Our panelist include: Chris Bourg (Stanford), Lea Engle (Texas A&M), Melia Erin Fritch (Kansas State), Chris Martin (North Dakota State), and Bess Sadler (Stanford).

The event will be a moderated discussion about the intersection of gender and academic libraries. Topics for discussion could include: how gender affects library leadership; the relationship between gender and technological skills; personal experiences of gender-related issues on the job; the importance of gender diversity in library innovation, etc. The dynamics of the discussion will be driven by the unique experiences of the panelists.

Let us know what you want to talk about here in the comments or on our ALA Connect site!

Battledecks Slides

Battledecks Video

Tomorrow I’ll be heading off to Indianapolis for ACRL 2013! Here is my tentative schedule which is, as always, subject to change. There are still a few gaps but I’ll figure those out later (need to leave some time for serendipitous discovery, right?)

I’d like to especially invite everyone to Battledecks on Wednesday night at 8pm. If you’ve never attended a Battledecks, you’re in for a delightful evening of laughs. Hope to see you there!

Tuesday

Arrive late afternoon

Wednesday

4:00-5:45: Opening Keynote, Geoffrey Canada (JW, Grand Ballroom 1-6)
7:00-7:30: ACRL 101 (ICC 104-106)
7:30-9:00: Battledecks (ICC 109-110)
9:00-11:00: ACRL TT Meetup (Slippery Noodle)

Thursday

8:00-9:00: Building a Dream Team: Library Personas in the 21st Century Library (ICC 107-108)
10:30-11:30: Invited Paper, Alison Head (ICC Wabash 2-3)
1:00-2:00: Hacking the Learner Experience: techniques and strategies w/ instructional ecosystem (ICC Wabash 2-3)
3:00-4:00: From the Periphery into the Mainstream: Library DIY culture(s) and the academy (JW Grand Ballroom 9-10)
4:20-6:00: Keynote, Henry Rollins (JW Grand Ballroom 1-6)
6:00-7:00: Libertine Meetup
7:00-8:30: Reception

Friday

8:30-11:30: THATCamp (ICC Wabash 1)
12:00-1:00: Virtual webcast presentation
1:30-5:00: THATCamp (ICC Wabash 1)
7:00-8:00: HackLibSchool meetup (Ram Restaurant and Brewery)
8:00-10:30: All-Conference Reception (Indiana State Museum)

Saturday

8:30-9:30: Think Like A Startup: creating a culture of innovation… (JW Grand Ballroom 9-10)

Leave for Los Angeles, early afternoon.

UPDATE: For ALA President, I endorse Courtney Young. I cannot recommend her enough. Courtney was one of the first people I met at ALA and since that time she has continually served as a model of professionalism: the type of model that I think we all should work emulate in our own lives. Her passion and her experience will lead our organization well. For more information, please see her candidate page.

My Official Statement of Professional Concern

I am primarily concerned with building communities and creating opportunities that help young professionals bridge the gap between graduate work in library science and professional employment. I’m particularly interested in running this term because ALA will be formulating its new strategic plan, in preparation for the sunset of the 2015 plan. I believe it’s important that we have a strong coalition of young professionals involved in the planning process: librarians who would think beyond the horizon and imagine the myriad of possibilities that contemporary technology will bring to our profession.

Question 1: What is the first thing you plan to do on Council?

One of my personal/professional agenda items in Council is to have a role in the strategic planning process for the organization. Libraries, like many service professions, have a strong tendency to default to being reactive to the world around us, but strategic planning and future thinking can help us to define our own future and create new opportunities. So one of my first actions on Council will be to identify those committees and ad hoc groups (official or otherwise) that are most interested in writing their own future for libraries in the 21st century.

Question 2: Many in the ThinkTank-for-ALA caucus referenced young members/new professionals in their platforms. What is one concrete step ALA can take to engage this demographic? And, if elected, how will you ensure Council pursues it?

One concrete thing we can do is work more with student members and create more opportunities for involvement. Programs like Emerging Leaders and Student-to-Staff are a good start, but are limited in their reach. ALA could sponsor student projects and research by helping to bring collaborators together, providing a [virtual] work-space and scaffolding, and offer funding. Creating more mentorship opportunities is extremely important. I don’t think we lack for interested mentees, but over the years I’ve noticed many groups in ALA struggling to find enough mentors to support the number of interested mentees. So finding incentives for mentors is a challenge that we should address.

Question 3: What is one thing you plan to learn more about before being elected to council?

Getting to know the structure of the Council (both formally through its by-laws and informally through its committees, constituencies, etc) will be a challenge, as I see it. It will take some time to get the lay of the land, but it is on the top of my priority list prior to taking office. Every organization has a unique culture of communication and knowing how that is so for Council is, in my opinion, indispensable in order to make things happen.

Question 4: How do you plan to connect with ALA Members while on Council?

In addition to Twitter, FB, personal blogs, and ALA Connect, I plan on reaching out to my local community. As one of the largest urban areas in the country, we have both a city-wide and county-wide library system, two large universities (not to mention a number of smaller institutions, both public and private, as well as the community college system), and the LAUSD. By creating opportunities for networking and fellowship (something which I am passionate about and help bring about though the “Librarians in La La Land” social group), I hope to connect with librarians in their daily lives.

Question 5: What are 3 reasons people should vote for you?

1. I will step forward. I’m willing to raise my hand and stick out my neck. Call it drive, call it passion, call it what you will, but I’ll be among the first people to volunteer for a task, to take the lead on a project, and to risk my time and attention. I’ve often been told that in large organizations half the battle is simply stepping forward, so my strategy is to get that part out of the way as quickly as possible and get to business.

2. I will listen. I’m willing to admit when I don’t know enough, which means I’ll be reaching out to you as members of ALA to keep me informed of your needs, your desires, and your hopes for the organization. My door (virtual and IRL) is always open. Likewise, I hope you will feel comfortable coming to me with your concerns at conferences or online.

3. I will be transparent. I hesitate to use that word, given it’s one of the many overused buzzwords of our time, but I think it best describes my philosophy toward leadership. I make no effort to hide my intentions and I am perfectly comfortable laying my cards on the table. Through my personal blog, Twitter, ALA Connect, FB, etc. I will make my goals as clear as possible so that you can understand my actions and trust my decisions. Concurrently, I hope you will feel the same openness toward me in letting me know what you need from your ALA Council.

If you any additional questions about me, why I’m running for ALA Council, or my goals, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Link: http://connect.ala.org/node/66417 

If you’re attending ALA Midwinter next week, I hope you’ll join the ACRL New Members Discussion Group for a moderated panel on the role of professional organizations in the professional life of academic librarians. The panel will be Sunday, January 27 at 10:30 in the Westin Hotel, Elliot Bay. Tyler Dzuba of the University of Rochester, River Campus libraries will be moderating a panel that will include:

• Suzy Palmer, Dean of the Greenwood Library at Longwood University
• Coral Sheldon-Hess, Web Services Librarian at the University of Alaska Anchorage
• Nan Schichtel, Information Literacy & Outreach Librarian at Grand Rapids (MI) Community College
• Gene Springs, Business Information Services Librarian at Rutgers University Libraries.

Panel description: 

Where is the common ground between our roles in organizations like ACRL and our day-to-day work as academic librarians? How can we translate our professional service into practical skills from 9 to 5? Join ACRL’s New Members Discussion Group in a moderated conversation about the relationship between our professional careers and our day jobs. A panel of four academic librarians will share their experiences, offer advice, and answer questions. We hope you’ll join us!

Link to ALAMW Scheduler

You can read my full review in this month’s College & Research Libraries.

Because if 100% of your time is devoted to maintaining the status quo, when do you invent the future?

-Andromeda Yelton, You Say You Want a Revolution: ebooks, licensing, and the future

This quote comes at the end of a discussion of ebook licensing and the future of digital text. The topic is important in its own right, but I want to focus on the bit at the end regarding Google’s 20% time, or as it’s technically called, “Innovation Time Off.” Much has been said about this practice over the years and at the risk of spending my 20% time (i.e. my lunch break) beating the proverbial horse, I want to draw your attention to it.

If you are not familiar with the idea, Google’s Innovation Time Off is based on a practice at 3M that allows employees to spend a certain amount of their time at work focusing on whatever they feel might be beneficial to the company. According to a 2007 article from the NYTimes, staff form “grouplets” to work on pet projects, “these grouplets have practically no budget, and they have no decision-making authority. What they have is a bunch of people who are committed to an idea and willing to work to convince the rest of the company to adopt it.” The only stipulation for using Innovation Time Off is that employees must keep the company updated on the progress of their project.

NPR has a similar practice called “Serendipity Day.” According to Andrew Phelps of the Nieman Journalism Lab, “Serendipity Day is actually spread out over three days — and for something labeled as spontaneous, there’s a lot of planning. The staff is given two or three weeks to think about what to build. The ramp-up begins the afternoon before Serendipity Day, and the presentations happen the morning after. That way, all eight hours of the main day are spent building.” Because Google’s model would not work for NPR given its size and budget, Serendipity Day is a less resource-intensive alternative to 20% time. Yet it still gives staff the ability to exercise innovative thinking on a regular schedule and to share the results with colleagues.

And there is, in my opinion, the gem of the idea: sharing. It is not so much the scheduled time for innovative/creative thinking that matters. It is the required show-and-tell that follows. Both Google and NPR ask only that their employees share the results of their creative work. It doesn’t matter if the ideas are good or bad. That isn’t the point of the exercise. The point (and the hope) is that the ideas, once out in the open, will collide with other ideas, other hunches, and hopefully become part of what Stuart Kauffman calls “the adjacent possible” : the entirety of possible connections that make innovation possible and help ideas to “level up” (see also, Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From (2010), Chapter 1).

Library leaders current and future should take this practice to heart. Not only does it relieve you of the responsibility of being the lead innovative force in your institution, but it allows your organization to remain flexible, helps you to identify unexpected solutions to essential problems, and more efficiently utilize the creative potential of your employees. Ask yourself: “When will we invent the future?”

Special thanks to Janel Kinlaw (@jcwlib) for bringing the NPR story to my attention. Photo credit: johnxlibris on flickr

2012 was the year of the MOOC. Massive open online courses remained in the center of the digital spotlight starting with the announcement of MITx in February, throughout all the discussions of badges, and to the recent news that at least one online platform is offering to connect high performing students directly to employers.

This year, as you think about your resolutions (or “projects”), consider enrolling in a MOOC or taking a self-directed course of study online. Why? Especially as academic librarians, I believe we ought to be familiar with these emerging landscapes of instruction. We may find ourselves there one day or, in the least, we will certainly encounter students who have been there.

Here is a list of course catalogs to get you started:

• edX (Harvard, MIT, and others)
• Coursera
• Udacity
• Udemy
• 650 Free Online Course, from OpenCulture
• ALA’s Online Learning Center

photo credit: Gideon Burton on flickr.

I don’t normally make New Year resolutions. I’m of the opinion that if you are deeply passionate about changing a habit, you would have already started. So instead, I like to make a list of potential projects. And 2013 almost certainly will be a year of big projects. Here are a few, in no particular order:

• Spend more time reflecting on the future of libraries: write and do more better (which includes working more closely with ALA/ACRL)
• Continue a habit of reading: I read more books last year than the past 5 years combined
• Bring library professionals together often: and for the purpose of improving our world (nothing less)
• Always be mindful that time is a restricted resource: you can’t get more of it, so don’t give it away to just anyone or anything
• Streamline my online presence/tools: I like to do a complete makeover every 2-3 years
• Become a father: in mind and in fact… it’s five months away
• Kill the bamboo: it’s taking over my backyard
• Shift professional focus to teaching: the benefits of this go far beyond just the experience gained

There are other projects patiently queued on my to-do list, but these are the ones that have been on my mind most of late. Here’s wishing you and yours a productive, innovative, and immersive new year.

photo credit: ell brown on flickr.