Professional Development

This will be my last post, since tomorrow will be limited to staying in the hotel room to finish up Jill’s version of the ZSR Annual Report before leaving for the airport. So, finishing up on Sunday… The first program of the afternoon was “Information Technology and Communities of Color:Issues and Opportunities in a Global Context,” where our own Sarah Jeong was selected to represent the Asian/Pacific American Library Association on the panel that included all five ethnic caucuses of ALA.Sarah spoke eloquently on how Asian/Pacific American communities are divided in terms of language and technology proficiency - often along generational lines.

Perhaps the best session I attended all conference was “Improving User Services through Open Source Solutions,” which Wanda attended also.For my money, Joe Lucia is one of the most clear-thinking library leaders in the profession today.His library produced VuFind, which we are about to implement this fall (I hope) as a discovery layer to our online catalog. He tends to speak his mind and pull no punches, though he said he had toned down his rhetoric somewhat from previous speeches.Basically, he said that the time is now for open source in libraries.Libraries are a noble part of the “Commons” as intellectual and physical space that is shared by all and consumed (used up, not just used)by none. Open source software is similarly congruent with the commons philosophy, in that it can be shared by all and consumed by none. Joe bluntly said that it is not an option to continue to wait for open source to get traction.There are many roadblocks to progress, chief among them timid leadership (he gently chided ARL libraries for failing to take bold leadership and moving in group-think) and a self-destructive addiction to legacy data and standards. What we can do is take up our courage and contribute to an open source community, investing resources formerly devoted to our (detested) legacy systems. He foresees that in three years, 30% of libraries will be invested in open source development. Other speakers in the panel included my former colleague Randy Dykhuis of the Michigan Library Consortium who worked with Equinox to provide affordable automation services with the Evergreen system.Another speaker from the WALDO group of academic libraries in the greater New York metropolitan area described working with LibLime to adapt Koha. The final speaker was from a small public library in Pennsylvania who has been using open source for 10 years. It occurred to me that there were two separate models represented in the panel:those who contributed code directly to the open source product and those who worked with a vendor to support them. There is probably room within the movement for both.

This morning (Monday), a group of us attended Roz’s presentation on LibGuides and other web guide software for libraries. They did a great job and it’s too bad more people weren’t in attendance. From there, I attended the session, “Pay Attention to Your Users! Conducting Qualitative Research to Reinvent Library Services.”The points were reassuringly familiar, as I learned how to do qualitative research in my doctoral work and then applied it in our joint study with UNCG, all in the interest of influencing library services.Good stuff.

After lunch with my good friend Toni Garvey from the Phoenix Public Library (where she had to cut her system budget by 30%) I attended the ACRL President’s Program.It was advertised as a four hour program (scary) on advocacy, but at least it was in my hotel. The facilitator was very, very good (known as the Advocacy Guru) and made an intimidating subject seem doable. I’ve never approached a member of Congress but she makes it sound possible.

I’ll close with a shot of my favorite building in the Chicago skyline, the red CNA Center. Don’t know why, but I’ve always liked it best, followed closely by the building first known as Standard Oil, then Amoco, now Aon.

Sunday morning has started off with a bang. I didn’t get up quite as early as Susan who signed up for Bill’s Alibris 5K race in Grant Park, but my day started with the Sirsi-Dynix ALA-APA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Salaries and Status for Library Workers. Wanda and Ellen M. were there for moral support and Susan came directly from the race to take official photos. Fresh from that ZSR success story, I went to another at the convention center where Lauren P. was signing copies of her new book So You Want to Be a Librarian. Way to go, Lauren!

Now to re-cap yesterday. i ran into Debbie Nolan at the Convention Center and we had a nice long chat for the first time in several years. She is doing well accomplishing great things at Towson and sends her love to all ZSR friends. I also ran into my former Dean at Wayne State and a few other colleagues and we all mourned our dear departed friend Lothar. I went to a session called “Who are these Millennial Grad Students” and I was reminded how I miss having lots of graduate students around, as no one uses more library resources and services than doctoral students writing dissertations. I was again impressed with the work at the University of Rochester. They first used anthropological research to study their faculty and why thy were ignoring their institutional repository (ahem); next they studied undergraduates and how they found information and did research, which resulted in the famous Studying Students book. This time, they studied graduate students’ needs and preferences. Much of what was said rang true and I thought that our decision to designate the Johnson Room as a graduate student lounge was well-timed, because separate space from undergraduates to work alone but surrounded by peers was their #1 desire. The last session I attended yesterday was the annual SPARC Forum, where much of the time was spent bemoaning the lack of money in the research library market. The best speaker was an editor from the Rockefeller University Press who told librarians that they and faculty authors hold all the power as creators and consumers of scholarly information, so they (we) should get some guts and use it!

It’s fairly frantic here in Chicago but I am enjoying a moment of quiet, waiting for the next session to begin and I even scored access to the only plug in the room! Friday seems so long ago but it started with an appointment to meet with someone from Lyrasis to talk about a potential consulting engagement at ZSR. Then I attended OCLC’s Symposium on the user experience. I am not a big fan of OCLC but I do enjoy going to the symposia that they put on the Friday before ALA officially starts. The program featured Joseph Michelli, author of The Starbucks Experience and When Fish Fly about the Pike Place Fish Market. Then there was a panel of librarians who gave examples about designing services around the library user experience. I actually think ZSR is way far out there in terms of creating a good user experience. In the evening, we had dinner at Blackie’s, a former speakeasy, that a friend from Wake told us about and then spent the evening strolling around Grant and Millennium Parks, again watching the Chicago Summer Dance Festival (and walking through the jelly bean for you, Giz).

Saturday has been a rush. Up at 8:00 am to hear about the Google Book Settlement. I’ve recounted in past posts the basics of the deal, as I tend to go to GBS sessions at whatever conference I attend. The new angle of this presentation was more on the orphan works implications. Orphan works don’t get a lot of love (that’s why they are orphans) but they are at the center of the controversy. Many fear that Google will get a monopoly on the use (and sale) of orphan works, but as the law professor speaker pointed out, how much harm would there actually be? As authors step forward to claim the royalties on out-of-print works, the number of orphans will inevitably decrease and the ones that are left will be the ones no one cares about, so is it really such a tragedy if Google makes them available? Great point.

Next session was about the Open Library Environment (OLE) project, on which we at ZSR are fringe followers. The new information I got here was about the move to Phase II at the end of this month, building on the work of the Kuali project for enterprise level connections. They are not planning to design a discovery layer, since there are so many good open source options available, VuFind first among them. That made me feel like we are on the right track. They are still looking for Build Partners, though with the entrance fee to this level of participation being around $200,000, they have been slow in coming.

OK, the next program is starting, so More Later…

I came to ALA a day early this year because Lyrasis held a Board meeting on Thursday afternoon. This was the first time we met our new Nelinet colleagues and we had a lively discussion on planning for the future!

I love Chicago. When you grow up in the Midwest, Chicago is your New York, London and Paris! And when you come from Detroit, it’s what a city can and should be. After a solo dinner near Printer’s Row, I went over to Grant Park and watched the Summer Dance Festival. Now that is civilized.

Congratulations to the ZSR-UNCG team who organized “Inspiration, Innovation, Celebration: an entrepreneurial conference for librarians,” held June 3-4 at the Elliott University Center at UNCG. Wanda, Mary Beth and Mary Scanlon worked hard for over a year and the results paid off! I’m sure they will blog about specific programs. I will give an overview because my job at the end of the conference was to give a few remarks tying it all together.

From the beginning of conference planning, people wondered about the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship. Was money the distinguishing characteristic? In the end after two days of conferencing, I came to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter. What mattered most was encouraging and celebrating creativity and innovation in all forms. And from the number of times ZSR was mentioned throughout the conference, it was apparent that we have achieved some success there.

The three keynote speakers were excellent. Joyce Ogburn from Utah started the conference off by discussing themes of risk management and knowledge management. We met Jon Obermeyer at lunch, who actually works for the WFU Institute for Regenerative Medicine and is thus a resource we can use here. The final keynote speaker was Steven Bell, who is familiar to many of you for his work on the blended librarian.

There were 20 contributed papers that fell into four distinct themes: 1) outreach (both to internal and external audiences), 2) the green movement in libraries (including our own Mary Scanlon and my own Bill Kane), 3) innovative fundraising (with Mary Beth Lock filling in for the virtual Erik Mitchell and Susan Smith) talking about our 5K), and 4) innovation through renovation.

I thought the quality of the programming was very good. Attendance was not quite up to expectations largely due to the global economic collapse and lack of travel funds that no one saw coming a year ago. There is a rumor that we might hold a second conference here at WFU in two years or so. We’ll see…

North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities is a consortium of private schools that provides lobbying in the North Carolina legislature and professional development programming for various units in universities including libraries. Besides the fact that you just can’t get too much information on assessment, I was interested in this conference because I have just been added to the list of potential reviewers for SACS. In the small world department, I started talking to the man next to me at lunch and learned that he grew up in the Detroit area and worked at Wayne State in the Center for Urban Studies at the same time I worked there. And he is also a big Red Wings fan (but who isn’t at this time of year)!

Keynote, Steven Sheeley, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)

Sheeley talked about accountability in higher education increasing by a more vocal and demanding public. In this economic downturn, all institutions of higher education have been hit, but publics may have been hit the hardest. The book Turn Around (Johns Hopkins 2009) is prescient in examining fragile institutions that may not survive additional financial stress. There will be a focus on efficiencies across the campus. The recession will affect enrollment in both positive and negative ways (community colleges enrollment is expected to go through the roof). Strategic decision making, informed by data and analysis, becomes even more important in times of financial stress.

Navigating the SACS Accreditation Process, Steven Sheeley

Standards and Policies are equal responsibilities for institutions, but Guidelines (such as faculty qualifications) are informative, not normative. Some standards require a policy and require that the policy be followed. Decennial review is necessary, leading to reaffirmation of accreditation every ten years.

Tracks A (baccalaureate only) or Track B (master’s and above)

Off-site Committee: compliance certification document review; each “cluster” reviews 3 or 4 institutions with a 2 day meeting in Atlanta. Committee report goes to institutions and forms basis of On-site Committee report. They give findings of either compliant or non-compliant.

On-Site Committee: Focused report and QEP document sent to committee 6 weeks before visit. Final report is narrative, institution has chance to respond within 5 months. C&R reviews on-site report, response, chair’s evaluation of the response to make a decision.

Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP): should still be in the planning stage until approved as part of reaffirmation. QEP should come out of assessment activities, NOT just brainstorming. Needs to focus on student learning outcomes. QEP lead evaluator can be from the outside, even outside SACS region.

Common areas of off-site non-compliance: faculty competence (not sending in enough documentation), college-level competencies (Gen Ed), institutional effectiveness, administrative staff evaluations.

Common areas of on-site non-compliance: QEP, college level competencies, faculty competencies

Common areas of C&R (in monitoring) non-compliance: institutional effectiveness, college level competencies, QEP, library/learning resources, financial stability

Danger zones: institutional effectiveness

Some sound practices: think like the reviewer (get off your own campus), begin early, clear documentation is key, burden of persuasion is on the institution, READ standards carefully, assessment woven throughout, ask if you don’t understand.

Fifth Year Report: mini-compliance report on progress

Use what you’ve got and get what you need:Strengthening your library’s assessment program, Yvonne Belanger and Diane Harvey, Perkins Library, Duke

I met Yvonne when we toured the Center for Instructional Technology at Duke a few months ago. She does assessment for CIT and is a resource for the libraries as well.They presented a very practical program on the basics of library assessment. My favorite quote was “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” credited to Ford Motor Company in 2006. That rang true, because I once heard an ARL consultant say that it takes 15 years (give or take) to change a culture. So that got me thinking how I would describe the predominant culture at ZSR and I think I’d say intensely personal service. But I digress…

The growth in assessment programs in libraries mirrors the growth in assessment in higher education. On many campuses, SACS accreditors say that the library does a better job at assessment than most campus units (and probably 1/3 of the attendees here today are librarians). Libraries singled out for excellence in assessment efforts are: University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, and University of Virginia. A key in library assessment is demonstrating the impact on institutional goals. The most successful library assessment programs are those that are infused throughout the organization, rather than just being the responsibility of one coordinator or one committee, hence the “culture of assessment” that we hear about. A good rule of thumb, attributed to Susan Gibbons of the University of Rochester, is “don’t guess, just ask.” With the availability of easy web survey tools and built-in focus groups of student employees or Lib100 classes, this is good advice to follow. So for example, when I see our virtual reference statistics declining, which seems counter-intuitive to all other prevailing trends, it seems a good approach would be to get some focus groups of students together to ask them what is going on.

Other nuggets that I picked up and will bring to various people when I get home:

• Bring together all assessment data in one place on the website so all can access and use it
• Look into Lib Stats, as a free, open source resource
• Build evaluative thinking by linking assessment to staff development
• Give data back: eg. analyze instruction sections by academic department and report back to department chairs and liaisons
• Our OCLC replication study given at ACRL was cited here as an example of how data tends to be local!

Better Assessment:The I-E-O Model Revisited, Libby Joyce and Rob Springer, Elon

They used the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE-spring semester of freshman year) and Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE- entering freshmen before they get to campus). They did a study of 331 matched pairs using the IEO model as a framework:Input (student profile), Environment (engagement), Output (outcome)

Impressively, they performed an ANOVA (analysis of variance) with

• Dependent variable:retention
• Fixed variables: NSSE cognitive variables
• Covariates of BCSSE cognitive variables

They found very strong statistical significance in their outcomes by looking at the complete picture of the student profile coming in (BCSSE), the environmental intervention, and then the outcome as self-reported in the NSSE survey.

Always have to ask the question: how much data do you gather before it becomes a burden?

What does this mean and where do we go from here? Assessing an information literacy program, Jennifer Hanft and Susan McClintock, Meredith College

Assessment is hard to define, but has elements of: accountability, focus, outcomes alignment, measurement, and acknowledgement of professional knowledge. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive, unchanging, intimidating, exceptional, self-sufficient or expensive. You are already assessing your program if you are meeting regularly with instruction faculty to discuss best practices, conducting regular student evaluations, grading assignments, conducting pre-tests, or partnering with faculty on assignments

ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education: At Meredith, three tiered program (English 111, English 200, IL Thread), incremental and developmental. Where to go from here: continue as part of Gen Ed program (survived revision), extend to graduate programs, continue to assess.

How they tackle assessment in Information Literacy:

• Identify a skill
• Find the applicable ACRL standard
• Identify appropriate level(s) of program
• Align with program’s defined outcome
• Decide how best to measure

Wanda covered much of the SAMM conference. I was only there one day, mostly because I am a SOLINET/Lyrasis Board member, so I will cover the sessions that I went to that Wanda did not. My flight from Charlotte was late so I missed the opening keynote…grrhgghhhh!

Google Book Search Settlement:Now What? Jonathan Band, Technology Law and Policy

Really complicated, lots of controversy; some love it, some hate it, some fear it. He represents ARL, ACRL, ALA. They filed comments with the judge overseeing the settlement.

Original Library Project (totally different from litigation)

Scanning 25 million books

Public domain: display full text (5 million)

In-copyright: 3 snippets (few lines) per book 20 million (2.5 million in print) 17.5 million orphans

Opt-out for authors and publishers (copyright owners) (prohibitive to ask permission)

Opt-in for partner program to share revenue

Why did publishers sue in 2005?

Act of scanning may be infringement, made copies for libraries, even though public could only see snippet and may have increased the market for the work

Opt-out wasn’t good enough, burden should have been on Google (so say publishers)

Core question:was this fair use?

Proposed settlement Oct 2008

Only applies to books published before 1/5/09, no books going forward

Google can go forward with scanning in exchange for payment to owners

Book Rights Registry manages copyright (run by owners) solves the legal problem without addressing fair use issue and binds all the owners

Court still needs to approve it, since it is class action

Settlement services

Applies only to US users

Previews: analogous to snippet but more content

Consumer purchase

Institutional subscription

Default rule for out of print books (17.5 million):immediately available for all 3 services unless rights holder shows up and opts out *these are the heart of the settlement and lessens the panicky impact*

Default rule for in print book (2.5 million): not available for purchase or subscription unless owner opts in (not likely, they will make their money without Google)

(in-print means commercially available in any format)

Owners can opt out of the settlement altogether and sue Google on their own, or permit uses different from default rules

Previews

Analogous to snippets

Public domain:100%

In copyright, out of print (17.5 million) : was 3 snippets, now 20%

In copyright, in print (2.5 million): was 3 snippets, now bibliographic info

Consumer Purchase

Consumer can purchase perpetual online access to full text of a book

Google will set price algorithmically between $1.99 and $29.99 (80% below $10)

Can print 20 pages with one command, cut and paste 4 pages, make book annotations

Institutional Subscriptions (to libraries)

Annual subscription to get access to full text of all books in copyright, out of print (17.5 million); discipline based subsets

Access limited to “appropriate individuals/authorized users”

Can print 20 pages with one command, cut and paste 4 pages, annotations, link to e-reserves, no ILL

Remote access only for higher education

Google’s overall model is free or very low cost; we’ll see

Public Access service

One terminal per building for public libraries and higher ed (one terminal for 4,000 ftes at 2 year associate colleges, one terminal for 10,000 fte at 4 year colleges)

Print pages on per page fee

Participating Libraries (Michigan, Wisconsin, UC, Stanford, etc)

Libraries provide book to be scanned, receive digital copy in return

Libraries now must sign agreement with Registry, (Here is where Harvard dropped out)

many constraints, almost like dark archive until it comes into public domain, but released from liability Cooperating libraries (different from participating libraries)

Research Corpus

Non-consumptive research, computational analysis not for intellectual content, possible but with strict security requirement

Google’s obligations

Within 5 years must provide services for 85% of in-copyright, out of print books it has scanned

Must accommodate visual disabilities (could be huge)

Revenue sharing (with copyright owner)

$60 for each book scanned

Google keeps 37% of future revenue from advertising, subscriptions, sales, gives 63% to Registry

Usage fees for popular books

$200 inclusion fee when enough revenues are collected

Owner has to register to get revenue

Pricing

Google and Registry set price, if can’t agree, subject to arbitration

Based on FTE

Only higher ed has remote access

Status of Settlement

Library associations filed comments, asked court to closely supervise implementation

Court extended deadline to 9/4/09

Libraries worry about lack of competition, subscriptions could be priced too high, no matter what Google says,

Traditional library values of access, privacy, intellectual freedom could be undermined

Digital Preservation:the Future is Collaboration, Robin Dale, UC Santa Cruz

Think in terms of services that we can provide here and now rather than great repository in the sky.

Collaboration

• Don’t do it for its own sake
• Public good v pragmatism
• Sustainability is hard
• Cyclical drivers, evolve or die, sunset is sometimes a good thing

Local Digitization Imperatives

• Digital preservation should be
  • an ongoing activity
  • understood responsibility
  • economically sustainable
  • cooperative effort

Shift from Silos to Service

• In the beginning
  • Large institutional digital repositories
  • Major local investment
  • Low acceptance/use outside libraries
  • High cost, bit preservation with low sustainability

• Now:
  • Incremental perspective with immediate action and future capabilities
  • Move away from imperative to tackle problem locally
  • Curation instead of preservation, look at the life cycle
  • Curation is an outcome, not a repository

University of California

• First tried digital preservation repository
• Shifted to

Web archiving service

HathiTrust

LOCKSS (rise of Private LOCKSS Networks (PLN))

New flexible repository service to manage digital objects

Meta Archive Cooperative

LOCKSS-based distributed digital preservation network

Hathi Trust (13 CIC (Big 10+), 10 UC libraries)

Archive and share digitized collections from the Google project

Goal to create and sustain public good - searchable, not just dark archive

Currently at 2,839,932 volumes (16% in public domain)

Role for Lyrasis

• Facilitator to obtain existing services for the collaborative

• Manager of LOCKSS PLN’s
• Enable immediate access to services with management possibilities downstream

Most of the Friday sessions were brief reports on various ASERL projects:

• An exciting new program is called “Liaison Librarians of the 21st Century.” It was proposed by George Mason University and was approved by the membership for further investigation and implementation, provided grant funding can be secured. It is a two year plan to create a comprehensive professional development program for liaison librarians - sort of like a continuation of the program we will have on May 12 with Carol Wittig. A consultant will be hired to design a curriculum around the needs of the modern library liaison who is called upon to interact with faculty in a number of ways as their research, teaching and learning missions evolve. The program is envisioned with lead-off and closing symposia and quarterly videoconferencing sessions in between. The Lyrasis grant staff has already begun looking for funders. I am very enthusiastic about this program and hope we will participate.
• Early meetings with leaders from the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) yielded the idea to form recruiting teams who would tour library schools around the country and sell them on the idea of working in academic libraries in the Southeast. The idea will go back for more work and refinement.
• The “Underpinnings of the American Civil War” digital project is moving along. Erik is participating on the project for us.
• The OLE project at Duke to create an open source integrated library system is completing its scope document and will move to the “build” proposal later this spring. They are looking for partners who can invest $240,000 plus a staff member each year for two years. We are not able to make that kind of commitment, but Susan and Erik are both on OLE committees and will assess if we can serve as beta partners to test pieces of the eventual system.
• Collaborative shared storage has been discussed by ASERL for many years. Originally, ASERL institutions focused on monographs in storage, where it was found that there was remarkably little overlap among libraries. Now attention is turning to serials, where libraries can get a bigger bang for the buck. The public universities in Florida are moving quickly on a project to build a common facility and the University of Florida is ready to commit one million stored serial volumes and Florida State will add 750,000. This could be the nucleus of an ASERL program, or the first branch in the banking system, as it was put. I volunteered to serve on a small group to plan the next action steps (and will count on people like Lauren C., Carol and Scott to help when the time comes to strategize.)
• Lyrasis has many more group purchase offers available to members than existed under SOLINET. I hereby encourage Carol and Derrik to look at the Lyrasis website to see if we can take advantage of any of them.
• The Federal Library Depository Program had a meeting several weeks ago to try to instigate change in this moribund system. It has been difficult to move beyond endless talk and study to take real action. In the meantime, both regional and selective depositories (like us) are becoming increasingly frustrated at the rigidity of rules built around a now-outdated print system. The most they could think of was to mount a letter-writing campaign.
• SCOAP3: this is the attempt to introduce open access publishing in the field of physics by converting the top-quality subscription journals owned by the usual publishing suspects to open access. Emory is championing this cause with the ASERL libraries and I will want to talk to Carol, Sarah and Lauren C. again on whether we should make the pledge to support this plan.

The one subtantive program session was on SACS accreditation. Representatives from Duke, Miami and Virginia Commonwealth all gave perspectives on their recent experiences. Duke was heaviy involved in the entire 2 1/2 year planning process including the Quality Enhancement Plan. Miami was similarly involved at the highest levels of planning and turned the focus of the QEP to multimedia/information literacy. VCU’s Director has served as a SACS reviewer and outlined the responsibilities of the Offsite and Onsite review committees. SInce I have been recently approved by the university and added to the roster of potential SACS reviewers, I listened hard at this part!

The next ASERL meeting will be November 17-18, 2009 in Charleston. Can’t wait!

ASERL (Association of Southeastern Research Libraries) began for me with the Education Committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon. We discussed a really exciting proposal for a professional development program for liaison librarians. How timely! Our own ZSR liaison development program will begin on May 12 with Carol Wittig from the University of Richmond. If the proposal is accepted by the membership tomorrow, planning will begin in earnest, which we will follow closely. There was also a proposal to work with the HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Library Alliance in a joint recruiting effort. Finally, I learned that the Information Literacy 2.0 Summit tentatively planned for this summer is on hold due to travel difficulties in many libraries.

This morning, there was an optional Resource Sharing Summit that explored new ways to expand resource sharing among ASERL libraries. (ZSR is a participant in ASERL’s Kudzu resource sharing system as well as the Lanter delivery component.) Those present talked about exploiting digital capabilities and moving in the direction of unmediated direct ordering by patrons. I participated in the user-centric small group that talked about the possibilities of using digitization or purchase in lieu of ILL, delivery to mobile devices, and a shorter period of “lower-casing” (ILL folks will know what I mean!)

This afternoon the membership meeting began with a round robin of coping strategies for budget reductions. A poll was conducted last week on the current status of budgets in ASERL libraries, which I will share at the next Admin Council meeting. In general, we are better off than most libraries both for the current and upcoming fiscal years. Almost all libraries are using this crisis as an opportunity to reorganize, restructure, and eliminate non-essential functions.

Kate Nevins and Cathy Wilt from Lyrasis gave an update on the new organization and invited ASERL libraries to take advantage of the greatly expanded array of programs, e-resources and products. At ZSR, we should pay close attention to their Library Leadership Network, Mass Digitization Collaborative, and e-resource licensing opportunities.

CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) sent their President to talk about their programs. They have re-opened their Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant, to which we will surely apply. They have also re-absorbed the Digital Library Federation and plan to broaden its base of participation.

The final session of the day was a compilation and discussion of strategic priorities in ASERL libraries. The discussion never really got off the ground but I will distribute the document for us to use in our future planning. The day ended with a reception at Connie McCarthy’s (W&M) house and then dinner in town with four ASERL colleagues. More tomorrow.

ALADN (Academic Library Advancement and Development Network) is one of the most worthwhile conferences I attend. I started educating myself at ALADN after I came to Wake Forest because raising money for ZSR was one of my main goals. It was/is a challenge because I had no previous experience with library fundraising and we do not have a dedicated library development officer or volunteer board. ALADN is both for development professionals and library deans and directors. I saw a number of my colleagues from across the country, including Tom Moore, Central Michigan; Barbara Kriigel, UM-Dearborn; Helen Spalding, Oregon State; Beth Titus, New Mexico State; Bill Mayer, American; Adrian Alexander, Tulsa; Mary Reichl, Appalachian State; as well as some ASERL colleagues: Connie McCarthy, William and Mary; Sylverna Ford, Memphis; Julia Rholes, Mississippi; Laura Probst, Florida International; and Bill Garrison, South Florida.

This year’s conference was in Colonial Williamsburg (picture to the left is Bruton Parish Church). I was a day late getting there because my mom wasn’t discharged from the hospital until Monday, but there was still plenty of information waiting for me. The unofficial theme of the conference was the challenge in rasing money for libraries in higher education during the “Great Recession.” One of the good things about ALADN is the use of speakers and consultants from the greater world of fundraising. One consultant spoke at the beginning and end of the conference with great humor and confidence. One of his topics was the management of volunteer leadership boards. We do not have such a board yet for ZSR but it is one of our goals. The consultant emphasized the importance of clear expectations for giving, “getting” (leads to other donors), terms and conditions when setting up a new board. Some libraries (Pitt, for example) get along very well without a board. At Wake, all major academic units have a Board of Visitors and I believe we should follow that model. During the current economic climate where it is not always appropriate to be asking for money from people who are losing their fortunes, it is a good time to reconnect with the university’s goals, with our role in helping to meet those goals, and with present and future donors on a human level.

A particularly useful session was entitled Playing Nice in the Sandbox,” which talked about the relationships between departments in the university and within the Advancement office itself. Though some think Wake is a siloed institution, I think it is actually collaborative in nature and I can see developing positive relationships with all the various units that are needed in the fundraising process.

As mentioned above, I admire the development operation at the University of Pittsburgh. They have no Friends or volunteer boards, but instead focus on major gifts (defined as six figures). Their lead development person gave a talk on “Negotiation: From the Ask to Yes.” I wish I had more practice in closing the deal (for that matter, I wish I had more practice in opening the deal) but in the meantime, I can prepare with the tips provided in recognizing types of donors, specific techniques for closing, and dealing with objections.

One presentation gave two different approaches for development of the elevator speech. One used the business model of crafting a message based on features and benefits, while the other came from an academic model of storytelling. I think I tend more toward the storytelling side, but the major point is to develop and perfect a short piece about the library and be prepared to veer off in one desired direction or another depending on the interests of the donor.

That is a summary of my favorite sessions. Next year ALADN will be in Santa Monica, so I just might have to make that one!