people to think about the marketplace: Communities buy public libraries with their tax dollars, and campuses buy academic libraries with their tuition and research dollars. These libraries are extensions of the same marketplace; children and teens who use the public library become students at the academy and may then become employees, faculty, or researchers there. AI is going to shift that marketplace, communities, and campuses. Hopefully, the libraries will work together to figure that shift out.


Making Nice Things That Help People

John BlybergWhen John Blyberg told me that he was creating a project called Inkleaf, I knew I had to pay attention. Inkleaf is his way of combining a people-first approach with technology to help libraries better serve their communities.

TELL ME ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH INKLEAF.

Inkleaf is a library software company started by myself and my partner Cindi Blyberg. Fundamentally, Inkleaf is a platform that makes the lives of library workers easier. We’ve all been in a situation where we know the form, document, bookmark, or FAQ is somewhere in the mishmash of tools that the library uses, but we just can’t put our hands on it quickly. Inkleaf solves this problem. Yes, our platform includes a knowledgebase, a staff and contacts directory, discussion threads, blogs, a form-builder, etc., but that’s just the beginning. We have big plans for Inkleaf to take it well beyond anything any intranet could do.

WHAT HAS THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS LOOKED LIKE? WHAT ARE YOU USING TO BUILD INKLEAF?

I began coding Inkleaf in 2019, but because I was not 100% on the front-end concept yet, I started by architecting the back end. I knew what the requirements were from the start, so that was something I could focus on building. We would need a robust, scalable API to support the user interface. I wanted the experience in the app to be live, such that if a user makes a change, their changes show up immediately to all other logged-in users without requiring a page refresh. That required creating a scalable socket solution, which meant learning how to work with web sockets at scale.

Our Knowledge Base product has a collaborative editing feature, so we need a service to handle that, which meant me taking a deep dive into CRDT (conflict-free replicated data types) algorithms—like actual CS stuff that makes my head hurt, but which is also really interesting. Because of the nature of what we were trying to accomplish, I built the back end using Node.js, which handles asynchronous processing natively. The front end is Vue.js. Having the entire stack written in TypeScript has really helped to keep the wheels on the track.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE LIBRARIES GET OUT OF INKLEAF?

I want the libraries that take this journey with us to feel like they’ve finally found the tool they were looking for. Inkleaf is for all people who work in libraries, and we value the work they do to keep the doors open, the lights on, the programs scheduled, and collections circulating. Figuring out how to share policies, where the emergency phone number for the plumber is, or how to store incident reports are not sexy problems to solve, but the people who deal with those problems are the beating heart of a library. That’s the space we want to be in.

WHAT IS THE LIBRARY-RELATED ACCOMPLISHMENT YOU ARE MOST PROUD OF?

I think I am particularly proud of the user experience (UX) department that I created at Darien Library. Initially modeled after the Skunk Works at Lockheed Martin, it grew and morphed into a completely novel way to provide technology support and leadership within the organization. Darien Library is a medium-sized library, but we were an innovation hub that punched way above its weight.


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Justin Hoenke is a library consultant who is interested in public libraries as community centers, supporting youth services staff to help them achieve their goals, and video game collection development. You can learn more about his work in libraries at justinthelibrarian.com. Hoenke previously worked in public libraries across the U.S. and New Zealand in leadership and youth services.

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10/15/2024Inkleaf Takes On Library Operations: An Interview With John Blyberg
1/9/2018A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 1
10/1/2023A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 11
4/4/2023A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 10
9/1/2022A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 9
4/5/2022A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 8
8/3/2021A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 7
10/6/2020A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 6
4/7/2020A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 5
11/5/2019A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 4
4/2/2019A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 3
9/11/2018A Day in the Life of Five Librarians, Part 2


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