Teacher’s College Press approached me about the possibilty of co-publishing Partners in Literacy. A partnership with the American Library Association was a sensible idea for a publisher for the education market addressing, as the subtitle states, schools and libraries building communities. In evaluating the possibility, I first looked at the quality of the press and then author credentials. Impressive. Publishing for more than a century, Teachers College Press is affiliated with Columbia University and its leading graduate school of education. The authorship is a compelling father-daughter partnership. They write in the acknowledgments, referencing their strong relationship and good communication, “It was a natural next step for us to dialogue about similar problems we were wrestling with in different, but closely related, community-based institutions, and roll up our sleeves to write about.” Sondra Cuban is a librarian with 14 years experience in public libraries of Hawaii. She holds a Ph.D. and focuses her research on adult literacy. She served 4 years as a research associate at Havard’s National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of Education at Stanford University, a historian by training, and former high school teacher.

As I read through manuscript I noticed a difference in perspective that was subtle, yet striking, ideas about the profession and its practices, expressed from the outside looking in. That’s what clinched it for me. We’re proud to bring you this co-publication with Teachers College Press.

While I note the new, I can’t resist a plug for the old. Natalie Ziarnik’s School and Public Libraries is a beautifully written book. I farmed her manuscript out to a freelance editor who liked it so much she wanted to buy a copy for a teacher relative of hers.

The next installment in the popular PLA Results Series is on its way through the production pipeline! This time experts Jeanne Goodrich and Paula Singer tackle HR in Human Resources for Results: The Right Person for the Right Job. The authors lay the groundwork with a macro view of how the library’s investment in its employees translates into the library’s larger purpose: providing services the library’s customers need and deserve. The following chapters offer a menu of projects to be sampled or consumed entirely, soup to nuts, as your library’s needs warrant. Topics include

• conducting gap analyses
• writing effective job descriptions
• recruiting, testing, screening, and selecting new employees
• developing and implementing a performance management system
• retaining a high-performing workforce

The book is filled with practical strategies for (what else?) getting results, including these Interviewing Dos and Don’ts:

• Prepare. Learn as much as you can about the job; read any materials (such as candidate applications and resumes) you’re given ahead of time.
• Establish rapport with the candidates. Be open and friendly and help them get through their initial nervousness.
• Ask the same questions of each candidate. You want to find out the same sorts of things. Using a structured set of questions and consistent types of follow up questions will insure that you do.
• Listen carefully to what they have to say. Ask follow up questions but fight the urge to talk extensively yourself.
• Watch for nonverbal cues or responses that might signal evasiveness.
• Take notes. If there are more than a few candidates, the interviews can easily run together. You want to be sure your impressions are based on information you’ve gleaned on past performance, not on your superficial impressions.
• Avoid stereotyping or jumping to conclusions. Base your impressions on what you hear and what the candidate can tell you about what she has done in past positions.
• Don’t make snap judgments. Adler believes that more hiring mistakes are made in the first thirty minutes of an interview than at any other time. Why? If our initial impression is favorable, we’ll begin selling the job, magnifying the positives we hear and minimizing any negatives that come up. Conversely, if our initial impression is negative, we dismiss the candidate before we’ve even heard much about his accomplishments in other jobs.
• Be wary of the halo/horn effect. This refers to our being influenced by the last positive or negative thing we heard or, in the case of a current employee, job activity. All information should be taken as a whole, with no one piece carrying a disproportionate weight.
• Avoid contrasting the candidate in front of you with ones you have seen previously. Take in information on each candidate and then make comparisons at the end of the interview day, after you’ve seen and heard them all.
• Avoid telegraphing answers to candidates, verbally or through your own body language. Be friendly and open but don’t coach or lead the interviewee.
• Tell the candidates what will happen next and within what timeframe. If it takes several days to conduct interviews or process results, they need to know.
• Be sure that there is follow up. Candidates deserve the courtesy of knowing where they are in the process. If they are ranked, eliminated, or selected to move to a next step, they need to know as soon as possible.