Effective leadership is built on empathy, compassion, and intuition, fostering trust, collaboration, and innovation within teams. Empathy allows leaders to actively listen, understand different perspectives, and create a supportive environment where employees feel valued. When employees feel heard, morale and engagement improve, leading to higher productivity. Compassion goes beyond understanding—it involves taking meaningful action to support team members in overcoming challenges. A compassionate leader provides encouragement, resources, and guidance, strengthening relationships and building loyalty. Intuition helps leaders make quick, informed decisions by balancing experience, data, and instinct. While logical analysis is important, intuition allows leaders to navigate uncertainty with confidence. Trusted leaders know when to rely on their intuition and when to seek additional information. By the end of this session, attendees will: Understand the role of empathy, compassion, and intuition in a leadership capacity Gain strategies for integrating these qualities to inspire their teams and drive meaningful success Learn ways to create a positive work culture where individuals and organizations thrive About our presenters: Sharon Palmer is a Regional Director at Brooklyn Public Library. In this role, she oversees ten neighborhood libraries and supervises over one hundred employees. Having worked at Brooklyn Public Library in various capacities, Sharon remains passionate about library services and is a strong advocate for collaboration and teamwork among staff. Additionally, she enjoys working with various community partners to positively impact communities. Sharon has been the recipient of three Bklyn Incubator awards that provides funding for staff to implement community-based projects: S.E.E (Shop, Eat and Exercise) Yourself Healthy, Cooking, Crocheting and Coping and Journey to Parenthood: How library staff can support pregnant people. Although Sharon’s primary roles focus on leadership, team building and project management, she enjoys planning and hosting innovative virtual programs for adults. Under Sharon’s leadership, staff at four libraries obtained the prestigious New York City Charles H. Revson monetary award for outstanding customer service. Additionally, Sharon previously presented on a variety of topics at the ALA,BCALA and NYLA conferences. Le'Andre Peoples is a dedicated professional with a wealth of experience in the field of library services. Starting as an Office Aide, Le’Andre's career journey has seen him excel as a Technology Resource Specialist, Circulation Manager, and presently as the Regional Assistant. In his current role at the Brooklyn Public Library, he assists the Regional Director and manages the Regional Office. Beyond his administrative duties, Le’Andre is committed to the professional development of the support staff and himself. His vision extends to expanding branch operations and, thanks to his extensive clerical, technological, and administrative expertise, he's a sought-after contributor to various committees and library initiatives. Taina K. Evans is a Regional Director at the Brooklyn Public Library who has been instrumental in transforming library services through innovative community-focused initiatives. Her groundbreaking "Our Streets, Our Stories" project launched in 2013, aims to collect and preserve oral histories from diverse Brooklyn neighborhoods, while her involvement in the "Branch Tap-Ins" program addresses staff resilience in the post-pandemic era. Evans has consistently demonstrated leadership in enhancing library engagement, supporting staff well-being, and amplifying marginalized community voices through her strategic and compassionate approach to librarianship. She is actively involved with the New York Library Association, currently serving as the President of the New York Black Librarian Caucus roundtable.

Social media can help you build professional and social community, find jobs, learn from others, share your work, ask questions, and hear about new ideas and projects. After the implosion of multiple other social platforms, the Bluesky platform has become one of the best options to keep accessing those benefits. This webinar will be aimed at GLAM folks considering trying out Bluesky, or who’ve dipped a toe in but not felt comfortable using it yet. During this session, participants will learn: A few simple steps to get started on Bluesky How to find and build community How to have a safe and lower-stress social media experience there And you won’t need to take notes, as there’s a detailed written guide for your reference after the talk! About our presenter: Dr. Amanda Wyatt Visconti (they/them) is Director of the Scholars’ Lab, a community research center for experimental and digital humanities learning at the University of Virginia Library in Charlottesville, VA. Their educational background is in libraries and literature; professionally, they’ve worked in academia, libraries and archives, tech, and the digital humanities community that spans all three. They’re a big fan of DIY (do-it-yourself) scholarly/learning communication, and in addition to being a frequent social media user (literaturegeek.bsky.social), they blog (LiteratureGeek.com), develop websites, do a variety of craft and makerspace work (e.g. https://amandavisconti.github.io/DHMakesMethodz), and author and catalogue zines (ZineBakery.com).

The METRO-ILL Spring 2025 meeting welcomes everyone interested in resource sharing and interlibrary loan topics. Bring any resource sharing topics/questions/ideas that you would like to discuss. Or, we may take on some topics such as learning/enhancing best practices when dealing with tough requests, resources for searching difficult to fill requests, tips/suggestions for system cleanups (maintenance), e-book chapter lending, etc.

With uncertainty swirling around our professional lives, we notice that we're feeling similarly to how we did in the spring of 2020. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, METRO staff gathered with library workers on virtual community chats to help support one another and process the situation. The current moment seems like a necessary time to revisit this communal space, so we'll be hosting a community chat in May to see what library workers across New York City and Westchester County are experiencing, and to consider how we might help one another through it. Please join METRO's Mary Bakija and Becca Quon for an open community discussion with the following agenda: Welcome and introductions Poll: What is the top concern for you / library workers at your institution right now? Guided discussion: Based on these concerns, what do you / your colleagues need most to best support you? Where are you finding joy, in your work and outside of it? Call for future agenda items/moderators: Would a monthly community chat be useful right now? If so, what shape might you like that to take? Please note, this will be a Zoom Meeting, which allows participants to be on mic and/or on camera if they so choose. To encourage open discussion, the Meeting will not be recorded.

Join us for a tour of the International Center of Photography's William Randolph Hearst Library, part of ICP's full photography center in the Lower East Side. The library is dedicated to the entire discipline of photography and houses an extensive collection of photobooks and other resources. Following the tour, join us for a social hour at a nearby location to connect with fellow local library and archives workers. Please note: Space is limited. Please join the waitlist if there are no longer spaces available, because spots do open up at the last minute. If you have secured a spot but then find you’re unable to join, please let us know as soon as possible so we can open your spot to someone on the waitlist.

Join us for a guided tour of The Noguchi Museum, the first museum in the United States to be established, designed, and installed by a living artist—Isamu Noguchi—to show their own work. Guided tours are led by museum educators and explore select works in the Museum’s collection and special exhibitions while introducing the life and vision of Isamu Noguchi. In keeping with Noguchi’s interest in the visitor’s personal experience of the Museum, groups will be encouraged to share their observations and interpretations throughout the course of the tour. Please note: Space is very limited for this unique, free opportunity. Please join the waitlist if there are no longer spaces available, because spots do open up at the last minute. If you have secured a spot but then find you’re unable to join, please let us know as soon as possible so we can open your spot to someone on the waitlist.

Want to learn more about prison abolition? Looking to explore the role of information in the prison industrial complex? Excited to discuss ways we can collectively offer resources to address violence caused by mass incarceration? Join the club (literally!). The Prison Library Support Network is collaborating with METRO to host Abolitionist Futures: A PLSN Discussion Group, which will meet quarterly on the second Monday of the month in the evening. The June event brings together activists working on the frontiers of immigrant justice, community defense, cultural fortification, and political solidarity, all of which have grown increasingly urgent in light of the escalating criminalization of immigrants and people of color, dismantlement of the social safety net and civil rights enforcement, and heightening of economic injustice. These threats have already funneled or are poised to funnel more money and resources into the carceral state’s varied institutions and agents. How can we mobilize and resist? How can we resource and show up in solidarity while holding space for our differing proximities to privilege and power? How can we work across sectors and siloes to build movements that represent our shared humanity? This event’s speakers, from Mijente and Organized Communities Against Deportations, will share their organizing and advocacy strategies to inspire visions and vehicles for us all to move this critical and intersectional work. Speakers: Cinthya Rodriguez, Mijente Antonio Gutierrez, Organized Communities Against Deportations Mijente was born in 2015 after the #Not1More Deportation campaign in recognition that we needed to build a vehicle to confront the challenges of our time and respond to the growing threats to the Latinx community. For too long we have been conveniently portrayed as a voting bloc that only cares about immigration. To add insult to injury, we’ve seen immigrants’ lives worsen. Our futures are peddled and traded off as if they are pawns in a political game. It’s said that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu—or they expect you to pick, cook and serve the food. We believe that the change we need isn’t just going to happen, we have to make it happen. To do that, we’ve got to organize. We’ve got to become the people who make things happen rather than those that things just happen to. At Mijente, no venimos de rodillas. We want to feel pride and confidence in our communities’ ability to not just survive, but thrive and bring about tangible change. We believe our people can’t afford 4 more years of despair, fear and growing systematic criminalization. Our plan of attack is to win Sin, Contra, and Desde el Estado: by creating self-sustaining networks of care; exposing harms and challenging power through direct action and narrative work; by mobilizing Latinx voters against authoritarianism. Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) emerged out of the fearless movement led by the young people of the Immigrant Youth Justice League. We are an intergenerational collective of undocumented, unapologetic, and unafraid organizers building a resistance movement against deportations and the criminalization of immigrants and people of color in Chicago and surrounding areas. Many of us know first-hand what it is like to live as undocumented people in this country and have ourselves experienced the brutality of detentions and deportations. We defend our communities, challenge the institutions that target and dehumanize us, and build collective power through grassroots organizing and cross-movement building. We fight alongside families and individuals challenging these systems to create an environment for our communities to work, organize, and thrive with happiness and without fear.