Professional Development

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!