Two iSchool alumni and an adjunct lecturer are included in Library Journal’s 2024 class of Movers & Shakers, an annual list that recognizes 50 professionals who are moving the library field forward as a profession. Tarida Anantachai (MSLIS ’11) was honored in the Change Agents category, Lissa Staley (MSLIS ’01) was honored in the Community Builders category, and Adjunct Lecturer Zachary Stier was honored in the Community Builders category.
Anantachai is director of inclusion and talent management at North Carolina State University Libraries. According to her nominator, NCSU Communication Strategist Chris Vitiello, Anantachai “has transformed the libraries’ recruitment, interviewing, and hiring processes through the lens of equity and inclusion and extend[s] that work into how our organization mentors and retains our talent.” As the coordinator of the NCSU Fellows Program, Anantachai recruits recent library school graduates for three-year fellowships, observing that the candidate pools for the program have grown increasingly diverse. She fields requests from other campus and external units that are interested in making their own strategic recruitment changes. Anantachai is committed to examining how organizations measure retention, advancement, engagement, and their efforts to instill a culture of belonging, particularly for BIPOC and other marginalized colleagues.
Staley is a community connections librarian at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas. Her “inreach” efforts include inviting local agencies into the library to assist patrons with mental health screenings, Medicaid and health insurance information, FAFSA applications, workforce support, family legal and emergency aid, GED classes, and small business mentoring. In collaboration with the United Way of Kaw Valley, she brought in a Community Navigator program, where social work interns and volunteers help residents navigate social services every weekday. Staley trains staff to use the WellSky Kansas Community Network to connect people to vital community resources. She helped add circulating Conversation Kits to the library’s collection, which contain decks of question cards and interactive games to spark dialogue on a variety of interests.
Stier is a children’s librarian at the Ericson Public Library in Boone, Iowa. In 2019, he launched Little Engines, a collaborative pilot project that supports early learning through virtual resources. Stier has received certification through the NASA@ My Library program to handle moon rocks and meteorites for patron observation and partnered with the Iowa Space Grant Consortium to build To the Moon and Back, a curriculum for science programming in Iowa libraries. His community programming for adults includes acquiring a grant to develop Activating Community Voices, a program and symposium featuring speakers from multiple partner organizations. During the Mental Health Awareness Month last year, Stier shared his story of living with bipolar disorder, a condition that he said has led to an appreciation for how he and others learn and experience the world.