Professional Development

Mary Scanlon and I attended the Thursday session of NCLA’s 58^th Biennial Conference in Greenville, where 543 registrants converged on the Greenville Convention Center.

The speaker at the day’s Ogilvie Lecture was Mary Boone, State Librarian of North Carolina, who commenced her address by countering our awareness of parlous times for libraries by citing positive statistics for the state: NC is the 4^th fastest growing state, 10^th most populous, and is projected to be the 7^th most populous state by 2030. On the other hand, there have been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the traditional big three job areas– tobacco, textiles, and furniture, as a new economy has emerged based on technology, banking, pharmaceuticals, and auto-parts , yes auto-parts. She underscored the importance of NC libraries and the services they provide, despite cuts to their own resources (17.9% cuts at ECU, for instance, the home university for this conference). She singled out NC community colleges’ challenges as they try to support a new curriculum that addresses the education and training needs of the new workplaces. I’ve read, for instance, that community colleges are jumping on the bandwagon for educating in emerging green technologies. Yet community colleges have had resource cuts of 25-41%.Public library use is at an all time high, heavily used by people seeking new jobs and forced to apply online, when some have never touched computers in their lives (some public libraries have also found it necessary to take reservations for story hours!). However, she remains optimistic that one can define one’s core mission and still provide essential services. For instance, she cited innovative strategies in the face of materials cuts:librarians going into the stacks and displaying literary classics in lieu of the latest bestsellers, with the result that these venerable works are flying off the display shelves.She closed by urging us to redefine and update our mission and do different, if necessary, with less.

I attended the RASS luncheon, which featured author Jill McCorkle as speaker. She prefaced her readings with engaging and humorous accounts of her writing process, disclosing that she tends to jot intriguing snippets of conversations on slips of papers, napkins, paper towels, etc. which she then stows away for future use. She cited one such remark from this summer, coming from a woman in a grocery store who observed that “the humility had been just terrible” of late; Ms. McCorkle emphatically agreed-and added that quotation to her cache for future use.She was queried, inevitably, about her archival practices (her papers are at UNC ), and she assured the audience of librarians that she does indeed place these slips she’s used in a story in an envelope, to be archived with her other literary output. Her readings from her most recent short story collection, Going Away Shoes, were delightful, full of wit and insight.I am looking forward to finding out how the tales ended.

Each day of the conference offered a session on the greening of libraries, and not surprisingly the sessions were all highly popular, with enthusiastic presenters and audiences alike. The choice of the day was “NC Public Libraries Going Green,” presented by Jody Risacher, Director Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center, Jodi Hojosy, Green Business Program Coordinator, and Dan Barron, Chair NCPLDA Green Libraries Task Force. They offered a very interesting and encouraging overview of Green Library initiatives in NC, including the NC Green Libraries Project (Mr. Barron’s portion) and included a specific account of how the Cumberland County Public Library earned the local Green Business Certificate. That opportunity had fallen into their laps when Sustainable Sandhills approached the library as part of an initiative to assist businesses and institutions in the area with sustainability planning and to encourage them to embrace more environmentally friendly modes of business. The Library now has an informative web page, “Thinking Green, Working Green,” that is filled with information resources, including books and dvds owned by the library, as well as links to external information sources for consumers, provided by governmental and by environmental agencies and organizations.

“Utilizing Library Space for Learning Opportunities,” presented by two UNCG librarians, Kathy Crowe (Associate Dean for Public Services) and Mike Crumpton (Assistant Deans for Administrative Services) took us through the process of assessing, devising, and developing learning spaces. They conducted an environmental scan, assessed how the students use space and what they need, considered changes and updates, and began the planning and renovating processes.They considered changes in how students approach learning and studying, such as active and reflective orientations, group and individual study, technology and other resource access issues. They determined that they needed to create a larger instruction lab, expand collaboratories and group spaces, develop a Learning Commons (the new term for Information Commons), expand service areas such as vending machine and copy center areas as well as the Archives space, reduce and resituate government documents, and reduce as well the reference collection. As a means to these determinations, they used three assessment approaches, an in-house survey, observational studies, and focus groups. Focus group results revealed that the 24/5 expansion was popular as were café booths, collaboratories, group areas and vending. Many considered the library’s environment conducive to study, and confirmed the need for quiet space areas. Fortunately, UNCG has made the expansion of Jackson Library one of its highest priorities, and the proposed design will expand the tower for book stacks and create a center for academic and student life.

Mary Scanlon and Kathy Makens, Electronic Resources Librarian at Durham Public Library, presented a BLINC session on “Social Networking for Career Advancement:It’s Not Your Teenager’s Facebook.” With her usual verve and energy even at the end of a long day spent a-conferencing, Mary explained the various social networking tools and correlated them with professional uses to which they could be put– totally unfazed and undeterred by connectivity poltergeists. She discussed email alerts, useful for journal articles; RSS feeds for both journal articles and blogs; Twitter for conference and professional association coverage; and Facebook, for similar purposes. I had not heard of RT-re-tweet forwarding; or twibes -twitter tribes ,what else, graced by a librarian twibe; or Pipes for filtering the inevitable abundance of RSS feeds (used with a Yahoo account). The audience, coming from various levels of experience, was very engaged, and peppered the two presenters with questions at the end of the very informative session.

I am down in Greenville, attending the North Carolina Library Association’s 58th Biennial Conference themed, “NC Libraries: Serving Knowledge…Serving You. “Tuesday was a day for morning travel eastward on a most rainy and dreary day to conference headquarters for a Library Administration and Management Section (LAMS) sponsored pre-conference that outlined strategies and goals used in the 2008 Leadership Institute. It was a most welcomed pleasure to see our own “Lauren Pressley” highlighted as one of the institute MVP’s! Institute leaders Mark Livingston and Kem Ellis shared core principles and beliefs of the institute in a session entitled “Leadership: It starts with you, but it’s not about you!”Included were these beliefs:

Authentic Leadership starts with your unique passion and purpose - Lead with purpose and authenticity.

The Ultimate test of your leadership is earning, keeping, and growing the loyalty of employees, customers and key stakeholders - Strengthen those relationships.

Libraries provide significant value and can make a measurable difference in the communities they serve - Focus on the total library experience.

Here are a couple of suggestions that were of particular interest to me.

Designing an agreed upon and accepted by each service point, a consistent plan for delivering customer service.

Informing your customers as they enter your building what they can expect their experience in your library to be. For example:

You may expect — a warm welcoming environment, personalized service and attention to your specific needs.

During the NCLA Executive Board dinner the group sang Happy Birthday, this was the extent of my birthday celebration along with all the folks who wrote on my facebook wall.

This morning I worked the registration booth from 7:30 a.m. until 10:00. This was great preparation for my next role (or shall I say our role) planning the next biennial conference. We had quite a few onsite registrations. Not sure what our final numbers are, but I’ll find out and report later. In addition we had several issues with the lack of wireless access for our vendors. I think the convention center might find beneficial a little refresher on the “customer services” angle as well as what the effects ofcondescending tones has on relationship building.

Keith Michael Feils, ALA Executive Director was our opening keynoter. Even though it may be discouraging at times for libraries, we are still the best bang for the buck! Here’s what he suggest libraries get busy doing.

Determine how technology will impact us.

Work to serve all, overcome issues of poverty and race.

Lead the world in diversity.

Preserve the rights of Library users.

Fight to keep information free.

Continue to attract the best and brightest.

Lead the world in international relations.

Work on funding for Libraries.

Document the value of Libraries.

Lunch was fun! Jane Bozarth of the NC Office of State Personnel/HRD Group led a very light hearted discussion centered around enjoying life. The luncheon was a popular choice of some 45 librarians. I read this to be an indication that even in difficult times, people look for an opportunity to wind down.The session entitled, “Thank God it is Monday: Enjoy Your Job, Enjoy Your Life,” invited attendees to focus more on the little pleasures. Our first assignment was to list five green light experiences. You know how you feel when you make all the green lights coming down through town, or get that parking spot near the library. How does this make you feel? My list included being greeted by a co-worker with a welcoming smile; hearing my favorite song before I exit the car; and of course a good hot drink.

Key principles to enjoying your job included liking what you do, being good at it and believing what you do has meaning. Ok for a little test. If you’ve read to hear send me an email listing these three things:

A) What you like most about your job? B) What do you think you are really good at? And C) Do you believe what you do has value, if so what?

Just testing - I hope you’ll all respond to me. I really want to hear. Brownw@wfu.edu

My afternoon session, “A Crises is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Reinventing Your Library During Challenging Times,” featured David Singleton, Director of Library Experiences at the Public Library of Charlotte. He discussed secrets for thriving during turbulent times, embracing change, brainstorming for success, looking at programs, services and staffing in strategic ways that make sense in today’s reality. Singleton’s view of reactions to challenging times is mostly emotional to staff. Some don’t feel valued, only focusing on the present and in dire need for someone to communicate with them both openly and honestly about the situation. Don’t assume that all will act the exact same way. Other tips included:

Leadership is the key to striving during challenging times.

Embrace optimism.

Be courageous.

Focus on the organization, both internally and organizationally.

Focus on customer service excellence.

Work towards continuous innovation.

Remove barriers; empower staff.

Plan for the future.

I have a lot more notes I took during this session. So if you’d like to hear more, stop by I’d love to talk with you. More later…Wanda

On Monday and Tuesday I participated in the NCLA Library Instruction 2.0 Conference with Roz, Susan, and Giz. Roz, Susan, and I gave a panel presentation on Monday on the 2.0 techniques we teach with at ZSR.

We must be onto something at ZSR, because after the presentation I heard from several other librarians that they thought WFU must be a wonderful place to work and they were impressed with what we’re doing instructionally.

Roz, Giz, and I gave a workshop on Tuesday on using Google Docs, Reader, and Sites in teaching and other library work. It was a long session, but people appeared to stay engaged and the content was new to a lot of the audience.

Unfortunately, between the presentations, and teaching obligations back at ZSR, I didn’t attend many other sessions. I did get to hear Debra Gilchrist’s keynote, though. If you’re interested in my notes, you can find them in my blog.

(Cross posted on my blog.)

I had hoped to write up every day of the institute and post as soon as possible, but internet connections were shaky, and we didn’t spend much time with computers, so instead you’re getting a summary.

The North Carolina Library Association Leadership Institute is The Best Leadership Training program that I’ve been through, and I’ve been through several. That’s not to say that the others weren’t good, just that the NCLA one paid attention to every possible detail, gave us all good opportunities to think about our own leadership practice, was a group of fantastic people, and was just what I needed at this point in time.

The entire workshop tended to run from 8am to 8pm, with three one-hour meal breaks and one one-hour break throughout the day. We met in large discussion/lectures, small group sessions, and had some individual work time. Every night we had a great speaker from other industries that focus on customer service.

The focus of the workshop is to understand our own authentic leadership style, how to share vision and think about employees/coworkers, and how to use that vision and good treatment of fellow workers to create the best possible experience for our users/clients/customers/patrons/etc. There were several mantras throughout the week, but the one that seemed to summarize the entire week was “It starts with you, but it’s not about you.” The “it” was up for discussion several times throughout the week.

The culmination of the week was our leadership statement of purpose. Mine was:

“My purpose is to use big picture, strategic thinking to help libraries remain relevant in today’s information environment. Through meeting and exceeding our users’ expectations, I hope to help create a library environment–both offline and online–which will inspire our users to be our advocates.”

And because I tend to be goal oriented, I included a how to section:

“To do this I will

• foster an environment of learning, experimentation, and creative adaptation.
• encourage innovative thinking and novel approaches in education and technology.
• cultivate a culture of compassion within my own library, both with colleagues and library users.”

I knew most of this about me, but it was good to have a period to reflect, take some assessment tools, and really focus in on my values, motivations, and passions. Hopefully this will reflect in both my job at WFU and in my work for the profession.

It was particularly good timing, given that I was feeling a little burned out after working on the book for so long.

The schedule for the last day included sharing our statements. There was a little anxiety around that issue, and we talked about it in my group. I shared an idea about how to approach it, and before I knew it, everyone knew and that was how we all shared our statements on the last day. For that, I was given the Tiger and a few books on leadership, now living on my bookshelves. (Well, the Tiger at least… the books are on the way to Vienna with me. )

Now I’m off on some personal time. Hopefully this will complete the rejuvination and I’ll be ready to hit the ground running!

Yesterday Giz and I helped give a NCLA workshop hosted in a beautiful facility at Elon University.

As an officer of NCLA’s Technology and Trends Roundtable, I helped pull together the group of speakers that also included Lynda Kellam and Amy Harris of UNC-G and Ed Hirst of Rowan Public Library (also an officer).

The goal of this program was to help people who missed the blogs/wikis/google docs/etc craze, but who are beginning to see a need to be up to speed on these technologies.  We demonstrated free tools and tried to make the connections to libraries as much as possible. The technologies we covered were: social networking, google docs, blogs, wikis, librarything, delicious, and Drupal.

I was particularly impressed with the audience.  With less than two full weeks to register, we had 35 participants. The group seemed to be really engaged and interested in what we had to say, and gave good feedback on the session.

We had a great time, and it was rewarding to work with folks who are just starting out in these areas. We had a group with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds, so hopefully everyone got something out of the session!