The Academic Library is dead. Long live the Academic Library

The Academic Library is dead. Long live the Academic Library. The phrase, typically given as the “The King is dead. Long live the King” in response to the death of a king, and hailing his successor, is appropriate for thinking about the academic library of the 21st century. Like the old king and the new king, there are similarities in role and purpose but the new king represents some fundamental changes; a new day with new opportunities and new promise. While some in the media and even in our own profession have predicted the complete death of the academic library, I think the news of its death is, as Mark Twain said, “an exaggeration”.

It is true that higher education and the world itself have gone through fundamental changes and continues to evolve on a seemingly daily basis.  Higher education is being challenged by new models, public opinion, media spin, government policy and legislation, and rapid technological change. Radical and continual decreases in funding, changing demographics, increased resource costs, and changes demanded by accreditation associations all have contributed to the mood to re-think/recast the higher education arena, which is the arena in which the academic library lives.

While higher education has indeed changed and will change even more, many of the fundamental roles of libraries have been surprisingly consistent and enduring. Libraries still provide collections of information resources, staff, facilities, services, and technologies, all to facilitate engagement with information and ideas, learning, scholarship, innovation, and creation. That said, academic libraries have taken on additional roles such as scholarly publishing, data management and data curation, large-scale digitization, and closer partnerships with faculty in student engagement and learning, and in faculty scholarship and research. Libraries always have been places of learning, intellectual engagement, creation, and dissemination. These are part of the enduring thread that ties the academic library of the past to the academic library of the future.

What is the academic library of the future?

A variety of challenges are shaping the academic library in today's colleges and universities. Some view that academic libraries are in crisis. I rather think that academic libraries are more alive and robust today than at any point in their history. Challenges can serve to dissipate complacency and to refine and reinvigorate our role and to allow the librarians and staff to play an increasingly more significant role in the educational and public purpose of the university.

The Library’s de facto hegemony as the purveyor of information is gone. Some bemoan the fact that “Google” stole our business. Regardless of what one feels about Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, or Facebook, they all have played a predominant role in making the world at large aware that everyone is an information consumer, and in many cases, a creator/provider as well.  They have made the world global in a new way. This new awareness of the value of, and need for, information can and should provide us with opportunities to exploit our knowledge and expertise to draw users to our rich resources; our collections, our staff, and our services.

Historically we have talked about libraries primarily in terms of collections, facilities, budgets, circulation counts, staffing, etc.  While this model served the academy well in the past and these are elements that are still important, this King is dead.

In thinking about the academic research library of the future I want to talk about it differently I want to talk about it in terms of its qualities or attributes and in some cases its aspirations. 

The academic library of the future is characterized by

Engagement: The academic library is engaged. It is engaged across the entire spectrum of the university and with higher education, locally, nationally, and globally. The library must be involved, in conversation with, and work with, all of the work of the university. We must be intimately part of the undergraduate experience, graduate students and also the work of the senior researcher. We must be engaged with athletics – scholar athletes, and with the arts. We must work with the VP of Research, the deans of the colleges, the research centers, student government and clubs, etc. The work of the university is our work in that we must understand the information /knowledge needs of all of these and lend our hand in supporting their work.

University aligned: The academic research library must be aligned with the values, goals, and strategic priorities of the university and likewise develop values, goals, and strategic priorities that advance the work of the university. We do not exist in and of ourselves. While we have individual ways of operationalizing these values, goals, and priorities we check these operationalizations against what the university community needs.

Collaboration: The library cannot be self-sufficient. The attitude of self-sufficiency is arrogant and certainly does not build community. The library must collaborate across campus with other learning, teaching, and research partners.  It must also work locally, regionally, nationally to build scalable and sustainable solutions. Examples where collaboration is necessary are stewardship of legacy print collections, digital preservation, data management/data curation, large-scale digital libraries, global learning communities. Collaboration takes work, trust, talented people, and sometimes money. We must be strategic in our partnerships so that we maximize our efforts for the benefit of the university and our students, teachers, researchers.

Embracing Change: Change is the hallmark of life. Rapid and disruptive change is the hallmark of now. The library must embrace change as an opportunity; an opportunity to meet new challenges, change current practices, explore new opportunities, move forward. Embracing change means we are alive and growing.

Responsive and Nimble: Paired with the idea of constant change, some of which we cannot control, the library must be nimble in responding to change. We must not be constrained by historic or past models of collections or services in making decisions to meet new demands. We must not build organizational structures that can’t be changed in response to new needs. We must not plan to plan. We don’t have the luxury of taking a year to make a decision on most things. We won’t always slay the sacred cow, but we need to be able to ask the hard questions and make appropriate and sometimes difficult choices. Like change, some people find it difficult to be responsive and nimble (after all we are people of habit). How many of you park  your car in the same place, sit in the same chair at meetings, etc.). I think it is the role of library leadership to support people well in times of change.  Change affects all from the custodian to the Dean.

Innovation and a Can-Do Attitude: Our students, faculty, researchers live with constant innovation in technology and services, mostly driven by the consumer marketplace. If they cannot accomplish what they need with an existing company or service, they go elsewhere.  The Library must be constantly innovating; be in constant beta mode. NO is not a word that is tolerated well so we must have a can-do attitude in our approach to helping students and faculty be successful.

High-touch/high-tech: Users expect and need a high touch and high-tech approach. While not everyone will need an in-person interaction every time they come to the library, or interact with the library virtually, the expectation is that the library and library staff are approachable and are eager to help with the work in which the user is engaged. High-touch builds community and inclusion. Because we live in a highly technological age the library must be where the users are in terms of technology, and in some cases out ahead, so that we can respond to anticipated need. The library and its services must work for the iPhone and the Android tablet, and the high-end graphics-intensive workstation. We must embed ourselves in appropriate apps and web applications. We must use these technologies ourselves and be comfortable and fluent with them. We expect students to learn to understand the library and some of its weird jargon and ways – we must feel comfortable with the tools they use too.

User-centered: We must meet the needs of our users. We must work constantly to understand the needs of our users (all of our users) and design, change, evolve services and collections to help users be successful. We do not design services primarily for our needs/convenience.

Being Smart:  The academic library will survive and thrive based on its people. The library staff is the library’s greatest asset. All members of the library organization must contribute to its success – to think and work smart. We must support and develop our staff from entry level position to the Dean in order to continue to move forward. We must provide a work atmosphere and a work culture that support the staff in the critical work they do in working with students, faculty, and researchers. This takes time and money.

We must also help our users to be smart. We must provide them with critical information skills and technology skills for the future. (Critical thinking, information fluency)

Values-driven: We must adhere to and live our stated values:  These values will be ones of the library profession (patron privacy, freedom to read/freedom of information, collection and preservation of knowledge), human values (open communication, trust, respect, diversity), leadership and business values (creativity and risk taking, great customer service, staff development), etc. These values help provide the raison d’etre and esprit de corps for what we do.  If we espouse values and do not follow them then we have failed in our mission and our strategic directions and work will falter and be damaged. We will lose the trust of our users.

Sustainable and Scalable: Since we are unable to mint our own currency, we must build models of collections and services that are sustainable over time and scalable to meet the needs of a large university. This is where many of the points above come in (innovation, nimbleness, collaboration/partnership). Sustainability in terms of “green” must also be a priority for the library- reducing the carbon footprint, waste stream, and costs.

Global and Diverse: We must be global and diverse in our outlook, our service, our collections, our policies. We live in a global world and the curriculum increasingly reflects a global perspective. Global resources does not mean the same as international- we must represent the world to reflect our users’ needs and our commitment. Our staff must also be global in their perspective and be comfortable in a diverse environment.

World-Class:  What does it mean to be a “world-class” research library? In the past, we would have said that was Harvard, or Oxford, or Berkeley, or MIT. More often than not our view of a “world-class” university library was defined by the size, depth, and breadth of its collection.  In today’s digital world the onsite collection issue is not nearly as salient, as there are ways to provide ready access to much of the world’s knowledge whether you are a researcher in a small town like Waterville, ME, Memphis, TN, or right here in Los Angeles. I think today the World-Class library is characterized by its staff, its services, its innovation, it willingness to be engaged across the campus as a key learning partner. It also means a constant striving to be better – to do the best in all that we do. It certainly is not the attitude of the “Rolls-Royce” – I’ve arrived but more in the attitude of Southwest Airlines – great customer service with a constant learning and improvement cycle.

Leadership: The Library has a leadership role that it can and should play. Because the Library belongs to the whole campus (not vested in one department/division), we have the opportunity to lead without stepping on too many toes. Major university libraries have taken the opportunity to step to the foreground in providing state, national, and international leadership in the library space and must continue to do so in strategic and collaborative ways.

Advocacy: The academic research library must play a strong advocacy role, not only in the university but in the state, the nation, and the world.   We live in a world where governmental forces want to limit rights, sequester/block /censor information. We have publishers who want to change copyright for their benefit and not ours or our users.  There are forces that want suppress publications that show certain groups in positive light (LGBT, Muslims, etc).  The library must play a strong advocacy role around freedom of information, open access, copyright and intellectual property, diversity, and fairness. 

It might be easy to say that all modern organizations need to have these attributes, and for the most part, I would agree. In the past we have defined the library in terms of collections, buildings, services, with a predominant emphasis on collections- we were in the collection building business. Today that is not our business. We are in the learning, teaching, and research business. Our collections, our staff, our facilities, our technologies are all tools that help us in that business.

Let me switch gears and talk about the future library in terms of some more tangible elements:

Collections: Collections will continue to be a critical focus of the academic library with digital collections being a primary focus though print will play an important role in some disciplines- e.g. the arts. Some of the changes in print will be caused by market forces beyond our control, e.g. e-books (in various formats) and e-journals (almost complete).  Other changes are the result of large-scale digital collections (HathiTrust, ECCO, EEBO, etc.) or aggregations (Digital Public Library of America and Europeana). Other changes are because of new forms of media (MP4, streaming audio and video) blogs, twitter, etc. and new forms of scholarship which are moving beyond print.

Research libraries have large legacy print collections and a move to a collaborative/shared model is necessary for long-term sustainability. We already see this with journals (West Storage Trust, CIC), monographs (Maine Shared Collections, Eastern Academic Scholars Trust, and HathiTrust) and government documents (Association of Southeast Research Libraries).  We will see this continue to scale up to a national solution.  Faculty acceptance of shared print models is directly tied to access and delivery- the US is geographically large so delivery models need to match.

Special Collections will increase in strategic value and will be a distinguishing mark of a research university. SC must engage students as well as faculty, external researchers, and the community. We must showcase our treasures. SC provides opportunities for outreach and funding as well as collaborative research projects that build inter-institutional cooperation as well as community research partnerships. This is an interesting and challenging area of the future – collecting and preserving the physical heritage but also ingesting new digital special collections and making them available.  

Services: The services the library provides will constantly evolve. We will probably still be circulating some books in 10 years but not necessarily laptops or even things like Kindles.  The need for information literacy training and research help will not go away and the library will have to find ways to embed elements of these in various services.  We will never have sufficient staff to meet with all the classes we should. We will need to experiment with new technological or partner solutions to provide a scalable and sustainable service (MOOCS or something like that).  It is doubtful that we will have “reserve services” or scanning services – other than specialized options in 10 years. We will probably do more print on demand or purchase on-demand options.

Facilities: We live in a hybrid world of physical and virtual. While our students and many of us spend hours online, the physical library still is a critical value to a research university. Facilities have become less print collection focused and more focused on learning spaces. Spaces may be technology-rich or quiet and contemplative. The library can and should be the intellectual center of campus; that place on campus where intellectual curiosity runs rampant and students and faculty engage in conversation with each other and with ideas ranging from Plato to astrophysics, race relations to aesthetics, queer theory to economics, presidential politics to poetry. Today, more than ever, library as place plays a critical role in the educational process. Libraries are not mere study halls but laboratories of scholarship, creativity, and innovation where people interact with information and ideas.

The 21st-century research library should have a reading room that provides contemplative space to read, think and write. The library should also be replete with technology enabled spaces to access information, create digital projects, and communicate and collaborate with others. Space for individual study, group study, and casual conversation over coffee, space for lectures and special events, and places to display physical and digital collections are all critical parts of the 21st-century library.

Technology: Technology is ubiquitous and fluid. We live in a technology saturated world and the saturation level will increase, some in ways that we have yet to imagine. The library must provide the technology that our users expect to be able to do their work (writing, research, creating, innovation, inventing). Staff must also have the technology they need and of the types that our users have.  We must have a robust infrastructure that continues to be refreshed to meet the bandwidth needed. We need 99.9% reliability.

Staff: Staff is the key resource of the library and the key to the library’s success. Librarians and staff need to be in constant learning mode and the library needs to support that learning with professional development funds (conferences, online courses, etc.). When positions open they need to be examined to see if they should be deployed in new ways and then we must hire the most talented people to fill those positions. We must create a work environment and compensation that helps these people to succeed and contribute to the mission of the library and the university.

Funding: Funding, while always an issue, will increasingly be a driving force in changing what happens in academic libraries.  Collection costs for more than 20 years have risen at a rate far higher than inflation and campus supplied budgets.  University campuses are receiving less money from state government. It will be increasingly necessary to raise funds to support operations and to find grant funding for specific projects. There will be a need overtime to endow positions to ensure that we have the staff resources that we will need to serve the university community.

Conclusion

Drawing this all together (Connecting the dots)

The academic library of the future needs to be one of engagement, collaboration, re-imagination.

The future of the academic library is tied to engagement with the university community which we serve. Engagement means conversation with students, faculty, research, administrators, with funders, with policymakers, and media pundits – not once but on an ongoing basis.  The Dean and the Executive Council can set the tone, and provide leadership and support, but engagement is everyone’s job. Libraries don’t fall into the guaranteed category of “death and taxes”. We will be an essential part of the university’s mission and the university’s success as we show the fundamental and indispensable role that we play in the learning, teaching, and research process. We won’t calculate a return on investment (ROI) that reduces facilities, collections, and staff to mere numbers (though spending our resources wisely is key). We can and should calculate an ROE- Return on Engagement that shows that the Library is integral part of the university – a strategic asset that helps ensure success and long-term sustainability. The Return on Engagement shows that we make a measurable difference to students (in and out of the classroom), graduate students, faculty and researchers, administrators, -the business, cultural, and scientific community, the world.

The academic library is not a solo enterprise. Our future is a community and collaborative one. Collaboration will involve the whole of the university community. Collaboration will also involve building collaborative partnerships with regional, national, and international partners around collections, services, technologies, etc. Collaboration is built on trust and mutual respect – it comes from building community (engagement, conversation, shared values).  Community takes time to build. It is a job for everyone – a job that is local in its touch, global in its outlook.

Re-imagine, is for some a scary word, or at least worrisome. Will the academic library of the future be one that I recognize – one that I feel that I can be part of? Like my opening statement of “the academic library is dead. Long live the academic library,” re-imagination is a way of looking at the essential role of the library and imagining new ways of making the library essential to our users; not essential for its own sake but essential in providing users with the resources and skills to learn, invent, create, teach, and thrive in a global world.  Libraries have always changed; we have always re-imagined our services, our collections, our roles.

We must engage, collaborate, re-imagine all the time.

Appreciating Library Support Staff

Everyone likes to feel appreciated and unfortunately the workplace is often one of those places where people feel marginalized or devalued. Libraries are no different. While staff at any level of the organization can feel marginalized or devalued, I am particularly interested in thinking about library support staff.  In many library organizations support staff outnumber librarians two to one.  The work and the mission of the library is strongly supported and enabled by the work of the support staff and it is critical that they feel supported and valued both by the librarians as well as the Dean/University Librarian.

Every library that I have worked at there has been some sort of divide between librarians and library support staff. Sometimes this divide has been insignificant and at times it has been crippling. Significant divides and animosity or resentment between librarians and library staff can be incredibly damaging to an organization and is one of the things that leads to bad staff morale and burnout. While minimizing this divide is important there are many other things that can affect support staff morale.

As a library leader there are things that you can do to make support staff feel valued and supported.

Know their name:  Regardless of the size of the organization, nothing sounds as good as hearing your name, in a positive greeting, from your supervisor, director/dean.  I know this can be difficult in large libraries but believe me, it does make a difference.

Allow them to lead: In many organizations support staff are in jobs with no chance for advancement, without changing jobs.  It is important to provide opportunities for support staff to grow and one way to do this is to provide them with leadership opportunities. These leadership opportunities can be in the library, leading a specific project, or a project on campus.

Committee Service:  While some staff will see committee service within the library or at the college/university level to be burdensome, many will relish the opportunity to contribute their expertise and their voice.  If as the Dean/Director you appoint staff to a committee within the library, it is important that the committee chair sees the staff member as an equal and vital member of the committee. If necessary, remind the chair.

Staff Development:  At many institutions professional development dollars tend to flow towards librarians and administrators.  While it is critical that librarians stay current and professionally involved, it is also important to provide training and development opportunities for non-librarian staff.  This can be online webinars, local conference, training opportunities through HR, and if appropriate national conferences.  A library’s greatest asset is its people and investing in them is critical.

Additional responsibility/upward mobility:  If possible, it is important to identify staff who want to grow and to give them, HR rules allowing, increased responsibilities.  This will give them the experience they need to move to a higher level job.

Communication:  As a library dean I want everyone who works in the library to feel engaged and able to contribute to the library’s mission and vision. As much as possible communication should be ubiquitous so that everyone is included. There might be some push back from some that this provides too much email, but over communication is better than under communication, especially if it is used to make sure support staff are not 2^nd class citizens when it comes to knowing what it happening.

Public thank you:  It is important to say thank you for work well done to staff at all levels.  Support staff often work extremely hard without much of any acknowledgment of their contribution to the library.  While a salary increase is always welcome, a public acknowledgement of their contribution goes a long way to making staff feel an important part of the organization.

An open door:  I’ve always operated with an open door policy.  If I am in the office and not on the phone, on a delightfully engaging webinar, or in a meeting, then my door is open and staff across the library are encouraged to stop by.  While some might argue that they would never get any work done, the amount of “stopping by” isn’t huge. However knowing that the Dean is available to chat, answer a question, or be a sounding board is appreciated by staff.  When someone does stop by and asks a question or raises a concern, I always ask them if they’ve raised the issue/question with their supervisor so as not to undermine the reporting structure.  I have found that this approach has been a healthy approach to encouraging dialogue and allowing staff to know that they have the dean’s ear if they need it.

Building a Culture of Collaboration

People say that librarians are collaborative by nature and I think that for the most part this is true.  We regularly and easily lend from our collections, we willingly share our expertise, and our history shows successful collaborations such as OCLC, Digital Public Library of America, and the HathiTrust, to name but a few.

Collaboration has been a major part of my career, with one or more collaborative projects being a part of almost every job.  Most of these collaborations were multi-institutional with some projects having a defined begin and end date and others starting and expected to go on indefinitely. My first major collaboration was helping put together a resource sharing consortium (MORE) in Western Wisconsin. At Macalester I helped develop a metadata standard for e-journal collections for the CLIC consortium.  In Maine I helped build a collaborative collection development model for Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin, and developed the Maine Shared Collections initiative to provide long-term stewardship of print collections across the state.  At Cal State Fullerton I helped develop a partnership with Athletics for a new initiative to provide information literacy training for student athletes.  I partnered with classroom faculty to develop a new campus wide lecture series and with campus IT to develop a Makerspace.

While libraries and library staff are collaborative, our first allegiance is to our own libraries and our own institutions. We must be careful that this allegiance does not blind us to collaborations that, in the long run, will be beneficial.

In general, while academic institutions compete against each other for students, prestige, rankings, sports; their libraries do not compete in the same way.  Sure there is some good natured comparisons and benchmarking against each other. Libraries also compete with each other in recruiting the best staff.  This non-competitive spirit allows us to collaborate in ways that our parent institutions often cannot.

Collaborations between libraries, often, but not always, start at the Dean/University Librarian level. Talks about collaboration are often aspirational (wouldn’t it be great if…) or strategic (we need to accomplish …) and or course sometime they are a mix of both. For collaboration to be effective and successful, it is important relatively early on in the discussions to get some librarians/staff with operational experience into the discussions so as to think through/ferret out potential roadblocks as well as to build support for the project.

There are a number of elements that I think are helpful in building a culture of collaboration

·        Need: Typically collaboration grows out of some need; a need identified by the library or libraries, or perhaps by the institution (s) involved. The need should be big enough that a single institution cannot solve it alone, or should not solve it alone, or it is a need that should be solved at scale.

·        Healthy sense of self:  For collaboration to get off the ground, it is critical that a potential library feel that it has something to contribute to the collaboration/partnership. This something might be money, staff, space or expertise/enthusiasm.

·        Humility: Collaborative partnerships are often uneven. Too much ego in the room doesn’t help.  If one or more libraries feel they are there to solve or fix things for others then the collaboration may not be successful.

·        Time: Collaboration takes time; usually a significant amount of time and it is critical to support the staff involved in collaborative projects by providing then the time and other resources to make the collaboration successful.

·        Trust:  Collaboration takes trust on the part of all the partners.  Building trust comes through time, and in my opinion, meeting face to face, and not just via Skype of some other technology. As a Dean/UL it is also important to trust your own staff to do the work without micromanaging the collaboration.

·        Vision/daring: While some collaborative projects may be mundane, it is important to be daring and to envision something bigger or more radical.  Jim Neal, University Librarian Emeritus from Columbia often urged “radical collaboration” as a way of moving things forward in more dramatic ways.

·        Leadership: The Dean/UL provides one level of leadership but also must allow other librarians/staff to take on leadership roles in any collaborative projects. The Dean should be involved enough to show that that the collaboration is important but hands off enough to let the staff involved do their work.

Moving forward I’m looking forward to developing more collaborative projects and a culture that supports the type of work that only can be achieved as libraries and other partners work together.

Preach, Pray, or Die: Speaking up, Being Mindful, Following Your Passion

Who we are is shaped by our life experiences, our families, our friends, our religious and cultural traditions. I grew up in Eastern Canada in a religious tradition that was predominantly shaped by Methodism. Two degrees in religious studies also shaped my understanding of some of the world’s major religious traditions as well as my understanding of the world.  While I have been a librarian for more years than I can count, I often go back to my first degrees for inspiration or sometimes provocation.

The Eighteenth Century British cleric and theologian, John Wesley, expected that his Methodist ministers would be ready to preach, pray, or die at a moment’s notice.  While this might seem an odd mantra for a library blog, I think there are some interesting lessons that can be drawn from this saying.

Preach (Speak Up)

While librarians do not preach in the religious sense, we do speak, talk, advocate, and debate heatedly about libraries and their impact.  The idea that librarians are a quiet, reserved group, is a movie caricature, and one that should be discarded.

Over the years I’ve been told that I needed to have an “elevator speech” – a pithy two or three sentences about the library in case I had a couple of minutes to talk to the university president, a donor, a faculty member, or students.  I think the elevator speech idea is too simplistic, as if the work and impact of a university library can be so glibly distilled.  Rather I think there are a series of stories of impact that can and should be developed that provide a richer and more nuanced view of the library and the library staff and the work they do. People are seldom moved by facts and figures (number of books, or number of visitors) but rather they are moved by stories of what difference the building, the services, or parts of the collection have made to students or faculty, or the public.

Jim Neal, University Librarian emeritus, Columbia University, once stated in a presentation I attended, that every librarian should find a way to have a voice- to present their work, their ideas, and their impact beyond themselves. This is sage advice and one that I have been attempting to follow.

In today’s highly politicized environment it is even more important to speak up about things that matter. It is sometimes easy to think that one voice doesn’t matter but I’ve learned that every person’s voice counts, especially in changing the world for good.  This year, for the first time I participated in the Women’s March. Along with my daughter Rachel, we joined more than 650,000 others in Los Angeles to speak up for women, their rights and their role in our society.  It was amazing to see the passion of people to change the world for the better.

Pray (Be Mindful)

In today’s society there is, for many, a recognition that prayer, or meditation, or mindfulness plays an important role for individuals and for some communities. In my more than 30 years as a librarian, I have found that rather than prayer, meditation, or mindfulness, we often see busyness, frustration, exhaustion, and sometimes burnout. Our work life, our commute, our use of social media consume a greater and greater part of our day and week.  Each of us in the library profession want to make a difference, to do good work, to change our work and our world for the better, but we often feel frustrated or unable to move forward in a positive way. We often put off the important for the urgent.

One of the significant educational/professional development events in my career was the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians.  While the people in the program were interesting, the instructors were great, and the material was thought provoking, the most valuable part of the week long program, for me, was the opportunity to be reflective.  Where in our very busy work and personal lives do we have the opportunity to take five full days and think critically and reflectively about our work, our profession, and ourselves?

As I have some extra time these days, I have been reflecting on what is important to me, both personally and professionally. Are there projects that I’ve been wanting to do but I’ve put off for another day because of work, or fear of failure, or general busyness?  Are there friends and family that I’ve been neglecting because I’ve been so busy.

I’ve also been reflecting on people who are not like me and what their experience of the world is like. I live in a very diverse part of the US where the majority of people I see don’t look like me. Right now at Panera Bread where I’m sitting to write, I see a well-dressed African American man doing some work and I’m wondering how he feels in light of the arrest of two innocent African American men in Starbucks this week. I see Asian and Hispanic students and wonder how they experience the world and what sort of systemic prejudice they deal with on a regular basis. I think of my own adopted Hispanic children and think on how to make the world better for them.

Reflection, prayer, or mindfulness should lead us to awareness of ourselves and others and move us from inaction to action. It should lead to appreciation and thankfulness, and hopefully to some forward movement.

Or Die (Find Your Passion)

John Wesley expected that Methodist ministers would live in such a way that there would be no regrets if they died at any time.  I think the value of the “die” section of this mantra for us is not about dying but on how we spend our time and our passion while we have time.  

In general, librarians are very passionate individuals. We are passionate about many things: the right to privacy, the right to read anything and everything without interference, the needs of our communities and our students to name a few. Librarians, for the most part, are passionate about social justice, even if at times we get things wrong.  We want our world to be a better place. We want people to be treated fairly and equitably.

One of the things that I think plagues librarians is that we want to do everything. We are passionate about so many parts of our work and about so many issues in our country and world.  My challenge to myself is to focus part of this time of reflection on the one, two, or maybe three things to be really passionate about and to devote serious energy to. I am expecting that I will work another 10 years before I retire and I want these ten years to be meaningful for me, my family, my profession, and the world.

My challenge to all of you is to Speak up, Be Mindful, and Find Your Passion.

My life in libraries: an homage for National Library Week 2018

We come to the end of National Library week and our celebration of the many ways libraries contribute to our society. During National Library Week we rightly celebrate the role of libraries in society and the difference they make. We seldom talk about the difference libraries make on those of us who have spent our careers in them. This is my brief ramble on my life in libraries.

Having spent my whole adult life working in libraries, I will admit that I am biased.  I’m even one of those librarians who visit other libraries when on vacation, either in the US or abroad. As a kid I was an avid reader. I grew up in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, in Eastern Canada in an era where we had only two channels on TV and even Saturday morning cartoons weren’t always available. Books, for me, were a way to have a new adventure. I remember as a child going to the library with my mother to borrow books as books were expensive and my parents were poor and the library had hundreds to choose from.  I was fascinated by how many books there were and by the wonders of the card catalog.  I was also one of those nerdy kids that used the school library, especially in high school.

I never expected to be a librarian, I had wanted to be an architect until I took a drafting class. Growing up I was fascinated by both history and geography and went off to the University of Manitoba to study history and become a history professor.  After the first year with an incredibly awful history professor and a highly engaging religious studies professor I changed majors.  As one can imagine both history and religious studies were quite book intensive and I spent hours in the library.

In 1977 I went to San Diego to Point Loma Nazarene University; a wonderful camps of 90 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  As an international student (from Canada) I could only work on campus and the only person I knew in California was Dorothy Thomson, a librarian at Point Loma.  I went begging, hat in hand, for a job. In my two years there, I got some rigorous experience. I worked the circulation and reserves desk, checked in print and microform journals (on print Kardex cards) and in my second year, got to be a reference intern where I spent 20 hours a week providing reference service.  This was before any computers so I had to quickly learn all the periodical indexes and most of the reference collection. I also worked for Esther Schandorf, the head librarian, doing bibliographic verification for a major bibliography she was working on. This was my first introduction to OCLC on a then modern beehive terminal. The librarians started saying that I should be a librarian and I, the typical cocky grad student, said no thanks. 

Returning to Canada in 1979, with an MA in theology, I got a job at the University of Manitoba Libraries and applied to a PhD program at the University of Toronto.  Working in current periodicals and helping check-in 13,000 titles and claiming those that didn’t come, taught me the joy/frustration, and sometimes absolute crazy world of journals.  My supervisor said I should be a librarian. I said no as did the University of Toronto.

About a year later I went to work in the library at Canadian Nazarene College, serving as a jack of all trades.  I physically processed collections, shelved, learned to catalog, ordered books, and even assembled and disassembled shelving.  My mentor, Muriel Weston, a retired school librarian, can be credited with finally convincing me to go back to school to become a librarian.  She also helped me buy my first computer. Three successive and very intensive summers later, I graduated with an MLS from the University of Western Ontario in October 1985.

In 1986 I accepted a job as a reference and instruction librarian at Point Loma Nazarene University and once again returned to San Diego. Two years into the job I transitioned to be the cataloger and then the Head of Tech Services and Systems. One of the advantages of working at a smaller and understaffed library is that you get to do a wide variety of tasks. I did library instruction for the Nursing program and developed an interest in medical information. I did a significant amount of original cataloging and authority control and gained an appreciation for the intellectual exercise that it takes to be a great cataloger. One of the big jobs that shaped my career was automation and building a case for automating, choosing a system, doing retrospective conversion, barcoding a collection, and going live.  Every job since has had some aspect of library technology. My boss, library director, Jim Newburg, supported exploring new ideas and gave me many opportunities to grow. My colleagues Ann Rupert, Vernell Posey, Robin Lockerby, and Sharon Bull provided helpful insights to a relative newbie to the profession.

In 1994 I moved with my wife, and twin daughters to West St Paul MN.  During the next 9 years I worked at Northwestern College (Senior Reference Librarian and Systems Librarian), Chippewa Valley Technical College (Library Manager), and Macalester College (Team Leader for Collections Management). Library systems, played a predominant role during this time. I was instrumental in starting the MORE consortium in Western Wisconsin and wrote the RFP for its systems, and I led the systems migration for the 13 library, 8 institution CLIC consortium in MN.  I also had the opportunity to develop collections expertise both in monographs and serials, and had my first opportunity in managing and spending a budget of over $1 million dollars.  Library director Sheila Carlblom (Northwestern), library director Terri Fishel (Macalester) were both influential in my development as they afforded me many opportunities for interesting work. Library staff member Dani Roach (Macalester), a brilliant serials & Microsoft Access guru taught me much about the importance of the workplace environment as well as about diversity and inclusion.

In 2003 I moved, with my wife and three children, from Minneapolis/St Paul, MN to Waterville, ME to become the Director of Libraries at Colby College. In 2004 I finished my EdD in Higher Education Leadership from Nova Southeastern University and a few months later, in 2005 we adopted a sibling group of four from Colombia, South America.  Over the fourteen years that I spent at Colby I was privileged to have many opportunities that helped the three libraries grow in collections, services, and expertise. During my tenure we built an on-campus storage facility, did a comprehensive renovation of the main library, and built a digital media lab in the art and music library. I got to collaborate with colleagues and Bates College and Bowdoin College to build a shared collection that supported all three schools. In 2010 I wrote a successful $821K IMLS National Leadership Grant to devolve a print retention strategy with the 8 largest libraries in Maine. .At the state level, I spent 11 years as the Vice Chair of the Maine InfoNet Board, helping with strategic planning, expanding the reach of the consortium, and upgrading the ILS technology infrastructure.  In conjunction with directors from Bates and Bowdoin, helped start the NExpress consortium, a resource sharing consortium in ME, VT, and MA. Colby, being part of the Oberlin Group, I was able to participate in the annual Oberlin Library directors meetings which were a source of both inspiration and an opportunity to grow.

It is hard to note all of the library people in Maine who made an impact both personally and professionally. From the Colby Libraries, Joann Curtis Allen who never said no to any challenge big or small. Eileen Richards, my go to person for information on how things worked on campus, and genuinely funny and true friend.  Colby Librarians Marilyn Pukkila, Peggy Menchen, Sara Prahl, Alisia Wygan tand Darylne Provost to name a few. Bowdoin college librarian Sherrie Bergman with whom I had a Hanukkah lunch every year and her wonderful colleagues Judy Montgomery, Karl Fatig, and Carmen Greenlee. At Bates, VP Gene Weimers, and his colleagues Laura Juraska, John Harrison, and Sharon Saunders we’re influential in my time in Maine. My many colleagues on the Maine InfoNet Board; James Jackson Sanborn, Linda Lord, Jamie Ritter, Barbara McDade, Joyce Rumery, Judy Frost, David Nutty, Steve Podgajny, Sarah Campbell, Pauline Angione, and Dick Thompson.  These folks and I made a real difference for academic and public libraries in Maine and they continue to do so in my absence.

In 2017, I moved back to Southern CA, with my wife and four of the seven children, to become the Dean of the Library at Cal State Fullerton. We had severe budget challenges, and a building that was inadequate for 41,000 students. Greater Los Angeles area is a minority majority area with people from almost every ethnic and racial group from across the globe. CSUF is the most diverse place that I have worked, with more than half of the students being first generation students.  The students were wonderfully engaging; very happy for the opportunities that were provided. They came to the library in droves, with more than 1.75 million visits per year. I was privileged to work with a great, dedicated, and creative group of librarians and staff who were totally committed to making a difference for students. Even though my time at Fullerton was short I will carry very fond memories of the library and the students, and over time many I worked with will be added to the list of people who have shaped my life.

My life has been shaped by the libraries that I have worked at and by the librarians and library staff in each and every one. My daughter Rachel recently graduated with an MLIS from University of Western Ontario, so the tradition continues. I have also been heavily involved professionally in ALA, ACRL, and IFLA, as well as other related organization such as the Coalition for Networked Information, the Center for Research Libraries, SPARC, and the HathiTrust.  I have many friends and colleagues in small and large libraries across the United States and around the world, as well as colleagues in the technology and academic publishing space.  Notable people that have influenced me, to name a few: Jim Neal (Columbia), Mary Ellen Davis (ACRL), Courtney Young (Penn State), Trevor Dawes (Delaware), Maggie Farrell (UNLV), John Szabo (LA Public), Maureen Sullivan (Consultant), Rebecca Jones (Dysart and Jones), Jane Burke (ProQuest), Caroline Brazier (British Library), Pam Bailey & Irene Hoffman (OCLC). Each of these wonderful people and so many others are part of what makes libraries an exciting place to live and work and make a difference and they have made a difference in my life and career.