Steve Thomas: Lindsay, welcome back to Circulating Ideas.
Lindsay Cronk: Steve, I am so delighted to be here. I love our conversations, and I really look forward to them and your podcast is a consistent source of inspiration to me. So again, thank you for the time.
Steve Thomas: Great. Thank you. And I think we might have covered this when you were on the podcast to talk about PeMento so I may have asked this question then, but just to recap again, what got you interested in being a librarian in the first place?
Lindsay Cronk: Yeah, it’s interesting because, and I like to tell the story right now, because we’re facing a really challenging time. So why I like to tell the story is like, most senior leaders not so far in the distant past, I was early career and everything was really hard. But before I was even early career, I was a grant writer in the midst of the financial crisis.
And so I was stressed beyond sort of comprehension. And, you know, in retrospect, through therapy, coaching and reflection, I’ve come to realize I was taking too much responsibility, right? I was engaging in a different kind of vocational awe. Thanks for naming that for me, Fobazi, but I was trying really hard because I was trying to assert control in a really difficult situation. And because my job was to raise money, and because there was just less money, my job was borderline impossible. But I was not getting any of that messaging from leadership, which is another thing I’ll mention later in this.
So I did what I always do, which is I like to stay busy when I’m stressed. It’s not true for everybody and I don’t necessarily recommend it as a coping mechanism, but for me being of help makes me feel better. And I will say a lot of the research on mutual aid speaks to this. If you can help somebody, you’re gonna feel better. I was volunteering with my local public library. I was helping them with a grant and they were like, “Whoa, Lindsay, this skill set would be really awesome in libraries.” And it was like, they threw me a lifeline, Steve. Like it showed me a vision of a future. They rekindled my own optimism about my future.
When I tell this story, it’s interesting because there are different parts of it that every time I think about. But in this moment, the thing I’ll say is libraries are places that are about hope. They’re about abundance, right? They’re about different possibilities and exploring them without fetter, without fear. That was what the library did for me. And then, and then the library pointed me to this whole profession, which has its warts, has its challenges, but like ultimately you will never find a cooler or more ingenious group of problem solvers than you do among librarians and library workers. That’s how I found my path to libraries.
Steve Thomas: Well, what’s great there is that the people there, they saw you basically. And that’s what we want to do. We want people to feel seen and they saw you and they’re like, “Oh, this is perfect for you because we can see who you are” and set you on a good path.
Lindsay Cronk: Yeah. Libraries affirm, right. And it was just a point at which it looked really apocalyptic, and that’s the other thing I’d like to say right now, because I get it, and I’m not you know, as an optimist, you’re always afraid of veering too hard towards toxic positivity, and I work really hard to not, but I do think that there is actually a imperative of all of us right now, to continue to work together, to envision a path forward, where on the other side of this, we are not just well, we are stronger, where we are whole, complete and moving towards goals, right? So that we’re not exclusively on the defensive, because that is, I understand the impulse, but we have strengths of position that we have not yet brought to bear is sort of my central argument.
And I see it all the time. And in these conversations where I have the great joy of over and over again connecting with library workers across the United States and broadly, globally, that’s what I hear, you know, like, “Yeah, Lindsay, it’s tough. Here are the things I did. Like today someone threatened me.”
You know, that’s where I’m thinking about how can the platform be really leveraged to make our libraries safer and to get our people whole, and by whole I mean paid correctly, right, like, my platform is all about wage equity and safety at the end of the day, which are super fundamental. If you traveled back in time and you talked to young, ambitious Lindsey Cronk who was trying to solve all the world’s problems and write all the good grants, I don’t think that this is the platform that she would have run, but I think that it demonstrates growth and maturity to acknowledge that in this particular moment, part of what we’ve got to do is create the capacity. And that has to be at the very top level of our organization so that, you know, someone is coming at us about something and our immediate response shouldn’t just be, like, “Don’t do that.” We need to have the constant counter programming, we need to have a consistent message of our value and if we do that, we’re not going to be in that position.
I really think it’s possibly even likely, there was a huge spur of American Library Association membership growth right after the Patriot Act, right? Why? Because we weren’t focused on saying the Patriot Act is bad. We were focused on saying what is within our power is to let you know if your records have been requested and we’re going to do that, right? We didn’t prematurely comply. We also didn’t act from a place of any sort of defensiveness. What we just said is this is our area of expertise and this is how we’re going to leverage it on behalf of our communities.
Steve Thomas: And how we’re going to use our power as a large national organization, we can do it in this way. You’re articulating pretty well your vision of librarianship, and I just wonder what inspired you to want to run for president? And how do you think you would want to funnel that vision into the role?
Lindsay Cronk: Yeah, so, so again having spoken to you before about PeMento, that the sort of my whole cheese is community and how do we strengthen community? Because one of the downstream consequences of the kinds of attrition we have seen in our libraries is a lot of loneliness and isolation and a lot of people who are the only person in their library who do their thing, or maybe the only person in their library period.
When I was approached and asked if I was interested, like, I’d been nominated, would I like to go through the vetting process? Because part of what I want to share with the group is there is this process, right? Not everyone who might be interested in being ALA president runs. We have a nominating committee. The nominating committee takes interest, they follow up with you.
And I was just like, you know, “Let me think about it.” I’d been in this role for a while, but I certainly don’t want to do a disservice to my home organization, nor do I want to do a disservice to ALA by acting with any divided attention, but Steve, you also know me well enough, and I think probably maybe our audience knows us well enough to know I never shy away from the big challenges.
And I love to, when it’s possible use my strengths on behalf of the profession and the association. So I do think that for me, the reason I accepted was, one, I think I can do a great job, right? Like, and I think that that’s maybe the most critical thing. I think I will be an incredible spokesperson for our profession. I think that I can help advance the association. I think that I can get to the dollars and cents conversations we’ve been missing. I think that I could be the right leader for the moment, right? So that’s big. It’s the right opportunity and the right person. And it’s a very strong slate. So like, you’ve got hard choices. And I love that for us, right? Like more hard choices. But that’s where I came down on it.
The other thing I’ll say is after the national election, I did as a woman who embodies authority and leadership in a different way than many traditional leaders take offense to what I saw as sort of a referendum on what those acceptable forms of leadership are. And I think it’s really important, like, as librarians, as libraries that represent diverse communities, you don’t have to perform masculinity or dominance or rudeness or aggression to be a great leader. You can do it in a very different way, and that’s why it is a little candy coated.
You know, one of my dear friends and constant colleagues in the profession once described me as “Tinkerbell as played by Gilbert Gottfried.” Right, like, that is me. And it’s important, I think, for everyone to see different authentic styles of leadership. And so that was also what motivated me in this time, in this moment.
I also think it’s important to have a leader who’s not from one of the big library cities, if possible. Like, I think that it’s important to have geographic distributions of leadership in the association that allow us to see the full breadth of what we do. So I think being in New Orleans and being, which is again, in addition to everything else, just a terrific city for cultural memory work and an amazing place for libraries, like such strong connections and community down here. I wanted to bring that into the conversation as well. So those are my general reasons. And thank you for asking the question.
Steve Thomas: And I wonder, you know, that I get the “Tinkerbell portrayed by Gilbert Gottfried” thing, and I think that’s good except I almost feel like because there is like you’ve got that that’s like the outer layer, but I mean like you’re tackling serious things and you can be obviously a serious person. It’s just the way you convey it is in this other way. It’s a delivery method, I think.
Lindsay Cronk: You’re absolutely right. And sometimes I call it the glitter in the eye before I throw it in the elbow, right? We’ve got to articulate our message in a way that lands with people, and there is a whole lot of noise right now, that looks like everyone trying to perform a very specific style of seriousness, to your point, Steve. We are not going to get our message out better by doing that, is part of my central argument.
And again I would love debate around that. Because I think that as a association and as a profession, part of what we grapple with, is we are not in agreement with each other. We are not, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need a strong voice to advance the foundational mission of libraries, I have chosen to focus in on wage equity because to me it’s the floor. It’s the foundation of everything we do, and I can see and I know from years of volunteer work and activism how broken it is. And so that is the heart of my campaign, and it’s a very tough one, because I’m asking administrators to have brave conversations. I’m asking allies to step up and help us get what we need, not just say “I love libraries,” but say “You’ve got to fund libraries,” right, like, and you’ve got to fund libraries, even when that’s a decision to fund the police less. Like, every time we’re asking for something, it is an opportunity cost for something else, and that is where libraries have traditionally lost.
Like, let’s just be open. Let’s just be honest. We have lost in those conversations partially because we’re too nice and we’re too humble about it, but there’s a really amazing recent study that is out between Penn University and the New York Public Library, and this is all about how there is codifiable evidence of how a library system uplifts a community. Now, that is an extremely well resourced public library system, though it has its own struggles with wage equity that I’m going to call out to and that is a very well resourced private university. But what have they given us, Steve? They’ve given us a template, right? And ALA could help people run that template, use that toolkit, to tell their story to candy coat the vegetables but also get people to eat them. So thank you for that.
Steve Thomas: So I think we’ve touched on this a little bit, but in your current role as a leader, what are some things that you do to lift up and help your staff grow? Because that’s sort of a key part of what the ALA president is being an inspirational figure, so how do you do that in your current role and how would you bring that to the ALA?
Lindsay Cronk: It’s interesting. Years and years ago you know, I said to a dear friend of mine, like, I want to be a university librarian, and I’m going to share with you all that I actually had for a period of time, two or three years ago, I had a real personal sort of crisis around this, like, did I actually want to be a dean of libraries? You know, I have a lot of really amazing mentors in my life, and I was seeing the walls they were hitting around some of this, and I was wondering, what’s going to make it different? What’s going to make it different if I do the job as opposed to all these talented people?
And so I thought about leaving the field. I thought about alternative career paths. I did. And I think that being open about all of that is really important. And PeMento brought me back into the fold. It gave me something back and it reminded me of the power to transform things.
So I became a much more candid and open leader following those experiences. And so when I was recruited for my current position, Dean of Libraries at Tulane University, I had the hard questions in my hands from day one, and I was just really open with my provost about what I saw within the Association of Research Library Data. What I saw after doing just the tiniest bit of sleuthing, which all of us in libraries excel at, which was huge pay equity issues. And I just said, you know, this is going to be my priority. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, but you’ve got to empower me within my budget to address this, to get the floor up for my people, right? And also to get them the professional development funds, to your other point, Steve, right?
Like, you can’t expect a organization to perform when you’re not resourcing an organization. And that falls out, right, across libraries, across everywhere. Like, that is all of our story. So again, I am lucky in that my boss listened to me, and it gave him the opportunity too, if he needed to tell me to eat my hat, If he didn’t want me for this job, he could have said that, right? So again, it’s just the honest conversation from day one empowered both of us to be really clear with each other. And I was just like, I can’t accept this position if I don’t have a guarantee that I can be creative with my budget. Like, I’m not going to ask you for everything, but you’ve got to give me more latitude than it seems like there has been historically. And he got on board and from there I was able to get a 30% influx of funding to my salaries budget. How did I do that? I did that by robbing other areas of my budget. That’s how you get it done.
You prioritize people because you recognize that they are the single most important aspect of the work, but like that took some finagling, that took some work, and it’s still an ARL budget. So again, there’s still so much privilege in that, but we do need to have more leaders having those strong conversations from day one. And I don’t think we’re actually equipping people to do it.
I do think that part of the challenge is our leadership pipeline. We get a lot of really well intentioned people who are then not equipped in those rooms to say those things. But I am an example of how it pays off and how it works. And, from an ALA standpoint, this is the last thing I’m going to say, the other big thing I did was I funded $400 worth of memberships for every person in my organization. I don’t care where you spend that money, but part of what we run into is even when there is a PD budget, sometimes it’s not for memberships. How much can we skirt and push that? In some places the answer is not at all. But in other places, if you’re just not having the conversation because you’re not prioritizing it, I think that actually it should be the priority, and that’s part of the message I want to deliver.
Steve Thomas: And I think the ultimate outcome of what you’re doing is you’re empowering your people, you’re giving them the resources they need so that they will be able to do better work and then better in the future, you know, tell your bosses to close their ears right now, you can ask them for money later cause you can say, look at this great work that we’re doing. And then the whole thing, yeah, it’s a cycle, but you have to start at the right spot. And you’ve identified that as wages and supporting your staff, and then that money that you robbed from other places, you can get back later from somewhere else.
Lindsay Cronk: 1,000% Steve, I will bet on me and my people every time. And that’s the confidence that people need to have. I haven’t necessarily seen it in a lot of the ways that we manage our communications. There’s just a lot of fear based responses that are about like, how do we hide what we’re doing? Like, and I’m with you. My favorite mental metaphor for the work that we do sometimes around projects is a heist movie, and I love the notion of getting the right team together to take on a task, specialists, and then you finish it and you’ve really pulled it off, right? Like I have that mischief in my heart too. I think it’s one of the most wonderful things in librarianship.
On the other hand, we have not been being as forceful as we can, we have not been owning the power we do have, and that doesn’t mean performing toxic masculinity, or performing dominance, but it does mean your authority is there, you have to reach for it and I don’t necessarily see that happening. And again, the precarity of when your wages are so low reinforces all of that, right? So how do we get our profession braver, stronger, healthier is the question in terms of ALA.
Steve Thomas: Well, and the difference, you know, the toxic masculinity part of that is like, I learned too late in my life probably, but more than a decade ago that assertiveness and aggressiveness are not the same thing. Like you can be assertive without being aggressive, but you do need to be assertive. You need to assert that authority that you have, and that doesn’t mean that you’re angry and pushy and rude and whatever, but you have self confidence. I mean, it’s almost like the library profession, the people that we attract are mostly introverts and who are wanting to defer to other people and be kind, and those are all great qualities, but it’s like, it’s not going to get you what you want from a tough system.
Lindsay Cronk: Exactly. We need a negotiator, right? We need someone who can be assertive while still modeling our values. And that can feel trickier than it is, right? Like, if you can have the clarity around it, and I think, like, Steve, you’re a leader I would point to as someone who does, right? Like, you’re a model for our profession, and we just need to figure out how to get others to feel a little bit more comfortable being assertive, but I would say one of the things that I think that people should vote on and hire for is assertiveness, in this case, right?
Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I should say, I am very much a natural super introvert, so it is possible to overcome somewhat of that and just push through it and then I just need my time alone after that to re-energize.
Lindsay Cronk: I mean, like, we all need more time alone One of the things I talk about with libraries all the time, it’s interesting, sometimes we go too far the opposite direction. People are like, ” Everything’s a rumble room in which we’re collaborating, 20 whiteboards!” And that’s really good, like I want that on at least one floor, right? But I also think that one of the real competitive advantages that libraries have just broadly in our era is, that’s a nice quiet space where I can think about things for a minute, there is so much noise, there are so many notifications going off. Libraries are the free space that is available to you where you can count on having space and energy for reflection, and our whole society needs to be a lot more reflective.
Some of my best and most beloved collaborators are big introverts, and I need them in my life, and I want to figure out how we get really amazing, because Steve, you run a podcast, like, you talk semi professionally, like, we can get people to feel good, because I also don’t want it to feel like drudgery, like sometimes you feel bad, like you’re pulling someone’s teeth. I don’t want that to be the experience, we should all be enjoying this together, but if our profession attracts these very thoughtful people, how do we make it so that they’re truly successful, so that they’re upheld, so they can find their path to an authentic leadership, because we need more of that, we don’t need more of people coming in and telling us about ourselves.
Steve Thomas: It’s funny, I was thinking as you were talking about that, I think academic libraries get this and public libraries get this and I’m sure all libraries get this. People really want that quiet space of the library, but they also want the collaborative space in the library. So it’s like we need the quiet study rooms and we need the collaborative rooms because people want both of that in the libraries but we can provide both of those.
Lindsay Cronk: Exactly.
Steve Thomas: So obviously, libraries are facing lots of tough challenges now. I mean, book challenges, equity, diversity, inclusion under attack. We can go into a lot of them, but what do you think are some of the top threats that our libraries are facing now and how do you feel like ALA can be addressing those?
Lindsay Cronk: Yeah, so it’s interesting. So I think the top threats in the profession just to name them, number one is attrition, and then on the other side of that is the pipeline that we can’t build because we don’t have the wage equity in place. You know, I was just on a call with ODLOS, the Office of Diversity at ALA, and we were talking about this, like, we’re 30 years into Spectrum now and we still haven’t really moved the needle as much as we would like. And it’s because of dollars and cents, Steve. I’m just gonna say it. You can’t ask a person to get a master’s degree and, and then do this.
Like, I’ve been very open about this, I love my alma mater, Valdosta State University. I picked it because it was affordable, because I was in the midst of the financial crisis but the competitive quality of the field, because we have many people who wish to enter the field, one, plus the cost of entry is replicating whiteness, is replicating homogeneity, and the only way to get past and through that is to have the whole enterprise be better paid. Like, it’s the only way we get it done. So you have to center that in all of the work in messaging.
And I think, again, we are in a better position now to have some of those conversations than we were, I think, in some ways, when I entered the field. The conditions have changed. And I think if we can start with the external threats that are real. You know, like book bans are absolutely real, they’re happening all the time. But to the point you and I were talking about earlier, they’re also fundamentally ridiculous, and part of what we need to be doing is owning our own authority and expertise in those conversations at the national level, to not just say book bans are real, but also they’re a hugely unpopular position. 85 percent of Americans love libraries, and we will get them as allies on our behalf, right? But that’s a fringe position to take, a real fringe position that deserves to be dismissed, I would argue, as a fringe position.
Those two things, like how we present ourselves and what we receive in return, I view as the sort of intertwined problem at the heart of everything. And the attrition we see in ALA, the dips in membership numbers, it’s just a reflection of that broader reality, which reminds us that to take on the problems, we have to think of the association as a proxy for the profession. What is wrong with the association is what is wrong with us. So that’s part of the reason I’m really committed to co-creative problem solving around this. This is not gonna be just me and all my fun ideas and cool analogies and movie references running anything. ALA’s a giant team. And I would like to sort of think of it in those terms.
Your president-elect year is all about appointments. So I’ve got lists running of people that I think would be great in those roles. And I’m working with a team of seven folks who advise me to look at all of those. But broader input means broader engagement. Broader engagement means more heft to the work ALA does. More heft to the work ALA does means that we will have those outcomes for library workers. I wrote an article for Katina magazine called “Why the American Library Association Still Matters” partially because I think a big part of the job of whoever is the successful presidential choice, is to bring the people who just got out on ALA back into the fold and remind them that the only way we get to the ALA we all want is through their active engagement.
Steve Thomas: So what do you think are some steps that ALA can make and that you could promote if you’re the successful candidate to make ALA more engaging and accessible?
Lindsay Cronk: Yeah, so again, from day one, and I do have the benefit of, because I was past president of CORE, I know the terrible appointments database about as well as anyone can. You’ve got to put the team in place, right, and you’ve got to check in with everybody. Through this campaign, I’m treating the campaign as a pre-process. So, I’m talking with as many committees as I can. I’ve sent messages to every state chapter, every student chapter. I am eager for people’s input around this, but it really has to be authentic.
I use LibLearnX as an example right now. LibLearnX was a great idea, but people didn’t see themselves in it. And the analogy I use for this one oftentimes, Steve, is cake. Because I think people can talk about cake. They can talk about their very strong opinions about cake in a way that they can’t talk about their strong opinions about what the association needs to do or not do. But if you bring me a carrot cake, if you bring me the most delicious, moist, spicy, I don’t know what people who like carrot cake like about it ,cream cheesy frosting, you bring that to me, I hate it. Objectively, I can understand that you spent a lot of time on that cake. So here’s what I’m gonna do, because I, again, I think this is, this is edifying. I’m going to take a little sliver of your cake, because I’m polite, and I’m going to eat it a little, and I’m going to tell you, “Oh, this is a great carrot cake!”
And I’m not going to engage past that so, LibLearnX was like a carrot cake and a lot of what the association does, I would argue, is people making a cake that is beautiful. It’s well constructed but it’s leaving people out of the process of making the cake, even though that messier cake would actually lead to the engagement we need.
Steve Thomas: They forgot to ask what kind of cake people like?
Lindsay Cronk: What kind of cake do you like? How would you like that cake delivered? You know, when we’re talking about sustainability, like, what is the point of an in-person conference? And I think that there is a point for an in-person conference, but you got to tell me, why this is in person now, in a post-Zoom era, like, why am I traveling and spending student money on that? We’re all there, but not there yet, and the issue has been that it is very hard to convene that conversation, but I do think that that is the other part of what I would attempt to do and what my past leadership experience speaks to.
As president of CORE, I sent a message to the membership every Friday, and I would commit to that in this role, too. I want to hear from people, and I can, but we have to have some of those more informal channels, too, because I will say one of the consistent things I’ve noticed is our super volunteers at ALA are overtapped. They are represented on multiple committees. They are doing too much. And then we have a whole portion of the association that feels left behind. And then we have people that just do not have the time. They need something quick and easy. They need like a survey. One of those sad face, happy face, bathroom things that they can click about the association, and I can say it’s going to be a lot more unhappy faces than your friend would like, but there are many ways to solve the engagement challenge.
I do think you’ve got to have a person who’s genuinely committed to engagement and you’ve got to commit to that culture. So that’s where, again, the appointments are super vital. In terms of early steps around this too one of the most powerful things that the President has is the column in American Libraries, right? So I would commit to a communication schedule in advance that would focus in on topics of wage equity. I’d also commit to visiting places that are not well-resourced enough and telling those stories really clearly swinging the elbow where I can. I really, I’d want to make this our dollars and cents year, right?
We have such strong allies in United for Libraries. I was just talking with them. I think that if we equip our allies to say some of this stuff for us, that is the best way for us to do this. Amanda Jones, who’s absolutely amazing, who’s in my state, who is one of the people who is fighting for bands. She’s featured in the amazing movie, The Librarians. What she has done that is a model and a template for everybody is she has built a friends group that understands, right? That’s the other place where ALA can help. ALA can help you have that toolkit and then we can help make those connections and then we can help leverage all of that. That’s how I approach the problem, Steve.
Steve Thomas: So I have like three other big topics we could get into. So I’m going to give you a choice of which one you want to talk about more.
Lindsay Cronk: I can lightning round them if you want. We can try to do ten second answers.
Steve Thomas: Okay, because we have like D. E. I., digital divide, A. I. Is there anyone in particular that you would want to hit more?
Lindsay Cronk: Let’s do them all. So like, like D. E. I. It’s so central to everything we do anyway. Like where we have again failed in my assessment is actually diversifying the profession. The only way we get to that is through the question of wage equity. I think scholarships are nice and we’ve done a lot of them, right? But it’s not keeping people in the field. We need to have particularly leaders of organizations commit to designing long term positions that really build that pipeline out. And with that pipeline, you’ve got to be thinking about are we actually creating realistic expectations for people who are entering the field?
I do think there’s a huge upside to my extremely practical library and information science degree is that it was very like nuts and bolts, right? Like if you go to an iSchool and then you go to work in a rural library, that is going to be a little bit of a hard entry, right? So I think that having those conversations around what is a well filled like education that speaks to the reality of what libraries across the country are facing is also a role for ALA particularly as an accrediting body and all of that feeds into the DEI thing.
Then your second one was the digital divide. I am passionate about this. I grew up in Indiana. Like, the library was the first place I could use the internet. It was a big deal. I was a queer Wicca curious child, right, and like the library let me do that. So it’s just I don’t think that this country has understood digital infrastructure for a really long time. So in a broad way, the thing I’m going to say is it’s about to get worse. I think that what we’re doing around broadband advocacy, around hotspot advocacy is great. I wrote about E-Rate a few years ago. I think it’s not widely understood, but I also think that that will probably trail through budgets. I was confident about E-Rate, I’m not confident about the expansions that we’ve had.
The conversation that needs to be convened, right, is around, can ALA, as an advocate, sign on with other bodies, right, and help the United States come to terms with the fact that theoretically I think the internet should be a public utility. That is such a big idea. That’s how I would think about confronting it though.
And then your last one was AI…
Steve Thomas: And mostly thinking of it of, what’s your approach to it, and then how do you keep the human touch? Because I mean, I don’t think saying, “Oh, well, let’s just completely ignore it and then hope it goes away, like, it’s not going to….”
Lindsay Cronk: I’m putting my hands on my ears just because I know this is a podcast, people will not see it, but “going la la la la” is not a strategy and we cannot do it. Make friends with someone who does AI. Like, I really think it’s another cake we try to bake all the time is if we can just be experts in AI, then we can speak to the ethics of AI. And then we can control the roll out of it. No! Horse out the barn, horse is in the hospital, like horses running all over everything.
So with artificial intelligence, find someone, and I have one. Her name is Beth Rudden. She is one of my endorsements. She is one of very few women who are working as entrepreneurs in AI as a field. And what she taught me is, the approach that we’re taking in the country broadly is extremely myopic, right? It’s all large data sets. And what do we know about large data sets as, as former IT people? Garbage in, garbage out. I don’t want the internet to be replicated for me in my Word document. Please leave it alone. She’s all about small data sets. And I think if we and libraries have those, if we could get to the level of technical expertise, we could build open source pieces that could be reused. I think that that is one piece of what we can do to demonstrate that the current model we’re seeing, and again, the way AI gets talked about, I also find bothersome because it is a whole slew of technologies. And I do think, like, theoretically, what we need is a strategy around machine learning, a strategy around automation.
So, that’s how I’d piece it apart and start to talk about it. But what we need to do is actually elevate voices and use our publishing and use our conference as a platform that are counter to the commonly held view that to do AI, you have to have a giant, 12 giant power plants. You don’t .
Steve Thomas: You know, I lumped it all together as AI, because that’s how people talk about it, but I agree with you. They’re actually different things. And when you click the little button on your photos on your phone that says, you know, fix this and it just, automatically fixes it. That was AI. That’s been around for years. Spell check is AI. If you’re thinking of it in terms of that, I mean, you’ve been using AI for a very long time.
Lindsay Cronk: Do you remember Clippy?
Steve Thomas: Yeah. Clippy was AI.
Lindsay Cronk: Clippy was AI, dude. Like it’s just, it’s been here. I would say, yeah, like I’m waiting for it all to shake out. I’m curious about what’s happening in terms of the resources themselves, in terms of where we’re seeing AI enter into library resources, AI e-books are just a big problem right now, and with the recent news from Clarivate, we’re going to have that on our hands as well, but I would say that is more about us leaning into our curatorial expertise and explaining that because our, our power users are going to see this garbage, and we need to weaponize their voices on our behalf.
Again, what are libraries about at the end of the day? Rules and standards for information that make it more accessible and findable. This is a lawless moment, and that is part of the reason I think we all feel so fundamentally unmoored. But I do think the other thing to keep in mind is that people like rules. There’s a reason we create social norms. I’ve been rereading Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, recently because like it’s all about notionally we all create community together and all the norms and laws we agree to really has more to do with how we enforce them with each other than it does with like law enforcement, so I do encourage everyone to think about what is your power in your context and when you have the spoons which you know is not every day, throw that elbow because it’s gonna help that person on the other side too. They just need to hear it from someone.
Steve Thomas: Yeah and we don’t need to get into a capitalism thing, but obviously a lot of the push for AI is venture capitalists trying to get their money back too. So it’s not as transformative as they say it is. It’s just, they have to say it is because they want their money…
Lindsay Cronk: They’re selling it to shareholders. They’re selling the notion of AI. And the issue becomes when then that is going to be within our research, learning, reading workflows, and again, that’s when it becomes like the very big possible garbage in, garbage out feedback loop that we all have to need collectively to cry foul and ALA is going to be prepared for that.
Steve Thomas: So before we wrap up, who are some people in the profession who inspire you?
Lindsay Cronk: Again, like there are so many cool people who are doing so much great work. So I will say Evviva Weinraub at Buffalo is a person who I look to all the time because I think she’s got her finger on the global library pulse and the global open source work that is taking place to advance research just better than most. Obviously, ahead of accepting this, I reached out to Emily Drabinski and I reached out to Courtney Young, two friends who are also past ALA presidents and whose work I admire and I look to Jamia Williams, who’s doing amazing work in terms of health information and is helping me on my campaign.
And then I would say, like, the two that I want to call out, and I’m going to send some links to, obviously, Kaetrena Davis Kendrick because I think her work on incremental hope right now is so important. We can’t lose sight and become hopeless. The allure of cynicism has never been higher, and I really appreciate the way Kaetrena talks about it and does it. And then the other person is Kate Woodson, and she is not from libraries at all. She is from journalism and highly recommend her work. She does sometimes podcasts, sometimes posts on Substack, Invisible Threads, because what she’s confronting is our nation’s mental health crisis, and the way that that is also at work in all of this, it’s made me much more effective as a communicator.
You may know, after January the 6th, the attacks, I went on a bit of a tear in terms of getting a resolution through ALA that condemned fascism and racism is antithetical to librarianship. On that same day, Kate Woodson was in the Capitol as a reporter and was cornered by a ring of angry people. And so her work working through her own trauma and working through how do you communicate with people even when you don’t just disagree with them, they have harmed you, I think is vital, and so she’s the person whose work I am reflecting on the most right now.
Steve Thomas: Well, thank you for the great conversation. If people want to learn even more about you and your campaign, where do they go to find out more about that?
Lindsay Cronk: So they go to cronkthevote.com. I couldn’t resist Steve, but if your last name is like a German expletive or onomatopoeia, you gotta work it for all that it’s worth. And on there you’ll find my endorsements, my platform, my background, and my playlist. So you can jam all the way to the polls. Thanks.
Steve Thomas: All right. Well thank you again, Lindsay, so much for coming on. And good luck in the election.
Lindsay Cronk: Sounds great, Steve. You keep up the great work. This podcast is a gift to the profession.
Steve Thomas: Thank you.
*****
Steve Thomas: Maria, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being on today.
Maria McCauley: Thank you so much, Steve. It’s such an honor to be here.
Steve Thomas: So how did you first get interested in working in the library profession as a whole?
Maria McCauley: Yeah, thanks. I was always a library kid, and I remember getting my first library card. It was a really important moment for me. It was my first official action, and that card enabled me, right? It gave me privileges to check out dozens of books. I remember at that time there were story play kits. So there was a story and then there was like a plastic sleeve of toys that went along with that. I thought that was so neat. I could check out a fishing pole and even a camcorder eventually through my home library, which was the Simsbury Public Library in Connecticut. And it was so empowering and freeing. I was able to let my imagination run wild through that library card.
My very first jobs in libraries, my first job was at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown as an assistant and at the Cambridge Public Library, helping in circulation and in reference services. And those jobs were instrumental in giving me insight in how library staff and libraries were profoundly helping their diverse patron base to learn and to grow. And I was hooked. I was hooked on libraries! And I realized that by working in libraries that I could pass on that thrill to others that I felt when I got my very first library card.
Steve Thomas: That’s great. Cause it’s like, it’s not just a service profession. That’s part of it. But it’s that joy that you get too, it’s not just helping people. It’s the joy you get from helping people.
Maria McCauley: That’s absolutely it. It is a joyful profession.
Steve Thomas: What inspired you to want to run for ALA president and what unique perspective would you bring to the role?
Maria McCauley: I think I’m going to answer this question, start off with why libraries inspired me, and then go into why I was compelled to run for ALA president.
So why libraries? Libraries opened up the world to me, as I mentioned before. I was born in South Korea and adopted and raised in Connecticut. I didn’t give much thought to my birth family or my birth mother until I participated in a book discussion group at my local library where we read I Wish For You a Beautiful Life, which is a book that is filled with letters from Korean birth mothers to the children that they’d given up. And I think, you know, it was heartbreaking for me in some ways and heart wrenching, and it made me see my birth mother in all of her humanity. And for the very first time, I was curious and longing to know more about her and about Korea. Similarly, I think that libraries open up worlds to so many patrons every day.
And why the ALA president? I’m inspired to run for ALA president because ALA has been such an important part of my career since I went to grad school at the University of Pittsburgh as a Spectrum Scholar, and I want to give back. I’ve been able to grow over my 25 years as an ALA member, a two term counselor, executive board member, I was on the Finance and Audit Committee, I’m a current Committee on Legislation member, and I was past president of the Public Library Association. ALA has been an important professional resource for me and so many people. And I think what distinguishes me is my leadership experience within both ALA and directing libraries for over 13 years. It is a critical time for libraries and all the experience that I have mentioned has given me the tools to be an effective president, especially in the times we are living in.
Steve Thomas: And your story, your personal story illustrates the power of libraries. It changed your life just being in that one book club there.
Maria McCauley: Changed my life. And since then, I went to Korea and actually my very first time going to Korea, I went to a libraries conference, an IFLA conference.
Steve Thomas: In your current role, how have you helped your staff grow and succeed? And how would you use those kind of skills to lead ALA?
Maria McCauley: I believe in inclusive leadership practices and so I think that it’s really important to make sure that people are given regular feedback, that people are given honest feedback so that they can grow and to learn, and I’ve brought those inclusive practices to the Public Library Association. For example, I made sure that we always talked about equity and inclusion and inclusionary meeting practices and when I chaired the nominations committee for PLA, I made sure that we set as part of the vision to have a real diverse slate of candidates, and that included to make sure that we had rural and small library representation as well, so I would bring that inclusionary mindset and leadership practice to ALA.
Steve Thomas: And as we know, unfortunately, equity, diversity and inclusion, they’re under attack throughout the country now as a misunderstood topic. But what are some steps that ALA can take to make some progress in that area to keep that important practice going?
Maria McCauley: We should definitely continue the Spectrum Scholars Program and other programs like travel scholarships, support for the Merritt Fund, support for small and rural libraries, support for community colleges, the Rainbow Roundtable, and make sure we are hiring diverse vendors and presenters. And to continue our commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and that might include seeking alternative and additional funding, if needed. I think it’s imperative to show ongoing support for intersectional and diverse library workers.
Steve Thomas: What would you say is your overall vision for the future of librarianship, and then how can ALA help push toward that future?
Maria McCauley: I want to help people to learn, to thrive, and to live their best lives through the provision of excellent library services by expert library workers. And ALA is an organization that helps libraries to excel and for library workers to develop their skills and their knowledge base and ALA demonstrates the importance of libraries in our everyday lives, and I want to be able to give voice to that and to talk about that as part of my platform.
Steve Thomas: You mentioned a few of your experiences within ALA already, but are there any other rewarding experiences that you’ve contributed as part of president of PLA or anything else ?
Maria McCauley: Yeah, I think it’s the people. So for me, the most rewarding aspect of being involved with ALA is getting to know all the people nationally and internationally and incredible volunteers. And this does include people from PLA, Spectrum, ACRL, CORE, so many groups, committees, roundtables, and I think when I think about an early memorable experience, it was the Spectrum Institute and at that Institute, I was in the second cohort of Spectrum Scholars. We were welcomed by library luminaries, including Carla Hayden, Camila Alire, Carol Brey, Sarah Long, Betty Turock, Loriene Roy, Sandra Rios Balderrama, Gwendolyn Prellwitz, so many people who believed in us and planted the seed that we would be successful in our careers and that we would also eventually give back and I’ve been able to maintain friendships with Spectrum Scholars over the years, and they have been a great source of strength and care for me. I’ve also found great meaning in mentoring others and giving back to other Spectrum Scholars and students and colleagues in diversity programs.
Steve Thomas: That’s great that your fellow Spectrum Scholars, y’all became a cohort and can kind of follow each other through your careers.
Maria McCauley: It really is so meaningful. When I entered libraries and academic libraries in New England, they just weren’t that diverse at that time. And so I often didn’t see people who looked like me in New England academic libraries, so going to conference was a place where I could see a more diverse group of colleagues and friends.
Steve Thomas: Well, especially working at a public library, you know that book challenges and censorship attempts are on the rise nationwide. What’s your approach to defending intellectual freedom and protecting access to diverse materials?
Maria McCauley: I think it’s really important to talk about how literature helps people to see themselves and to imagine possibilities and to see other people. A diversity of literature helps us to strengthen our compassion and our humanity for each other. And we always need more of this. I also think it’s important to emphasize that individuals should be able to choose for themselves what they want to read rather than other people making decisions for them.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I usually find if you even explain that to, not the ones who are part of this sort of political push to do banning, but individuals who are just who feel concerned about items, when you explain that to them, a lot of times that diffuses it and they just kind of understand. But, you know, we’re also unfortunately dealing with a organized effort as well.
Maria McCauley: Yeah, I agree. I think it is really important. People enjoy their individual freedoms and I want to make sure that we are supporting individuals’ right to choose what they want to read. I think that resonates with many, many people.
Steve Thomas: Right. You can choose the books that your children read without excluding other books from other children reading them.
Maria McCauley: That’s right. That’s right.
Steve Thomas: So the digital divide is still a major issue for many communities. What can ALA do to help libraries bridge that gap and ensure access to technology for everyone?
Maria McCauley: Yeah, it is. The digital divide is a major issue for people and it determines access to technology and opportunities for learning and life success. I think that ALA should continue to make grants for digital equity and inclusion through both ALA and divisions and provide continuing education to build technology skills.
I also think that ALA should lean into its efforts to help libraries to bridge this gap. ALA can do so by continuing to highlight this issue and to advocate for adequate funding, including both government and private funding, to bridge this gap.
Steve Thomas: And speaking of technology, AI is obviously the hot thing now, and it’s changing the way that we and our patrons interact with information. We hear a lot about the negatives of it, but how do you see it enhancing library services, while also keeping the focus on people rather than just getting immersed in the hot new technology?
Maria McCauley: Yeah, that’s a great question. Students and many patrons are using AI, right? And we can help patrons to learn how to smartly use AI and be clear about pluses and drawbacks, including ethical and environmental implications. At the Cambridge Public Library, we hosted Ruha Benjamin, a sociologist at Princeton who studies the intersection of race, justice, and technology, and Benjamin received a 2024 MacArthur grant for her work on illuminating how technology reflects and reproduces social inequality. So she spoke about the algorithm bias and how many of these systems embody the bias of the people who create them. And I think it’s important for us to think about how libraries may use AI to enhance the delivery of library services and to instruct patrons on how to effectively use AI and to explore the ethical and environmental aspects of AI.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, AI, I think, struck me recently, the AI kind of reminds me of like Wikipedia back in the day where we were all kind of like, “No, no, no!”, trying to trying to do a complete zero tolerance, never look at Wikipedia ever in your life. And it’s like, well, but it’s out there, and you just have to deal with it but you have to know how to use it. Like, again, you don’t just trust what it says automatically, because you can edit it and things like that. The same with AI, we can’t just throw it all in and just say, well, let’s just make replace librarians with AI. Like, we’re not gonna do that. It’s a tool that can be used poorly or well.
Maria McCauley: That’s right. And it is widely being used and will continue to be used. So we need to be well informed and help people to use it.
Steve Thomas: Like you said, with the ethics, especially with students and making sure they understand not to use it to plagiarize.
Maria McCauley: That’s right. Yeah, good example.
Steve Thomas: So how would you work to make ALA membership more engaging and accessible?
Maria McCauley: I would highlight the many benefits that membership brings: a professional national and international community with which to learn, to exchange ideas, a place to identify and advocate for library priorities, and it’s an opportunity to grow in the profession.
One of my presidential platforms is to create a peer program where any member can be matched up with any other member to go through some kind of a peer journey together, and this might include virtual networking, so sometimes meeting up with various groups within ALA and affiliates, and then it also might include a meeting in person if the peers are planning on attending a conference.
I also want to make sure that we’re tapping into the wisdom of ALA leaders. There are so many people who have been member leaders over the years, and I think this might be a really wonderful opportunity to tap into their experience and wisdom.
Steve Thomas: Who are some of the people that inspire you in this profession? You mentioned Carla Hayden and a couple other people from the Spectrum Scholarship before, but who else inspires you?
Maria McCauley: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people who inspire me. When I think about the whole 25 years, I would say that Dr. E. J. Josey was one of the first persons I met when I went to the University of Pittsburgh, and at the time, he was Professor Emeritus and I think we are all aware that he opened up ALA, demanded that Black librarians be invited, and founded the Black Caucus American Library Association. Ken Yamashita , who is one of the founders of the Asian Pacific American Libraries Association, and he wrote a history on APALA and the founding of APALA. Betty Turock, and Elizabeth Martinez, who founded Spectrum. Carla Hayden, our Librarian of Congress, and Sandra Rios Balderrama are all people who inspired me throughout my career. I’m also inspired by library students and workers who deliver library services every day.
Steve Thomas: For anyone listening who wants to learn more about you or your campaign, where can they go to find more?
Maria McCauley: MariaForLibraries.com.
Steve Thomas: Great. Thanks so much, Maria.
Maria McCauley: Thanks.
Circulating Ideas 