Two Years Ago by Leah the Librarian / CC-BY-NC

For new library school gradates, or for more seasoned librarians ready for a change, entering the job market can be an intimidating, frustrating experience. We hear that there are no jobs available, and that the few libraries that do advertise new openings are inundated with applications.

Perhaps less publicly, we also hear administrators express concerns about a lack of good candidates for important positions, and we notice some jobs being advertised for months or being re-posted, sometimes more than once. We notice ALA’s estimate of over 122,000 libraries in the United States, as well as its estimate that academic, public, and school libraries employ over 150,000 librarians (ALA does not estimate the number of librarians who work for special libraries, vendors, or other employers). It may also be worth noting that, although U.S. unemployment as a whole remains relatively high, employment rates appear to be stratified by education level: in 2010, the average unemployment rate among people with Master’s degrees was 4%.

Because we do not yet have access to reliable, real-time data, we are left with imperfect, occasionally confusing information. No one knows the actual employment rate among librarians or how satisfied librarians are with their jobs. Nor do we know how satisfied administrators are with the librarians they employ or the applicant pools for positions they hope to fill.

By looking at the past and the near future, and by studying the process of conferring Master’s degrees on prospective librarians, we can begin to think about strategies for ensuring that we, both individually and as a profession, are taking an efficient approach to matching libraries’ needs with the supply of library workers.

Should library schools admit fewer students? Is the admissions process sufficiently selective? Are library school curricula and graduation requirements too similar or too distinct? Are they providing their students with the skills they need in order to get hired and do useful work? Should there be licensing exams for librarians? What data would we need to collect in order to come up with useful answers to these questions?

I hope this essay makes a contribution to that discussion. My original idea for it was to build on existing analyses of ALA-accredited library programs, adding my own observations based, in part, on my status as a somewhat recent library school graduate (Drexel University, September 2007), first-time adjunct professor (I taught a course at Drexel’s library school this past summer), and potential faculty member (I am a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University’s library school).

That will have to wait for the second part of this essay. Before discussing how library schools might better serve public interests and their students’ needs, we need to make sure we have reliable data about current library programs. The rest of part one is devoted to the story of that data.

The Librarian Job Market: Projections

According to the latest data (2008) from the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 159,900 librarians and in 2018 there will be 172,400, a projected growth rate of 7.8% (between 7% and 13% is considered average). The anticipated number of job openings due to growth and replacement needs is 54,500, with 12,500 openings attributable to new jobs being created and 42,000 due to attrition.¹

We have been hearing about the graying of the profession for a long time, a factor that will contribute significantly to roughly one quarter of all current librarians leaving the profession by 2018. Who will be hired to fill those positions? What qualifications will they be expected to possess?

Right now, 84% of librarian jobs require a Master’s degree, 13% require a Bachelor’s, and 2% an Associate’s, and new job postings appear to indicate an increasing expectation that applicants will have earned a graduate degree in a library-related field. According to Nazi Torabi’s review of research by Robert K. Reeves and Trudi Bellardo Hahn, most current employers are requiring an MLS or MLIS, though even a Master’s degree is not sufficient. In addition, writes Torabi, “experience, either through internships, co-op programs, or part-time or full-time employment, is essential for new graduates seeking employment.”

As mentioned above, the BLS expects employers to need 54,500 new librarians in the ten years spanning 2008 to 2018. We can represent that need as requiring 5,450 new Master’s-level graduates per year (54,500 divided by 10).

If library schools were to continue conferring 5,478 degrees per academic year, which is the average number of MLS and MLIS degrees they awarded from 1997-98 through 2006-07, there would be roughly as many new librarians as new jobs for librarians.² Based on the years the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) makes available for comparison, 5,478 Master’s-level library degrees per year would be near the midpoint given library schools’ relatively recent history:

• 1970-71: 7,001
• 1975-76: 8,037
• 1980-81: 4,859
• 1985-86: 3,564

One concern, at least for recent and future library school students, is that library schools have already begun conferring more Master’s-level degrees. The number of degrees conferred increased every year between 1999-2000 and 2007-08. In addition, in the two academic years following the ten years included in the average above (1997-98 through 2006-07), Master’s-level graduates from library schools numbered 7,162 (2007-08) and 7,091 (2008-09). That not only makes the job market especially competitive for recent graduates, it also means, if the number 54,500 was correct, that library schools should aim to graduate roughly 40,320 for the eight years remaining in the BLS ten-year projection, an average of 5,040 for the academic years 2009-10 through 2016-17.

There are several problems with the information presented so far in this essay. Before continuing, it seems worth discussing three primary issues.

1. Unlike medical schools, which faced pressure not to produce an oversupply of physicians, there appears to be no pressure on library schools to graduate only as many librarians as will be needed to fill vacancies

As with the job market as a whole, a limited level of unemployment among degreed librarians increases employers’ ability to hire selectively among the most qualified candidates while simultaneously decreasing salaries. When they produce more librarians than are needed, library schools make libraries happy by vetting, and providing initial training for, a more highly skilled, cheaper work force.

The key for library schools is to avoid granting so many degrees that the entry-level market for librarians becomes significantly more competitive than comparable job markets. If a disproportionate number of potential applicants perceive librarianship as offering worse prospects than comparable alternatives, then it becomes increasingly likely that the overall number of library school applicants will decrease and that library schools will have to compete with each other more aggressively for the most highly qualified applicants.

Although library school students are already graduating into a difficult job market, it seems at this point to be no worse than the job market facing law school graduates. While the salary potential for the most highly qualified new librarians is nowhere close to the salary potential for the most highly qualified new lawyers, the risk is nowhere near as great in terms of the amount of debt encumbered by the average student or the time commitment required to complete school. On a risk-adjusted basis, it is entirely possible that library school is a safer decision.

2. Economic projections are notoriously difficult

Projecting what will happen tomorrow is incredibly difficult, let alone what will happen next year or over the next decade. But selecting 2008 as the initial year for a projection may have been especially inauspicious given what happened that year: a decline in U.S. gross domestic product, along with the start of an unemployment spike and a stock market crash. Projections are worthwhile in that they help to provide some direction, and there is no reason to believe the Department of Labor projections were based on anything but the best available information. But, as librarians well know, sometimes the best available information will only get you so far.

3. Figuring out how many people graduate each year from an American Library Association-accredited program with a Master’s degree in a library-related field is surprisingly difficult

I thought this would be the easy part of this essay. With the help of a Presidential Task Force on Library Education, ALA’s Committee on Accreditation updated its Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies in 2008 and released a statement of Core Competencies in Librarianship in 2009; it also released a revised second edition of its Accreditation Process, Policies, and Procedures in 2011. As is demonstrated in a Library Journal article by Norman Oder on the Presidential Task Force on Library Education and in the Committee on Accreditation’s own Standards Review blog, many within the information professions take the accreditation process seriously, and there can be significant debates surrounding accreditation policy.

ALA’s Office of Accreditation helps to vet applicants for the External Review Panelist pool, and also supports the accreditation process by maintaining a directory of currently accredited programs, as well as a list of all programs accredited since 1925. However, no one at ALA officially knows how many students graduate each year from the programs it accredits. When I asked for this information, I was directed to ALISE, the Association for Library and Information Science Education, which produces an annual Statistical Report.

The ALISE reports, which are compiled from questionnaires submitted annually by each accredited program, provide a great deal of data and analysis. However, I discovered a few problems when I tried to make use of ALISE data for this project:

1. It is proprietary and accessible only to ALISE members. Though the University of North Carolina provides public access to the Statistical Reports for 1997-2004, several of ALISE’s more recent reports are inaccessible to me, despite my connections to Rutgers and Drexel. Fair use seems sufficient for me to share the data I most care about—the number of graduates from each of the accredited library programs for each of the past ten years—but there is no reason to assume most readers would be able to verify any claims I make about the data.
2. It appears to be inaccurate. The individual number of graduates for each accredited program, when summed, does not equal the number given as the overall total for reports covering the 1999-2000 (off by 8), 2000-2001 (off by 13), 2001-2002 (off by 19), or 2002-2003 academic years (off by 9).
3. It is incomplete. The 2007 report, covering the 2005-2006 academic year, is unedited and unreleased, while the data for the 2008 report has not yet been compiled from that year’s questionnaires. The ALISE web page for its Statistical Reports lists both as being “for future release.”
4. It does not match the data the schools reported to the National Center for Education Statistics. Moreover, in some years it is higher and other years it is lower, so it does not seem to be differing in a predictable way (such as NCES including data from non-accredited programs).

• 1999-2000: 4,877 (ALISE “total”) or 4,885 (ALISE sum) vs. 4,577 (NCES)
• 2000-2001: 4,953 (ALISE “total”) or 4,940 (ALISE sum) vs. 4,727 (NCES)
• 2001-2002: 4,923 (ALISE “total”) or 4,904 (ALISE sum) vs. 5,113 (NCES)
• 2002-2003: 5,175 (ALISE “total”) or 5,184 (ALISE sum) vs. 5,295 (NCES)

IPEDS Data: Annual number of graduates from each ALA-accredited program, 2000-01 through 2009-10

For these reasons, it does not currently make sense to use ALISE data as the basis for answering questions about the relationship between library schools and the library job market. Fortunately, an alternative to the ALISE data is available through the NCES Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Data Center.³ IPEDS uses Classification of Instruction Programs (CIP) codes, which for the most part are extraordinarily useful in figuring out how many people graduated from each of the ALA-accredited library programs in each of the last several years. The last three CIP code revisions—1990, 2000, and 2010—have the same code number for Library Science, 25.

Among accredited programs, all report graduates for the Library Science classification except the University at Albany-SUNY, the University of Michigan, the University of Missouri, and the University of Puerto Rico. I have written to each of these schools and included their information in the following table.

Some Observations About the Data

My goal for this essay was not to engage in detailed statistical analysis. Rather, I wanted to verify that useful data is available for free from a readily accessible source, a necessary step before progressing to part two of this essay. However, before discussing part two, it seems useful to make a few observations about the data and ask a few questions that may eventually lead to useful information.

• If you rank the largest classes for each school by size, the top ten graduating classes between 2000-01 and 2009-10 are:
  1. 465 (San Jose State University, 2009-10)
  2. 456 (San Jose State University, 2006-07)
  3. 448 (San Jose State University, 2007-08)
  4. 437 (San Jose State University, 2008-09)
  5. 359 (University of North Texas, 2006-07)
  6. 356 (University of North Texas, 2009-10)
  7. 338 (San Jose State University, 2005-06)
  8. 315 (University of North Texas, 2008-09)
  9. (tie) 308 (San Jose State University, 2004-05)
  10. (tie) 308 (University of North Texas, 2007-08)

  All ten classes appear to be primarily attributable to two administrators. Ken Haycock was director of the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University from 2005 until 2010, and Herman L. Totten has been dean of the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science since 2005.

  This raises two questions: Is it a good thing for the profession for administrators to be able to position their schools as outliers in the production of ALA-accredited Master’s degree recipients? And if it is not, are there remedies that would avoid creating even greater issues than the problem they would be intended to address?

• It may be interesting to see if the number of graduates from a program relates to its perceived quality, a measure readily available through U.S. News:
  

  U.S. News ranked 50 master’s degree programs in the United States that are accredited by the American Library Association. The rankings are based solely on the results of a fall 2008 survey sent to the dean of each program, the program director, and a senior faculty member in each program.

  The questionnaires asked individuals to rate the academic quality of programs at each institution as outstanding (5), strong (4), good (3), adequate (2), or marginal (1). Individuals who were unfamiliar with a particular school’s programs were asked to select “don’t know.” Scores for each school were totaled and divided by the number of respondents who rated that school.

• Does the recent increase in the number of library school graduates seem to correlate more closely with endogenous factors, such as the iSchool movement or the increasing emphasis on online education, or with exogenous factors, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics study or broad economic trends?

Looking ahead to part two

The significant variation in the number of students in accredited library programs, along with the rapid increase in the number of students who receive their library training without ever meeting one of their professors in person, harks back to library education at this point in the last century. Melvil Dewey’s personal influence began to wane after the first few years of the 20th century and Andrew Carnegie was already very actively funding libraries, leaving something of a void in library education just as demand was increasing. There were few training programs we would think of today as library schools, so many of the people hired to work as librarians received their education through correspondence-based programs.

In 1919, the Carnegie Corporation hired Charles C. Williamson to assess library education and make recommendations for how it might best support libraries and their users. In 1923, he published what is generally known as the Williamson Report, though its official title is Training For Library Service A Report Prepared For The Carnegie Corporation Of New York.⁴ Williamson’s findings and suggestions led to the Carnegie Corporation funding the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago, which conferred the first Ph.D. in Library Science, and played a pivotal role in establishing the standards for library education that arguably remain in place today.⁵  As noted above, ALA began accrediting library schools in 1925.

Working together, ALA and the Carnegie Corporation were increasing demand through advocacy for libraries—specifically, by funding new libraries—and also through advocacy for librarians by investing in their educational resources: new schools: dedicated, better trained faculty; modern textbooks; and updated, evidence-based curricula. Meanwhile, they were decreasing supply by adding de facto regulation in the form of library school accreditation, a limitation on supply that continues today. From the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11 Edition entry for librarians:

A master’s degree in library science (MLS) is necessary for librarian positions in most public, academic, and special libraries. School librarians may not need an MLS but must meet State teaching license requirements…. States generally have certification requirements for librarians in public schools and local libraries, though there are wide variations among States. School librarians in 20 States need a master’s degree, either an MLS or a master’s in education with a specialization in library media. In addition, over half of all States require that school librarians hold teacher certifications, although not all require teaching experience. Some States may also require librarians to pass a comprehensive assessment. Most States also have developed certification standards for local public libraries, although in some States these guidelines are voluntary.

These are not the only conditions minimizing competition and protecting working librarians from termination. Librarians may also belong to a union, earn tenure (or quasi-tenure), or hold Civil Service commissioned positions. While occupational licensing among librarians is not as organized as it is in fields like medicine or law or the financial industry, it may be worth investigating if librarianship could benefit from more licensing or less, and, if any licensing at all is beneficial (either to the public, to librarians, or both), how it might best be organized.⁶

Finally, it seems worth investigating who is educating librarians and how the educators have themselves been taught. Library science is part humanities, part social science, and, at times in the past, and perhaps in the near future as well, part information science, and even computer science. Figuring out how these tensions might be balanced has everything to do not only with producing an appropriate supply of new librarians, but also ensuring these new librarians have the requisite skills to meet the demands of the marketplace.

Thanks to Nicole Cooke, and to my Lead Pipe colleagues, Emily Ford and Leigh Anne Vrabel, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. And thanks to Emily for helping me with the final draft as well.

1. To find this data on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, go to Selected Occupational Projections Data: Search by Occupation, enter Librarians as the keyword and choose “Job openings due to growth and replacement needs, 2008-2018” as the variable.
2. These figures are derived from data found in the National Center of Education Statistics Digest of Education Statistics for 2010 and for 2009, “Master’s degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years.” For 2010, the source data is found in Table 283, and for 2009, it is in Table 272.
3. From the IPEDS Data Center home page:
   • Select Compare Individual Institutions.
   • On the resulting page, select Publicly Released Data, then select Continue.
   • The field labeled Institution Name on the next page also accepts either individual UnitIDs for schools or a comma separated list of UnitIDs. Download this list of UnitIDs for all schools that had ALA-accredited programs between 2001 and 2010, enter its values into the Institution Name field, and chose Select. If you choose, review the list for accuracy against the earlier linked current directory and historical list of ALA-accredited programs, then choose either Check All or check the box next to individual institutions and select Continue.
   • You will be presented with a list labeled My Institutions. Select Continue.
   • On the resulting page, select the plus sign next to Completions to see a list of variables, and under it select the plus sign next to Awards/degrees conferred by program (2000 CIP classification), award level, race/ethnicity, and gender – includes new race/ethnicity and award level categories, and under it select the plus sign next to Gender – 2002-03 to 2008-09. For Step 1, select the check box next to any or all years between 2002-2003 and 2008-2009. For Step 2, select both First Major and Second Major and choose Save; select Library science (option 25) under CIP Code – 2000 Classification and choose Save; and choose Master’s degree under Award Level code and choose Save. For Step 3, choose Grand total. Then choose Continue near the top of the screen.
   • You will be presented with a list labeled My Variables. Select Continue.
   • Decide if you want Institution name only or if you also want the UnitID (I recommend the former), if you want short or long variable names (I recommend the former), if you want to view your report on screen or download it (I recommend the former first, followed by the latter), and if you want imputation and status flags. There is also an option to include a name for the table. Select Continue.
   • Adjust accordingly. Data earlier than 2002-2003 is available, but uses 1990 Classifications for its CIP code and is listed under a different variable. There is also early release data available for 2009-2010, but it requires a free login, which can be obtained by contacting IPEDS through its help desk.

4. See also:
   • Vann, S. K. (1971). The Williamson reports: A study. Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press.
   • Williamson, C. C. (1971). The Williamson reports of 1921 and 1923: Including Training for library work (1921) and Training for library service (1923). Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press.

5. Richardson, J. V. (1982). The spirit of inquiry: The Graduate Library School at Chicago, 1921-51. Chicago: American Library Association.
6. See:
   • Kleiner, Morris M. (2006). Licensing occupations: Ensuring quality or restricting competition? Kalamazoo, Mich: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
   • Kleiner, Morris M. and Krueger, Alan B. 2010 “The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing.” British Journal of Industrial Relations. 48(4), 676–687.
   • Kleiner, Morris M. 2011. “Occupational Licensing: Protecting the Public Interest or Protectionism?” Policy Paper No. 2011-009. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
   • Winston, C., Crandall, R. W., & Maheshri, V. (2011). First thing we do, let’s deregulate all the lawyers. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press.

by Neil B on Flickr

Introduction

Almost three years ago, Emily Ford wrote a post on ALA’s membership pyramid.  In this post, she commented on the need for the American Library Association to engage people she called Level 2 and Level 3 members – those who paid dues to ALA but who were not involved or only marginally so.  She argued that failing to do so would lead to the organization’s irrelevance and downfall.  The topic generated 44 comments, second most of all of our posts to this date – and it did so in the opening weeks of the blog.

The comments included a response from then ALA president-elect Camila Alire, who acknowledged the issues in the post:

We hear you! We have heard your concerns from many other folks. We know that we have to stay relevant to folks coming in as new members and members for less than 5 or so years. We know we have to think/act out of the box.

Don’t give up on ALA. We are working on it — but we are such a “process” organization that it is taking more time then we would like to admit.

Alire followed through on her promise and established the Young Professionals Task Force whose charge was to look at issues of engagement and retention with young professionals.  The initial work of this group resulted in a list of recommended actions for the Association to take.  The list included some concrete steps to more fully engage young members.

The Task Force presented its recommendations to the ALA Executive Board in hopes that they would spur action on behalf of young members.  What happened was revelatory for the group, and reflection on the events that followed provides a road map for not only young members to get involved, but for all Level 2 and Level 3 members to participate in changing an organization to meet their needs.

ALA Doesn’t Have a Magic Wand

ALA’s Executive Board did not take long to respond to the Task Force.  In short, they told the Task Force that it was asking them to endorse several recommendations that they have no ability to endorse. The recommendation would either have to go to the policy committee of ALA Council, or to Divisions and Roundtables. Executive Board couldn’t simply make these recommendations happen.

In a column for American Libraries, former ALA president Jim Rettig echoed this message:

With all due respect, if ALA members of any age group are waiting for a “magical entity” named ALA to bring about change of the sort and at the pace the Young Librarians Working Group and many other members want, my experience over more than three decades indicates that they will have a very long wait.

ALA is us—change for its members comes through our initiatives. The most helpful thing ALA can do is provide an environment in which members can continuously refine and redefine what participation means—an environment with not just appropriate tools, but also with enticing incentives. The best thing members can do is use that environment to get what they want out of ALA. A little rebellion is a medicine necessary for the sound health of our Association.

To put it bluntly, ALA is not your mom.  Each member is responsible for using what resources the association provides to shape the organization into something worthwhile, and from an initial look  at the association’s website, ALA (the BIG ALA, not its divisions) offers many opportunities for individuals looking to engage with the association and its work:

• In-person conferences twice a year
• National Library Legislative Day, Virtual Library Legislative Day and the Legislative Action Center
• ALAConnect, a social networking / workspace tool
• The Emerging Leaders program
• ALA Governance (including Council and Executive Board)
• The Copyright Advisory Network

This list of resources alone allows motivated members (even those without any financial support) to take legislative advocacy action on a national or state level, discuss copyright issues with other librarians and copyright policy experts, and develop online communities around topics of interest or need.

With additional money and time, members get access to discussion groups and social events at the conferences and the ability to participate on the ground in national legislative action.

Successful networking and a body of professional work will earn members the potential to run for office, increase members’ chances of getting involved in committee work, and having connections to draw upon when looking for jobs.

There isn’t a shortage of opportunities, and at first glance, ALA is providing the environment in which members can connect and make the association worthwhile.  Are these opportunities enough to make ALA worthwhile?

So What’s The Fuss?

Despite these opportunities, we still see people who believe the association is irrelevant, has a closed and elitist structure, and provides low value for the amount of investment ALA requires.

The Young Professionals Task Force responded to Rettig’s column by agreeing that ALA members are the drivers of change and value in the association, but also reminding readers what it is like to be new:

To new members, who are still trying to memorize acronyms and study the organizational chart, and who have never spoken to anyone in a position of power within the association, being an ALA member feels like being a guest on a cruise ship: you’re just along for the ride.

New members’ lack of knowledge and information is a barrier to participation in the association, even for those motivated to get involved in association work.  In a recent research article titled “New Kids on the Block: My First Time in a Political Community,” Dudash and Harris uncovered that political involvement is partly defined by “’having knowledge’ or ‘having information’ about politics” (p. 475). In the instance of politics, involvement means casting a vote for a candidate and engaging in discourse about issues.  In associations, it’s not entirely different – we also have elections and engage with others to learn or teach.  Armed only with cursory knowledge of the association, new ALA members will have trouble finding meaningful ways to engage beyond attending a typical conference program.

Going back to Dudash and Harris’s political research, we find a telling example of how young people make connections and get involved in supporting a cause or a person:

I wasn’t an Obama supporter, none of us were, but we went to this house party for Obama. We felt like we were a part of the party, even though we weren’t supporters. It made us want to be supporters. Even a house party made us feel a part of something. (p. 476)

The party led to an engaged group of individuals more likely to investigate issues, take action, and participate in the political process.  How can we help new members of ALA – those without a complete picture of what the association is and does – get to a point where they feel like they are a ‘part of something’ and the want to be involved in making the association better?

#makeithappen is How to Make It Happen

The only comment posted to the Young Professionals Task Force’s response to Jim Rettig was by JP Pocaro of 8bitlibrary.com, plugging an unofficial ALA Annual Dance Party in New Orleans.  It’s a way for people who enjoy dance parties to ‘feel a part of something.’  Even with no stated professional purpose, it serves one.

It is easy for people who have been members of ALA for a long time and whose schedules are filled with meetings, discussion groups, and “official networking events” to perceive dance parties that last into the night as a misuse of time at conference; however, these parties do serve an important purpose for professional librarians who like to dance or go to dance clubs.  Even if there are no professional discussions, it fosters a sense of belonging and gives people a reason to get together.  It makes being a part of ALA more valuable, because people develop friendships that turn into professional discussions later in the conference.

The dance party is not sponsored by ALA.  All of the initiatives at the beginning of this post that are sponsored by ALA are quite different than the dance party. There’s formality, structure, and in some cases, an application process and acceptance or rejection.

There is a need for both, and if ALA wants to remain true to its vision of fostering an environment in which members receive incentives for reshaping what participation means, then they need to support all types of events, including dance parties and impromptu networking events and presentations.

Looking at their activity, they do to some extent.  For example, at ALA Midwinter in San Diego, a space was set up with a projector and screen in the main hall of the convention center, complete with round tables and power and connections for laptops.

There are other examples of librarians – particularly young librarians – working outside of the official ALA structure because it doesn’t meet their needs.  For example, the ALA Think Tank sprouted out of a need for sharing expenses at conference, coordinate shared experiences amoung attendees, and the need to be able to respond to new ideas quickly without having to suffer through ALA’s bureaucracy.  If participants in the Think Tank want to hold an impromptu flash mob in to raise awareness of the importance of libraries, they don’t need a conference programming committee to do it.  As their hasgtag suggests, they just #makeithappen.

Action Items for ALA and its Members

The first and most important object for ALA should be to support these member created initiatives – even those that are outside of the ALA structure.  Continue to share news, events, and links to Unconferences, Think Tank groups and Dance Parties over official communication channels like the ALA Facebook Page or Twitter feeds.  People new to the profession look to ALA first, because the association is the primary organization of the profession.  It gets visibility in library schools and in libraries.  Let’s add these non-ALA opportunities for participation to the communication we give new members.

The ALA Membership Committee could create a welcome packet for new librarians that features the structure of ALA and a way to find their home in association activities, including committee work, conference attendance, ALAConnect groups, the New Members Round Table, and others.  The packet should also feature non-ALA activities that a new librarian may want to be involved with, depending on preferences and needs.

ALA might even consider sending financial support to these external groups if possible without attempting to absorb them.  Help these member-driven groups to develop the environment for young librarians to succeed.  This may require some maneuvering if ALA by laws do not allow for financing non-ALA initiatives with its finances.

Seasoned members need to take the same approach.  Many members are extremely good at involving new librarians in association activities.  For example, mentoring programs in the New Members Round Table and other units of the association deliberately set up structures by which experienced librarians play host to new librarians.  These mentors provide great advice for a new librarian to get involved with the formal structure of ALA, like advising people to go to committee meetings even when they are not on the roster in order to network with people that might place them on the committee.  Mentors give people strategies on which conference programs are the best, and they encourage people to apply for programs like Emerging Leaders.  They recommend these paths because that is what has worked for them – but that might not be the right advice for everyone.

What members need to do is to be aware of all of the other member-driven events going on that new librarians might be more attracted to than the official cadre of ALA initiatives.  These external groups (like the Think Tank) might be just what they need to grow as professionals, even if it’s not what people have needed in the past.

In time, young librarians become … not young librarians.  The association becomes less confusing.  People in positions of power in the organization become less intimidating.  Life as a professional becomes normal.  Perhaps then these members will find ways to shape the association itself into what they want and what it needs to be in the future.

The Pyramid Revised

ALA has done a fantastic job of trying to support young librarians.  Participation options are plentiful for those who can work in its structure.  Those who thrive in those situations rise to become what Emily called Level 1 members.  There will still be a massive amount of members who pay their dues, attend conference, but don’t get involved in committee work or other activities of the association.  These are Emily’s Level 2 members.

In the new model, there will still be Level 3 members, defined as dues-paying members who join as a professional obligation, like the fact that ALA provides toolkits and advocates on library issues.

If ALA and its membership do a good job, though, we eliminate the disenfranchised member that was also part of Level 3. These members create their own structure to thrive in and occupy a shadow Level 1 kind of member, engaged, active, making change and participating at high levels in whatever structure they create that works for them – all supported by the association and its members.

Much like the now official unconference that happens, the methods and models these young leaders develop will become part of what it means to be a member of ALA.

What Works for You?

If you are familiar with initiatives not mentioned in this post that happen outside the auspices of ALA, please share them here!  What can members do now that will make the association better for its membership?  Let us know in the comments.

Many, many thanks to Jody Bailey and Emily Ford for taking the time to clean this post up, offer encouraging remarks, and making the post much better than it was in draft form.

References

Ford, E. (2008, October 15). On the ALA membership pyramid [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/on-the-ala-membership-pyramid/.

Young Professionals Task Force. (2010, June 11). Young Librarians Working Group final report and recommendations. Retrieved from http://connect.ala.org/node/105013

Rettig, J. (2011, January 4). Is the association ripe for rebellion? [Web log post]. Retieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/01042011/association-ripe-rebellion

Johnson, A. (2010, September 23). ALA is not your mom [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.abbythelibrarian.com/2010/09/ala-is-not-your-mom.html

American Library Association. (2008, April 23). ALA | American Library Association website.  Retrieved from http://www.ala.org

Young Professionals Task Force. (2011, April 4). ALA is us, and we’re looking younger every day [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/ala-members-blog/ala-us-and-we-re-looking-younger-every-day

Dudash, E.A., & Harris, S. (2011). New kids on the block: My first time in a political community. American Behavioral Scientist, 55, p. 469-478.

Keeter, S., Horowitz, J., & Tyson, A. (2008). Young voters in the 2008 election.  Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1031/young-voters-in-the-2008-election

Sweeney, P.C. (2011, February 21). The revolution won’t be televised, but it will be Facebooked [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://pcsweeney.com/2011/02/21/the-revolution-wont-be-televised-but-it-will-be-facebooked/

Kleinman, D. (2010, November 24). The ALA alienates librarians because it is politicized, elitist, group think oriented, not very professional, and generally does not serve the needs of librarians [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/11/ala-alienates-librarians-because-it-is.html

We thought the New Year would be a good time for us to get together and do another group post; what do we want for 2010? Comment on this post and tell us: What do you want for 2010 in your library, in libraries in gen eral, or in the profession?

Ellie

On a purely personal level, I’d like to get a fantastic response rate on the environmental scan my library will be performing this spring semester. On a broader level I’d love to see more libraries performing their own user studies and publicizing their results. For pie-in-the-sky I want catalogs magically fixed.

Emily

I’d love to see a radical expansion of Public Access Policies (like the NIH Public Access Policy) that are responsible to researchers, archivists, librarians, and the public. As a matter of fact, the Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently taking public comment regarding expansion of Public Access Policies. If we can give good feedback to inform the shape of future Public Access, then maybe we can have a Public Access model that works for everyone involved: researchers who want to disseminate their work, librarians who help people find that work, libraries that can consult on creating repositories, publishers that remain important in the peer-review model, and the public that funds the very research at stake.

Brett

I want to see some Amazon Libraries. To me, the idea seems so obvious I can’t believe it hasn’t yet happened: a full partnership between Amazon and a subset of public libraries–maybe a group of independent municipal libraries, or perhaps entire library systems.

The legal arrangements would take some doing, but I think it would be worth it for Amazon. FedEx purchased Kinko’s, and UPS purchased Mail Boxes Etc., in order to have a large, trusted network of brick-and-mortar retail outlets. Amazon could benefit from a similar arrangement by appealing to in-person, impulse, and last-minute shoppers, and it could also reduce its warehousing and last mile expenses. For example, it could begin offering free shipping on any purchase for customers willing to pick up their items at a local library, a common practice among retailers such as REI and Nordstrom. Amazon could then raise the minimum for free home delivery from its current limit of $25. I don’t think a new minimum of $50 or even $100 would be unreasonable–after all, if these customer want their purchases shipped for free all they have to do is visit their local public library.

As beneficial as this arrangement could be for Amazon, I think it could be even more of a boon to participating libraries:

• Amazon’s website is more usable than any library website I’ve ever seen;
• Library operations, especially our collection development activities, are inefficient and expensive–and we still don’t have useful predictive statistics, which can cause long waits for popular items and encourages us to rely heavily on ILL;
• Library cataloging is very good, but it’s frequently slow, and we almost always duplicate effort.

By partnering with Amazon, libraries could outsource many of these activities to an organization that is among the world leaders in each area. Amazon would manage its partner libraries’ technical infrastructure and material-related operations; in exchange, libraries would handle all in-person transactions and customer service. Depending on availability, cardholders would have the option to borrow or buy popular items–and could still rely on their libraries to offer reference services, training and programming, and other activities library users have come to expect. The cost savings for participating libraries, plus the revenue they could earn by selling some items instead of just lending them, would help these libraries become far more solvent.

The only obvious danger would be to privacy, but that could be handled by storing circulation records on-site and purging any personally identifying data before it is uploaded to Amazon. That is, assuming people want to maintain their anonymity. For those who don’t–that is, for those who want to use their Amazon login in place of a library card–they could enjoy Amazon’s tailored shopping experience at the library they know and love.

Hilary

Pie-in-the-sky for libraries in general:  I’d like to see augmented reality apps (demo using Layar) to be developed for use in libraries to expose collections and services.  The NCSU Libraries is nearly there with its WolfWalk application.

As a practical application for libraries in 2010, I hope to see the implementation of a more effective way to manage collections, especially licensed content like journals and databases, alongside things like usage patterns and return on investment analytics.  Keep an eye on the ambitious efforts from OCLC (have some spare time? check out this video presentation) and the OLE project to see who gets there first.

Related to the profession, I hope that SLA can recover from its name change initiative (identity crisis perhaps?) and continue to advocate for its members in an intentional, strategic, valued, and thoughtful way.  In an historic vote to change the name or keep the name, the process made members think about what it means to be a member of a professional organization – defining expectations, questioning SLA’s motivations – and it fractured the member pool soon after the organization reached its 100 year-old birthday.  SLA has been my professional organization of choice, and I hope that 2010 is a year of renewal and momentum in the right direction for SLA.

Kim

Well, since you asked… all I personally want for 2010 is to be granted tenure: magically, early, and without all the hassle! (Just kidding.)

Just as pie-in-the-sky, though, here’s my wish:

All I want for 2010 is a national referendum requiring that true research skills be taught as part of the K-12 school curriculum, including lessons on how to distinguish different types of online and print resources, how to find authoritative research, and how to be a critical information consumer. I would like to see students in my classes who understand that not all information is good information. I would also like to see colleges and universities embrace the national movement in research instruction (that I just invented) and apply it to the higher education curriculum so that all college students learn advanced research skills as they broaden and advance their educations. I would like to see us raise a new generation of information savvy American citizens who think critically about the information they receive as they move through our diverse, opinionated, and complex world.

If I may be granted a second wish, I wish for the American Library Association to find its way in reinventing itself as an association, and as a set of associations, that might better support and inspire librarians and libraries around the country.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest
author, Kristine Alpi! Kris is the Director of the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Library of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University Libraries.

Why do document delivery technologies limit information transfer?

Modified from the original -- permission for the use of this derivative work has been requested from the publisher of Histology and Histopathology.

The technologies that libraries use for interlibrary loan and document delivery frequently reduce the value of the information available to be delivered.  In the past, color was used sparingly by publishers concerned with printing costs, and readers could assume that most images were not available in color unless dealing with visual arts publications.  Although entire books have been written about the value of color as communication, color has always been a special request for interlibrary loan copies. Now, color is much more common: in situations where color is crucial and in cases, such as graphs, where well-presented shades of gray could convey the message.  In 2001, the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry began offering one full page of color figures per article at no cost to authors since the majority of their content required color images [1]. Scholarly disciplines that need color to convey meaning are not having their needs met by interlibrary loan/document delivery (ILL/DD).  Growth in the frequency and quality of image reproduction in pathology, molecular biology, microsurgery, and other highly visual aspects of science has changed the amount of content for which color is absolutely essential to shared understanding.  The 275,000+ papers on the subject of gene expression covered by PubMed provide just one example.

Standards?

Neither color nor image quality is mentioned in the American Library Association Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States (Revised 2008, http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/resources/guidelines/interlibrary.cfm) nor the sample ALA Interlibrary Loan Request Forms.  Most standard library forms and processes assume that a readable black and white scan (B&W) is sufficient to meet user needs.  Library staff in academic, public and special libraries, large and small,  have suggested to me that the images don’t matter because users just skip over the pictures or data in favor of the text; that doesn’t fit with the browsing patterns of many users who go straight for the data tables or images.  I would argue that the reason readers might undervalue images in their interlibrary loan articles is because the image quality has typically not been able to convey the message from the original publication.  Warner (2004) compared the quality of print original journals, custom supply photocopies from the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), and the online and printed quality of Ariel transmitted files and found the Arieled copies lacking [2].  Ariel has gone through several upgrades since his 2003 exercise, but it is not clear how many libraries have upgraded their Ariel software or how the upgrades of the Ariel technology centered around TIFF file transmission have attempted to take advantage of global improvements in non-library imaging devices and software.  The corporate website (http://corporate.infotrieve.com/ariel) positively comparing its transmission to fax quality suggests a need to aim higher.

Why aren’t we pushing the envelope to provide a more accurate and usable facsimile of the original article?

If pushing our ILL/DD partners to scan in color or grayscale isn’t feasible, purchasing the original article is a viable option from some publishers.  Image and data technologies have made tremendous advances, but if you ask document delivery staff why color is not more widely supplied, the answer will almost always come back to the technology as a limitation. File size challenges, difficulty with email attachments and file transfer software, old versions of scanning software, or the scanners themselves are cited as the barriers.  Lack of color printing in the borrowing library was often a concern back when all articles were printed and mailed or faxed. Now, the borrowing library does not need to offer color printing of the final document received in order for the acquisition of a document in color to be useful.  If the item is to be delivered electronically, the user can view it in color or may have affordable access to color printing at home or elsewhere.  Also, a black and white printout of a color scan will have more contrast and distinction than printing a B&W scanned document.

Even when the color technologies are available, our ILL/DD requesting systems do not facilitate color requests. The requesting library staff may not have time to consider whether the material carries content in color based on the citation, but requesters probably have some idea after reading the abstract. Users could use the Notes field to make this request, as many have, but asking the question about color up front could save the time of the user and library staff and allow the color request to be made in an automated fashion.    It would be better to ask for and use this information on the initial request, than to acquire a B&W copy and then hear from the requester that what was received is unsatisfactory.  One of our anatomic pathology trainees is learning the hard way to request color or grayscale after having to wait on replacement color copies for several poor quality B/W documents received via Ariel.

Automating the ordering of color increases its usage.

The National Library of Medicine’s DOCLINE interlibrary loan request system added color copy requesting in December 2003 due to user demands for biomedical literature which features images that need to be seen in color for the reader to fully understand the message.   The number of color requests has grown as a percentage of the overall DOCLINE requests from .02% of the overall requests in FY2004 to .14% of the 1.5+ million total requests in FY2009. While 2,217 color requests may seem paltry, this data reflects only requests for which library staff indicate a color request using the system select box, not those that use the Comments field.  Because so few lending libraries indicate that they provide color copies, some borrowers will not select the color request checkbox, but will add a comment to the lender indicating they prefer color if available and at no extra charge. In these cases, getting the article content is more important than getting that article in color.

DOCLINE is primarily a tool of biomedical libraries.  What about academic basic scientists and clinicians using public libraries who rely on OCLC Resource Sharing? Do these users realize that color is a choice either when ordering direct via WorldCat or using library forms?  How are we limiting the range of possibilities and why?  Is it accidental or intentional?  Right now, a borrowing library asking for a color copy in OCLC must entertain several possible steps of additional effort—you can pre-identify lenders that provide color and route requests to them or you can make it a note for the lending library staff to receive and respond—where the resulting conditionals can add time to the request.  Some libraries warn users that color copies can take longer:

Color copies are available through MINITEX for articles with color charts and graphs. If you need a color copy please make a note of that in the “Comment” field when sending your request. Color copy can take up to two days longer to obtain.  http://www.morris.umn.edu/library/ill.php

Asking for color shouldn’t have to slow down the process, but it does when the request forms and shared systems don’t match the right user need with sufficiently detailed information about the lending libraries.   Warning users creates more realistic expectations, but it can also dissuade users from requesting color if they need the article in a timely fashion.  In a system like DOCLINE where color capacity and requesting is automated, the turnaround times for color are frequently the same as B/W. Users may also be hesitant if they aren’t sure whether an article is actually in color, especially if there are color-associated charges.  If not able to fill in color, should the lending library share the information about the pages in color with the requesting library as a conditional response so that the library or user can make a fully informed request?

What about Document Delivery?

How do libraries providing document delivery handle images for their own clients?  CISTI offers custom supply service to meet the needs of researchers who require high-quality color or grayscale images. In Warner’s report, these documents were supplied as high-quality photocopies—there is no information about this service on the CISTI website that I can find. The British Library Articles Direct request form does not ask about color—the requester will need to complete either the “Additional details” or “Specify special requirements.”  A naive user might assume that color articles come in color and that articles with images will be scanned with the best available photo imaging technology and never realize whether the original article was in color or not.  The Linda Hall Library addresses this issue in their Email Delivery Frequently Asked Questions:

Although the typical file size delivered will be less than 2MB, grayscale and color images will create files of a far greater size. Linda Hall Library will not scan in color for electronic delivery unless specifically requested to do so. Please do not request color scanning for electronic delivery unless your email is able to accept files of at least 10MB.

Asking for color isn’t all rosy.

The fill rate for color requests is lower.  Per the institution records in DOCLINE, only 243 libraries report providing color copies with 32 of those libraries charging extra for those color copies.  For example, the National Library of Medicine charges $2.00 more per item in color and the Linda Hall Library charges an additional $1.00 per page for color copies.  What would our users say about the value of color or grayscale images if we asked—would they pay differential rates?  Why should they?  Why do libraries charge more for color when it is now mostly scanning? It could be that they only have one color price option in the software and still need to deliver paper copies. It is true that a paper copy in color costs more in toner—though that difference in cost is decreasing.  But what is it in the case of scanning—is it a matter of staff time spent since it takes a few seconds longer with many scanners to acquire a page of images in color or grayscale?  It may also reflect trying to spread out the cost of more expensive color scanning equipment.  While low volume flatbed scanners are inexpensive and offer B&W, color, and grayscale, there are significant price differences between color and B&W versions of the large overhead scanners used for tightly bound and duplex page scanning.  Are libraries who pay for ILL/DD trying to avoid the extra cost for color?  More likely it is just that they haven’t revisited these options as their technology and workload has changed.

Providing color can create the blues as well.

At the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Library of Veterinary Medicine, we want to provide the most informative materials possible. We often scan color plates in color or detailed images in grayscale, but we run into all kinds of problems in delivering these large files to other libraries and directly to our users. Our processing choices result in very different file sizes and image quality, though the readability of the text remains about the same.  Below is a table showing the five possibilities available in the Veterinary Medicine Library’s operation.  Our example was a selection of three pages (613-5) from the paper “The Notch pathway: hair graying and pigment cell homeostasis” in the journal Histology and Histopathology [3]. We accessed the article online in the original PDF, as well as scanning the print file in all the available options using Ariel 4.1.1.99 with our two scanners—a black and white Minolta PS 7000 overhead scanner and a color HP ScanJet 8290.  We also looked at printing an online article to a TIFF file using the Microsoft Document Image Writer which turns the color images to grayscale and pixelates the images, a loss of image data quality.  The image quality is still much better than all of the B&W scans, and this is our only option to securely deliver online-only content without printing and rescanning.  The opening image in this article shows a side-by-side comparison of an original image in the online PDF article with the output from B&W text scanning.

The results of our scanning experiment with 3 pages of an article with many images.

The size limit for an email attachment at North Carolina State University is 15 MB including the encoding, which increases the file size by about 30%.  This is a fairly typical limit with many organizations being restricted to even smaller attachments. It is clear from the email delivery addresses used by many Interlibrary Loan departments in DOCLINE that they have created free email accounts on external services in order to send and receive materials. The file attachment size limits of 25 megabytes per message for gmail.com and yahoo.com are more generous than university or hospital IT policies.  Other strategies that have been espoused on discussion lists are using the free levels of services such as YouSendIt™ (http://www.yousendit.com/).   In order to deliver to non-Ariel libraries and individuals with these email limitations, we have posted their scanned documents online and emailed them the URL for download.  In some cases however, people still have trouble opening, viewing, downloading, and printing the files from their computers, and it is very difficult to help troubleshoot these issues remotely during the very busy workflow of the interlibrary services function.  Other ILL departments have reported that they cannot receive and therefore disseminate color documents electronically via their version of Ariel software because it is attached to a B&W scanner which is not something the lending library can tell from the sending end. Odyssey software has been reported to work with black and white, grayscale, color, or any combination of these scanned formats, albeit slowly. Perhaps its widespread dissemination will address some of these file size transmission issues as more libraries have delivery software.  It is clear from the ILL/DD community discussion list questions that a great deal more improvements to speed and functionality are needed in all of these products.

Breaking the Color Barrier

Library procedures and technology really shouldn’t be a barrier to sharing color information.  All partners in the borrowing and lending chain have a role in providing the highest quality information. Ideally color scanning of color images at no additional charge would be the default practice. Absent that sea change, borrowing libraries should get users thinking about whether color is needed and explicitly ask them on request forms whether color is preferred. Lending libraries should indicate whether they provide color or grayscale scanning or copying services and any associated charges. Lenders can also look out for materials where the typical scan doesn’t provide sufficient information and use the options in the technology at their disposal to optimize the images.  Resource sharing systems should provide an automated way to match the user’s request for color materials with lending libraries’ capacities for filling requests in color.  Resource sharing software should provide options to deliver better compressed versions of files that reduce the file size burdens for file transfer.  Institutional information technology departments should be more flexible in allowing large file size attachments or providing easy-to-use, secure file transfer services.  Lastly, funding agencies can work with libraries to help them obtain faster and more effective scanning technologies and software as prices and functionality improve.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Maria Collins, National Library of Medicine, for providing data about color requesting in DOCLINE and to Beth Westcott of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Region for discussing this article proposal with me.   Discussions with James Harper, Librarian for Interlibrary and Document Delivery Services at North Carolina State University, greatly affected this piece and broadened my point of view.  Thanks to Lead Pipe reviewer Derik Badman for his comments and edits and to Kimberly Burke Sweetman at New York University for her review and thoughtful questions.  Lastly, the ILL/DD staff at NCSU deserve recognition for the care they give to the images in each item they provide.

References

1. Baskin DG. Free color pages. Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. 2001; 49:551-2.

2. Warner P. CISTI Source and journal use at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Interlending and Document Supply. 2004;32(4):215-8.

3. Schouwey K, Beermann F. The Notch pathway: hair graying and pigment cell homeostasis. Histology and Histopathology. 2008;23(5):609-19.

Photo by Flickr member grewlike

If you want to start a passionate conversation, ask a past Emerging Leader (EL) about their experience in the ALA Emerging Leaders program. Created by former ALA President Leslie Burger as one of her presidential initiatives in 2007, Emerging Leaders was initiated to put new librarians “on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership” (learn more on the wiki). If you talk to any of the roughly three hundred participants in Emerging Leaders so far, you are likely to find that they have a powerful opinion on the subject. Some loved it, some hated it, and some express profoundly mixed feelings. A very few are neutral. In this blog post I will be exploring those differing responses from past Emerging Leaders as part of a critique of the high-profile program.

Emerging Leaders is intended to recognize and train approximately one hundred outstanding new librarians each year and guide them toward becoming leaders within ALA and the profession. Participants are selected in part by their accomplishments and leadership potential, and in part by the desire to have a geographically and culturally diverse class. The program involves a one-year commitment and requires attendance at that year’s Midwinter and Annual Conferences (a full day workshop takes place at each), plus unmeasured time working on a group project in the interim. ELs spend the six months between conferences working in small groups on an ALA-related project. The EL projects vary widely and are introduced into the program by individuals or committees from across ALA.

Disclaimer and admission of bias: I was an EL in 2008 so my experience serves as the impetus for and subtle bias of this post. I’m writing from a blend of personal experience, anecdotal evidence, and survey data. Though I strive in this post to maintain an objective distance, my own Emerging Leaders experience is best described as a roller coaster ride full of high points and deep frustrations. I applaud the program’s goals but I believe that there is a significant gap between the inspiring, boundless encouragement given to ELs to reenvision ALA and the reality of how change might actually happen within the organization. I am proud to have been an Emerging Leader and I hope that this post may be the start of some small movement to improve what is, at its heart, a truly impressive initiative.

Literature Review

While the talented new librarians you will meet in Emerging Leaders are generally very willing to say what they think, I was unable to locate even one written critique — either positive or negative — of the program by a participant (if you know of any, please post them in the comments below). Very few have written about their experiences except to post the occasional non-evaluative summary of the program events and workshops. In fact, other than a tongue-in-cheek blog post by The Annoyed Librarian (who has not been an EL) and a well-rounded slideshow report by Rachel Vacek, there is little in any published medium other than PR and related announcements.

From this we may draw one of several conclusions: (1) Past ELs don’t have any opinions about the program one way or the other; (2) Past ELs don’t write much or aren’t interested in writing about the program; or (3) Past ELs are, for some reason, uncomfortable about critiquing their experience in the program. Based upon a variety of personal email exchanges and in-person conversations, I am going to immediately rule out the first possibility. I have met ELs from every year of the program and all have been vocal about what they see as its strengths and weaknesses. In truth, their energetic praise and criticism played a large part in my decision to tackle this topic in a blog post. As for the second possibility above, a few quick searches will show that many past ELs are prolific writers and bloggers. While it is possible that they simply don’t have any interest in discussing their EL experiences in their writing, I find that unlikely.

I find the third possibility above to be the most plausible, and offer my own feelings as evidence here. First of all, this is a high-profile program that is quite attractive on resumes and CVs, and the library world is very small. Writing a critique about Emerging Leaders, and being willing to accept any potential negative feedback from such a critique, takes courage. On the other hand, among those I know who have been through the program, I have heard more than one admit to feeling too emotional about the experience to put their thoughts on paper. Personally it took me nearly a year to gain the distance and perspective required to approach this post, and even after much encouragement and feedback from others, I still offer it with some hesitation.

Survey of Past Emerging Leaders

In order to write about the Emerging Leaders program with some authority, I gathered feedback and opinions from as many past ELs as possible. Accordingly, this post is based not merely upon my own experience, but upon the insights of nearly fifty past ELs who took the time to complete a survey about their experiences in the program. Admittedly this is a self-selected sample, and it is likely that ELs who had strong feelings about the program were more likely to respond. I conducted the survey in Google Forms and distributed it to the listservs for the 2007 and 2008 ELs, a pool of approximately 220 librarians. I omitted 2009 ELs from the survey because they have not yet completed their program.

The survey was composed of eleven questions, six of which were open-ended with a box for unlimited text responses. The remaining questions were multiple choice or ratings (see Appendix below for the list of questions). None of the questions in the survey were required, and respondents were encouraged to pick and choose those they preferred to answer.

Results summary

There were 46 respondents, divided roughly by year with 57% of respondents identifying as members of the 2008 Emerging Leaders class, and 43% from the 2007 class. Overall, the results to the ratings questions were positive. When asked to rate the value of their experience on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being highest, 60% of respondents rated the program as a 4 or 5. When rating their experience based upon how much they enjoyed it the ratings were slightly lower, with 43% rating the program as a 4 or 5. However, an additional 41% rated the program at the midpoint level of 3. As an additional indicator of the perceived overall value of the program, 61% of respondents indicated that they would recommend Emerging Leaders to others. 78% (36 respondents) felt that the program made a difference in the trajectory of their career and/or ALA involvement. The great majority described a positive impact; only 3 of those respondents indicated a negative impact in that the program discouraged them from continuing in ALA.

The responses to the open-ended questions were far more mixed, and will be described in the following sections of this post.

Worthwhile aspects

Overwhelmingly, survey respondents pointed to networking as the most rewarding part of their Emerging Leaders experience. Out of 38 who answered the question, “What aspects of the program did you find worthwhile, if any?,” twenty-five referred to “networking,” “making new friends,” and/or “meeting people” as a positive result of their participation. One respondent described “meeting other enthusiastic librarians” as a worthwhile part of their experience. Another simply answered, “Networking, networking, networking.”

Similarly, an additional seven respondents pointed to their group work, in terms of having the opportunity to work with and get to know a small group of people, as a worthwhile aspect of the program. One respondent explained it this way: “Working in small groups was a real plus. I probably would never have met my groupmates through any other channel, and it is great to see them at conferences and catch up.”

Eleven respondents indicated that the most worthwhile part of Emerging Leaders was the doors the program opened for them in terms of committee work, recognition, and resulting presentation and publication opportunities. In the words of one respondent, “The recognition I received from other conference attendees because of my EL ribbon on my name badge was surprising to me…. Just wearing the ribbon served as a conversation starter and the networking opportunities are there for the taking. The opportunity to continue working at the national level upon the completion of the program is the greatest benefit.”

Another respondent commented that it was “a great way to become more involved when getting your foot in the door seems intimidating.”

I agree strongly with these assessments. Being handed the opportunity to meet so many like-minded librarians who share my passion and desire to make positive contributions to the field was a stunning experience. Granted not every EL was quite that driven — I do know that a few dropped out along the way — but the vast majority of the librarians I met through Emerging Leaders are impressive individuals, and I have continued to stay in touch with many of them through email, Facebook, and this blog. I cannot overstate the value of the Emerging Leaders networking experience.

Disappointments

Out of 39 who responded to the question, “What aspects of the program did you find disappointing, if any?,” eighteen indicated some aspect of the conference workshops, and another fourteen pointed to their group projects. Specific comments about the workshops varied, although many expressed the wish that there had been less lecture, more interactive sessions, and more advanced leadership training. “Really expected to have more ‘leadership’ training,” said one respondent, “similar to ARL’s leadership workshops, with in-depth discussion and activities around aspects of leadership in a library organization. Found that it was little more than ‘here are 5 qualities of good leaders.’” Others described the content of the leadership training workshops as “rudimentary,” “weak,” or “trite.”

Additionally, several respondents felt that those facilitating the workshops were not responsive to their ideas and feedback. As one respondent explained, “The ALA leadership that spoke to us regarding what can ALA do to enhance or encourage more participation by newer librarians – when we provided feedback and comments in an open forum – I got the distinct impression that there was not an interest in new ideas. Rather they were looking for confirmation that what steps they were already taking were satisfactory. There wasn’t an opportunity for a free exchange of ideas between the old guard and the new guard.”

Another observed, “You have a room full of folks who are energized and the energy didn’t go anywhere.” This sentiment was repeated throughout the survey responses.

A large number of respondents felt that their group projects were “busy work” and did not see that their efforts were providing any results. “Emerging leaders participants do a lot of good work for the projects,” said one respondent. “I was disappointed that the work was not used more within the ALA system. While doing the project for project’s sake provides good training experience, the outcomes can be useful for the organization.” Others compared the projects to “another library school assignment” or evaluated them as “not all that engaging or useful.”

Overall, my own greatest disappointment in the program was being encouraged to offer creative ideas and feedback in the interests of effecting change within ALA, and then watching the bubble burst over and over again. Whether it was a conversation about how to make ALA more responsive to new librarians, or the “World Cafe” events in which we brainstormed what the ideal organization would look like, our collective vision was praised, collected, and (I imagine) filed away at the end of the session, with no opportunities to further develop or pursue it.

Alternative visions

In response to the question, “If you were asked to take over the Emerging Leaders program, or to create a new program to foster leadership among new librarians, what would it look like?,” past ELs had a variety of relevant ideas and suggestions. Regarding the content of Emerging Leaders workshops, respondent comments generally focused on three primary issues they would address. First, they would emphasize interactive leadership training as the program’s primary goal and reduce the emphasis on generating greater ALA participation. As one respondent stated, “it would have a larger goal than putting participants ‘on the fast track to ALA leadership.’ I think it should focus on helping participants attain their personal and professional best and how ALA can help them get there.”

Second, respondents disliked the current lecture-based format and many indicated that they would incorporate active learning exercises and guided small group discussions moderated by experienced ALA members. Third, many would add a variety of inspirational and “Mover and Shaker”-type guest speakers from within and outside of ALA whose experiences and knowledge would be relevant to ELs. Several suggested creating venues to facilitate free and open discussion among and between Emerging Leaders and those at various levels of ALA leadership. One respondent had a clear vision of a potential format they would institute: “Instead of posing organizational change questions to the group as a whole I would offer Issues Discussion Tables, letting participants choose the issues most important to them and to which they feel they can offer definite courses for change. Issues Tables might include: ALA Structure, ALA Student Chapter Solutions, Virtual Membership, etc. A 1.5 hour session with a mentor/moderator could provide real, progressive ideas.”

In terms of program format, many respondents would develop intensive training programs that included week-long retreats or a year-long, involved program with multiple meetings at each conference and ongoing virtual participation. One respondent summed it up, “It would have to be more involved. More than just 2 meetings. More virtual participation, discussion.” Many respondents thought an ideal class size for a leadership program would be small (one suggested a class size of 50 participants). Consistent with this, many felt that such a program should be highly selective, accepting only candidates with the clearest leadership potential.

Some respondents favored incorporating a mentoring program, possibly by having past ELs mentor subsequent participants or groups, or by holding “tours” of high-level ALA meetings for participants. Many emphasized the need for communication and community building activities among EL participants and alumni, such as an online community and/or regional meetups for ELs (or projects assigned by region) that provide networking and development benefits without required conference attendance.

Among those who would include group projects, respondents indicated that those projects would be designed to have clear relevance, impact, and purpose within ALA, and provide room for innovation. “I’d give the young/new librarians more room to innovate in their projects instead of assigning them grunt work from the various divisions,” said one respondent. Some suggested models in which ELs identify and design their own projects, are fully integrated into existing committees, or are employed as interns at high levels of ALA structure. Others believed that group work interfered with the leadership training goals, and could be omitted altogether in favor of other activities.

An alternative vision proposed that differed somewhat from the others was stated thus, “Why have the program if the only benefit is to get a committee appointment? Just have a program to get people on committees.” Others mentioned BIGWIG and an unspecified AASL program (perhaps the Collaborative Leadership Institute?) as models they would draw on.

From my experience in the program, I can attest that there was quite a bit of grumbling amongst the ELs during the full-day sessions at each conference. The majority of ELs are borderline or full-fledged Millennials, and being “talked at” is not a way we effectively learn. And while we can learn through lecture if we must, the content in our sessions assumed that we knew very little about leadership or interpersonal skills in general, which was largely untrue. A higher level of content and more skill-based activities would have greatly enriched the sessions for many of us.

Discussion

Clearly Emerging Leaders is generating widely differing reactions among participants. Some of the responses are extremely positive, and many past ELs express gratitude and pleasure for having had the opportunity to participate. One respondent asserted, “being an EL has changed my life…. It was a great way for me to get involved in a career that I truly love.” Others made similarly glowing statements. Meanwhile, other past ELs say they have become “embittered” and describe the program as “a waste of time.” My personal response to the experience was mixed; as a whole I found the experience rewarding but like many others I was frustrated by some of the elements of the program that didn’t fulfill my hopes for what it could be.

At its root, much of my own and the survey respondents’ frustration with Emerging Leaders may derive from a discrepancy between our expectations and the reality of the program. Comments from many of the respondents indicate that they began the program with the hope of making a difference by bringing their new ideas and energy to ALA, but felt that they were not offered an effective venue to do so. One respondent acknowledged that discrepancy, saying, “I would recommend the program with a huge qualification regarding expectations and outcomes.” Implicit in this comment is an indication that their expectations for the program were too high, at least compared to the reality of the experience.

From what I have seen, there is a direct connection between those individuals who are most passionate about making a positive difference in libraries and those who are most frustrated by the Emerging Leaders program. The frustration is a product of feeling that their EL experience was something akin to standing in a doorway, enjoying a spectacular vision of the future, and having the door slammed in their faces. Said one respondent, “I felt a great disconnect with the leadership of ALA and have concerns for the professional organization and what current leadership is doing to pave the way for new ideas.” Another respondent echoed those concerns and took a step further: “I am not sure…that we are making much of a difference within ALA. We had many ideas, but nothing has been done with them. Perhaps we need to extend the program to a post piece that deals with the ideas that we’ve come up with and creating a strategic plan on how to implement them.”

If one were to make change to the Emerging Leaders program based upon this feedback, there are two potential paths that could lead to a more satisfying experience for participants. The first is to simply remove the elements of the program that give participants the impression that their creative ideas for remaking ALA are welcome and to focus on the skills specific to leadership instead. Discussions and brainstorming sessions about how to improve the organization could be removed from the program in favor of an increased focus on leadership overall. This approach would eliminate the disappointment caused by ELs feeling that their creative ideas were invited and then discarded.

The alternative path is far more complex but arguably more exciting. It would require the organizers of Emerging Leaders, and the ELs by extension, to become more aggressive in seeking out opportunities in which ELs might share their creative ideas with those in ALA who are best positioned to consider and respond to them. It might involve having a group of ELs write a proposal to ALA Council on some pressing issue. It could tie certain ELs to current ALA presidential initiatives, or other high-level committees and task forces. Or perhaps at the end of each program year, it would involve ELs presenting a list of ideas and/or proposals to representatives of current ALA leadership. Perhaps ELs could work on more meaningful, longer-term projects they would hand off each year to the next group of participants. Above all, it demands enabling ELs to begin putting into motion some of the creative ideas they are generating in workshop sessions. There are many potential ways to offer ELs the sort of exposure and feedback that survey respondents indicate they are seeking; the point is to start building those bridges.

What do you think? I invite my fellow ELs to add your insights and comments below. In this post I am only beginning to dig toward the root of the issue, and maybe with your help we can bring it out into the light. Perhaps the true movement toward change that comes out of Emerging Leaders doesn’t have anything to do with the program at all — perhaps it is made by those of us who have come together out of the program inspired, furious, motivated, and passionate with a network of colleagues who feel the same way. After all, that is the spirit behind In the Library with the Lead Pipe; it is not a coincidence that five members of our blogging team are past ELs. And as we move forward in our careers we carry with us that nearly religious belief in change, and the knowledge we need to make it happen. Perhaps, in the end, we are the change we wish to see.

Appendix: Survey Questions

• What year were you an Emerging Leader? (multiple choice)
• Please describe your overall experience in the Emerging Leaders program. (open-ended)
• Please rate your experience in the program, in terms of how valuable it was to you. (rating, 1-5)
• Please rate your experience in the program, in terms of how enjoyable you found it to be. (rating, 1-5)
• What aspects of the program did you find worthwhile, if any? (open-ended)
• What aspects of the program did you find disappointing, if any? (open-ended)
• Has the Emerging Leaders program made a difference in the trajectory of your ALA participation and/or your career? (multiple choice)
• If you answered “yes” to the previous question, how has it made a difference? (open-ended)
• If you were asked to take over the Emerging Leaders program, or to create a new program to foster leadership among new librarians, what would it look like? (open-ended)
• How likely are you to recommend the Emerging Leaders program to others? (rating, 1-5)
• Is there anything else you’d like to share regarding your experience as an Emerging Leader? (open-ended)

Many thanks to everyone on ItLwtLP for help in crafting the survey and drafting this post, to the many ELs who took the time to respond to the survey, to Latanya Jenkins for her thoughtful feedback on a draft, and to Derik Badman for reviewing multiple drafts and providing me with some small (but needed) kicks in the butt.

]]> http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/all-dressed-up/feed/ 35 http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/why-we-should-adopt-alaconnect-a-brief-review-and-rumination-on-alas-new-online-community/ http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/why-we-should-adopt-alaconnect-a-brief-review-and-rumination-on-alas-new-online-community/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 11:00:06 +0000 Emily Ford http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=1331

ALAConnect's Home Page © ALA

So ALA has joined the ranks of two point oh. Last month it rolled out ALAConnect, a service influenced by Ning, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Docs, and other online networking platforms and shared work spaces. Despite the hoopla about the system I hadn’t even heard of it until one of my working groups was asked to use it. Being an online networking junkie I was intrigued and decided to log in and, consequently, to write this post. After my first look around the site I was a bit pessimistic, but after taking a deeper look, I have come to hope that ALAConnect will be able to reach individuals who haven’t been able to attend conferences and engage with their colleagues about ALA-centric issues. If ALAConnect can draw this constituency to use it, then the tool might mean some real changes for ALA.

Currently, ALAConnect, which aims “…to engage in ALA business and network with other members around issues and interests relevant to the profession” (ALA, 2009) is in Phase 1 of its launch. This means that not all functionality has been implemented and future enhancements are planned for the site by the end of 2009. These include an advanced search for members and a mentoring network. (Check out the ALAConnect Roadmap for more details.)

At first glance the system seems to have tools that we librarians have been using for a while from many different places and systems. It offers the ability to create and modify shared documents, host chats, and sponsor polls and votes all in one space! In many ways this fills a very real need for ALA committees that have been struggling to work virtually. Instead of chatting in a Meebo room, on Gchat in your Gmail, AIM, and using Google Docs or e-mailing documents back and forth, these groups now have the opportunity to conduct work in one community space.

Before I begin to discuss the social context and implications ALAConnect has on ALA politics and the organization’s evolution, I’d like to discuss some of the more apparent and concrete issues surrounding this technological implementation.

Usability

As with any system, some basic usability problems are apparent in ALAConnect. Most of the issues I point out have something to do with the structure of the system in place, in this case, Drupal. Some of these issues will be fixed in time with future Drupal releases, but right now they pose some usability issues.

One of the first things I attempted to do in ALAConnect was build my social network. I quickly discovered that it takes too many clicks to add a new friend. After you have found a friend to add and successfully add that friend, the system returns you to your profile instead of the “My Network” page.

Next, I tried to do some searches to find relevant communities to join. Being the librarian I am, I clicked on “advanced search” but was confused that this did not take me directly to the advanced search interface. Instead, I had to click a few more times to get there.

Another seemingly simple usability issue that I noticed is that in the left navigation toolbar, the drop-down arrow next to menu items isn’t functional. While it does tell you that there are more items to view under that navigational category, it does not work to drop down the structure. Instead, you have to physically click on the link and load a new page to see the sub-navigation levels.

Again, these problems will likely be addressed as ALA gets more feedback or as Drupal’s developers make further improvements to the software. Either way, these are basic usability issues that, in the future, might be improved.

Privacy

Privacy seems to be another issue with the system. In fact, Jessamyn West was one of the first to comment on it. (You’ll notice from the comments in that blog post that ALA staff was quick to respond and fix the issue!) I get the feeling that they are getting a lot of privacy based questions because of the existence of the Privacy FAQ page and the many posts in the forum related to privacy. There are some pretty robust features for privacy in ALAConnect, but it’s hard to figure out what’s what without doing your research. You can choose to keep your membership in communities private, but your official ALA work will display to members. You also have options to control your privacy for each community you join. See the FAQ for more information about these details.

The first thing I saw on my profile, shockingly, was my (personal) phone number. Why? Well, the answer is simple. First, my personal phone number is the phone number with which I joined ALA. (Being an unemployed librarian at that point it was the only number I could give and I haven’t yet updated my information with ALA.) Second, this piece of contact information was imported with other membership information when creating ALAConnect. (Why we need a phone number to display in an online social networking tool is beyond me.) Upon further investigation I discovered that phone numbers display only to people you call contacts, but this overlooks two simple questions: Who is going to call me when they could shoot me an email, and why was this piece of data even imported into ALAConnect?

ALAConnect's Online Now Box ©ALA

More disconcerting to me, however is that ALAConnect displays who recently logged in on its homepage, even to the public. At first I thought I had the ability to opt out of this, but it turns out I don’t.

Going into my profile I disabled the ability for people see my online status in my user preferences, but this status only relates to IM and chat gadgets embedded in your profile, not the entire portal.

While displaying whether I’m online might be inconsequential, it still gives me the heebie jeebies to know that anyone can find out that I’m at a computer logged in to ALAConnect. Furthermore, what utility does this function add? How will the information that I’m online be used by other members? There is no internal IM function (except for chats in member communities and groups) to which it can link. I’d be more forgiving if there were some utility to this part of the interface, but there doesn’t appear to be any.

ALAConnect Privacy Options for IM © ALA

Functionality

Unlike usability, functionality is one of those things that is harder to change after a system has been implemented. While I think the functionality of ALAConnect is quite rich, I did have some basic questions and frustrations about it. For instance, when creating my profile I wanted to include all of my schooling, not just one school.

ALAConnect Profile Education Display ©ALA

I would also like to be able to show that I have two master’s degrees, and I know there are many many people out there who are in the same boat. Moreover, I would like to be able to connect with people who are alums of my same college, which seems to be a logical way to network. For example, I belong to a group on Facebook called Reedie Librarians, which is a way for me to connect with Reed College graduates who are also in the library profession. (This functionality has been marked in the ALAConnect Roadmap as a future improvement.)

There are some additional items in ALAConnect that might prove to be useful. Using tagging and being able to “favorite” a post or group is really helpful, if you use this functionality. Though if you’re anything like me, you might never look at your favorites again. ALAConnect also boasts the ability to create RSS feeds to read content of interest. (I did not try to create an RSS feed so I cannot say if this is easy to do.) Additionally, the system embraces some other, but not all, social networking sites such as Flickr and Delicious. These sites will show up as gadgets on your profile if you include them. The following image is of Aaron Dobbs’s public profile.

User Profile on ALAConnect with Flickr and Delicious Gadgets ©ALA

Even though users can embed some gadgets in their profiles, some might want better interoperability between ALAConnect and their other networking tools. ItLwtLP blogger Derik says,

“My big issue is that I want interoperability with my other social networks. If ALA Connect would connect up with Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc., maybe I could see a use. That interoperability is where we get into OpenSocial, Facebook Connect, and Google Friend Connect, all different ongoing projects to make the social network portable.”

I have a feeling that many people agree with Derik. Why would I join another networking site if isn’t interoperable with the other things that I’ve been using for online networking and work? The problem here is that ALAConnect is not supposed to be a social networking site. Rather, it is intended to be a professional networking site. This is an important distinction to note, but I wonder if it is a distinction that users will make.

Finally, one of the best features and functional pieces of ALAConnect is its ability to host user-generated content. Users can create groups, join groups, post comments, etc. This kind of content is one that I feel has been lacking within the ALA structure, and creating this functionality may open the doors to increased organizational participation and meaningful online discourse about professional issues.

I’m sure there are other functional things within ALAConnect that I haven’t yet been able to explore. If you know of any, please comment on this blog post!

The Social Context

I’d like to move from the concrete portion of this review to looking at the social context of ALAConnect. As was ingrained in my brain in graduate school, no technological implementation exists in a vacuum. In fact, the social context surrounding a technological implementation will most likely determine how well the system is adopted and used. (See Kling, Rosenbaum, and Sawyer’s 2005 book, Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics for an easy to read summary.)

ALAConnect might be able to offer ALA members the networking and virtual space to engage in discourse and other community-based activity that has been taking place in other virtual spaces. There is no doubt that online networking and use of webapps are part of a computerization movement which is particularly useful for information professionals and librarians. (For more about computerization movements, read a piece by Susan Iacono and Rob Kling in Yates and Van Maanen’s 2001 book, Information Technology and Organizational Transformation.) The question is: for ALA members who feel disenfranchised and disenchanted, can ALAConnect be a democratizing factor? Can a social movement form in this virtual space to give ALA members what they need from the organization? I think it’s possible, but whether this happens will be determined by the system’s users.

Browsing ALAConnect ©ALA

There are a few things in the ALAConnect interface and system that show its surrounding social context. You will notice that ALAConnect’s structure is based on ALA’s scary, unwieldy, and seemingly unnavigable political structure. Notice in the following screenshot that to browse ALAConnect you immediately have to understand the structure of ALA. This is not all that helpful to those who don’t quite understand it. One the one hand, this system must reflect that structure. On the other hand, this could prevent many users from joining and using the system, simply based on its parent structure.

I tried to look at how to create a group (see the screenshot below), and was left wondering what the “ALAConnect” subject headings had to do with the group I was going to create. For instance, we are asked right away to place our user-generated content into an organizational hierarchy (ALA’s) that is hard to use. However, like any classification, this function will help to make groups more findable. You can also request to add a new subject heading, which is a great service.  (See the Member Chair FAQ for more details.) This model isn’t ideal, but it seems to address the issue of how different users might find the groups they’re looking for.

Creating a Group on ALAConnect ©ALA

It is impossible for a system like ALAConnect to be devoid of social context. The real issue here is the tension between the “networking” part of the system and the part that is tied to offcial ALA committees and structure.

The Verdict

Despite some of the criticisms I’ve discussed in this article, I think it is a tremendous resource with great potential. Content, including communities and discussions, can be user-generated. Structures and conversations can center around an issue, not around a division, something that ALA desperately needs in order to be able to involve a larger community, to make the ALA structure more open, and to make the association’s work more relevant to today’s librarians. The fact that the system is part of the ALA structure may dissuade some users, but there is a growing online community of non-ALA members who have created ALAConnect accounts and are using the resource.

ALAConnect offers everyone in libraryland (not just ALA members) a way to get involved in professional discourse, to engage in professional networking, and to create their own professional communities online. What we need to do is to join ALAConnect en masse, create groups, engage in communities, and make ALA what we need it to be. ALAConnect is just a starting point, but I honestly think that if we start there, the sky is the limit. It’s up to us to make sure we use the system in a way that is meaningful to us.

Teapots In a Tempest by GaijinSeb / CC-BY-NC-ND

Only a few information technology organizations predict the future by inventing it.¹ One of the canonical examples is Xerox PARC, which in the early 1970′s produced the first mouse, pioneered Graphical User Interfaces, invented Ethernet, and developed the first laser printer, along with dozens of other innovations. Among contemporary organizations, the inheritor of this lineage appears to be Google.

The Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago during its early years is probably the most widely accepted Xerox PARC analog within librarianship. If libraries have a Google equivalent, a contemporary organization that is both synthesizing the best work in the field and shaping its future, it’s North Carolina State University Libraries. Under Susan Nutter’s directorship, NCSU Libraries became the first university library to win the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Excellence in Academic Libraries Award and received the American Library Association’s Library of the Future award; Susan Nutter was Library Journal‘s Librarian of the Year in 2005; and it places someone in LJ‘s Movers & Shakers list pretty much every year. Observe NCSU Libraries from afar and you can’t help but be impressed. Study it up close, as I did two years ago this week, and you get a sense of what it must have been like to work at Xerox PARC or, I expect, what it’s like to work at Google.

Two years ago, I was a library school student enrolled in Steven Bell’s Academic Librarianship course at Drexel University. The major assignment for the class was to conduct a field report on a library, and Susan Nutter allowed me to spend a day interviewing her management team, mostly individually or in small groups. One of the major themes I noticed was how fortunate they felt to work with each other. They believed they were working more hours than their colleagues at peer institutions, but they also believed they were having more fun (in my experience, both beliefs seem to be accurate). As complimentary as they were toward all of their colleagues, when they began listing the colleagues who they most admired, who drove them the hardest, who made them feel like what they were doing was important–and just about every member of the management team cited just about everyone else by name–inevitably they started that list with Kristin Antelman.

The sense I got of Kristin, in part from our conversation, but mostly from hearing her colleagues talk about her, was captured by Steve Yegge, a programmer at Google, in a post entitled Done, and Get Things Smart:

“At first it’s entirely non-obvious who’s responsible for Google’s culture of engineering discipline: the design docs, audited code reviews, early design reviews, readability reviews, resisting introduction of new languages, unit testing and code coverage, profiling and performance testing, etc. You know. The whole gamut of processes and tools that quality engineering organizations use to ensure that code is open, readable, documented, and generally non-shoddy work.

But if you keep an eye on the emails that go out to Google’s engineering staff, over time a pattern emerges: there’s one superheroic dude who’s keeping us all in line.”²

The trait Kristin shares with Yegge’s coworker at Google is that she excels at understanding how decisions made today—or left unmade today—can impact the future. And she insists on looking at reality as it is and seems likely to be, not as people might wish for it to be. As NCSU’s Associate Director for the Digital Library, one of her major initiatives over the past few years was to lead the group that first introduced faceted browsing to library catalogs, using the Endeca software that was previously used only on commercial websites like Home Depot’s. After rolling out the catalog at NCSU Libraries, she and her colleagues worked with their peers in the Triangle Research Library Network to create an Endeca-powered union catalog (in addition to NCSU, the network comprises the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina Central University). In an article for the April 2009 issue of College & Research Libraries News she co-authored with TRLN’s Mona Couts, they emphasize the ambiguity inherent in the project:

“TRLN librarians were in agreement that our catalogs were bad, and that what NCSU had in its Endeca catalog was, if not the answer, at least an improvement. The harder challenge is that the very concept of the catalog is in transition. Implementing a “next-generation” catalog doesn’t answer the question, what should a library catalog be anymore?”

When I learned that a group of Assistant/Associate University Librarians and Assistant/Associate Directors (AUL/AD) in academic libraries, known as the Taiga Forum, issued a series of provocative statements on the future of libraries, it was no surprise to me that Kristin Antelman was on the steering committee that helped create the document. And when I read the statements themselves, I was sure I detected some of her ideas.

Over the past few weeks, I had the good fortune to interview Kristin about Taiga, the statements, and the future of libraries. Although during the course of our conversation we chose not to dissect the Taiga Forum members’ creation or discussion of each statement individually,³ we encourage you to use the comments section that follows this article to share your thoughts on the statements themselves as well as the other ideas Kristin shared.

Why did you agree to join the Taiga Steering Committee and to moderate a session? What was it about Taiga that appealed to you?

I got involved with organizing Taiga 4 because I had attended the first three Taigas and found them to be great meetings. They were unlike any professional meetings I had been to; we spent a whole day talking honestly about big and difficult challenges facing academic libraries. At the end of Taiga 3, I felt I wanted to have some input in how the next one was done.

The Taiga meetings were conceived as a venue for people at the Associate University Librarian/Associate Director level in academic libraries to get together and discuss common challenges. We tend to have few peers in our home institutions and, sometimes, in smaller institutions, none at all. The premise of Taiga was that, while directors had venues to talk amongst themselves, there was no such venue for administrators below the level of director to talk frankly about issues across functional lines and with colleagues from other institutions.

The first year saw the development of ten provocative statements. Those statements ended up serving as the basis for lively conversations not only at the first Taiga meeting itself, but in academic libraries across the country for years afterward. I think they struck a chord because they dared to express fears and forebodings about our collective future that many of us were feeling but that we may not have had the courage (at that time anyway) to speak freely about. Taigas 2 and 3, very successfully in my opinion, employed the “open space” approach to participant-defined meetings. You could even say we were ahead of the curve on the “unconference.”

The aspect of Taiga 4 that has received the most attention was its revised “Provocative Statements” document. What was its purpose?

For Taiga 4, which was held this past January before ALA in Denver, the steering group had the idea to revisit which (if any) of the original provocative statements were still valid, and then to add to them. The new statements would be focused around the theme of this year’s meeting, “Organizational Change: Professional Identity and Personal Commitment.” We asked the Taiga community for feedback and took those responses into account when we wrote the new statements. As it happened, we did not carry forward any of the original statements, but incorporated a lot of the same themes in the new ones. The statements were written by a subgroup of the steering committee over several phone calls and wiki work. They were then commented on and edited by the full steering committee, and were distributed to the people who signed up to attend the meeting.

We then asked for volunteers to do “lightning talks” on the statements at the Taiga 4 meeting. Those talks were each followed by 10 or so minutes of discussion, which planted many seeds for conversation for the rest of the day. At the end of the meeting, we reviewed how we felt about the statements. That recap resulted in minor changes, including deleting statement #3 (about the dominance of Google) as not very provocative.

One of the misconceptions about the statements has been that the Taiga meeting participants believe that these things will happen, or, more interestingly, should happen. Actually, their purpose is largely rhetorical. We hoped the statements would inspire conversation—and resistance!—at our meeting. We very intentionally meant to say that we feel that research libraries are facing serious challenges to core areas of what we do and that we want to talk about these challenges without presuming any answers. I would also add (and here I’m speaking for myself and not the group) that I think the statements also explicitly confront superficial optimism about how academic libraries—and librarians—will transition into new roles.

The subtext of many of the statements is the as-yet-unknown impact of a potentially prolonged period of tough budget times, which was just becoming evident when these were written. How libraries build collections and are staffed now is a product of many decades of pretty robust growth. It remains to be seen what path libraries will take when budgets are shrinking, but ideas like realizing we cannot support a hybrid print/electronic model indefinitely, or cannot continue to work around underperforming employees, are a couple responses to these pressures that we explored.

Are the reactions you’ve seen—the ones that respond to the content rather than the context—in any way satisfying, even if their writers appear to be dismissive of the ideas expressed within the statements? Do these librarians’ strong reactions mean the statements are doing what they’re supposed to do?

Any reaction means the statements have had an impact. Response to the statements’ content and their context have been quite intertwined, however. Having made the decision to send the statements out into the world, we made a mistake in distributing them in a static way, with a lack of transparency about their context (who did this? what was the purpose?). We were rightly criticized for that.⁴

Apparently, the Darien Statements might be a response to Taiga, although they don’t claim that.⁵ Aside from being both being list-like and appearing around the same time, I don’t see too many commonalities. Except, that is, in the section called “as librarians, we must…”, where the Darien Statements have quite a bit in common with the spirit of Taiga, including their own expression of some of the points made in the provocative statements.

One aspect of the responses that does concern me is that there seems to be a pervasive, and enthusiastically embraced, gap of trust with administrators. While maybe that’s just something that always has been and always will be, it concerns me because these divisions weaken us. Those of us who are currently AULs or ADs are not MBA-types dropped into libraries; we have spent most of our careers working in various non-administrative librarian jobs. In fact, my impression is that a significant number of AUL/ADs attend Taiga soon after arriving in their positions.

Another criticism I’ve seen is that we’re too negative, that we don’t propose answers. It’s worth noting that, while most of the statements themselves don’t propose answers, the discussion at the meeting did very much address answers. How libraries address the challenges facing us often gets back to organizational culture. Acknowledging the need, and then adjusting what we do and who does it, sometimes in significant ways, is not an easy task for any of us, whether you are a front-line library worker, a manager, or an administrator. A couple colleagues and I have been working on a project to find out more about what future library leaders are thinking. This dovetailed with the Taiga 4 theme, so we prepared a little video of interviews with some of these librarians that we showed at the beginning of the meeting.

Will there be a Taiga 5?

Since Taiga is not a formal organization, we see where it takes us year to year. Thanks to the continued generosity of our sponsors, Innovative Interfaces and R2 Consulting, a Taiga 5 meeting will be possible, but what form it will take remains to be seen.

Time for some non-Taiga questions. What do you think library schools should be emphasizing? Requiring? Or, put another way, what are the abilities you consider most important in potential NCSU Fellows?

Library school programs are becoming increasingly differentiated it seems to me; and they have to in order to survive. Distance education will make it possible for prospective students to find the program that best meets their needs. These are both positive developments. I think that internships are even more critical than ever. Every recent MLS we hire tells us that they learned more in those experiences than they did from their educational program. Separating the Masters coursework from learning library practice would also help address the theory/practice identity crisis characteristic of MLS programs.

In terms of skills, I like to see librarians who have the ability to think through problems in a systematic way, who can learn independently, who are fearless and enthusiastic about technology. It’s critical that they be able to communicate effectively, including in writing, and that they show leadership qualities. They should be focused on the big picture and be pointed toward the future, thinking about what libraries are for, not what we do, because what we do is changing very quickly. I’m very encouraged by the graduates I’ve seen in recent years. The applicants to our Fellows program just seem to get stronger every year.

What are the most useful things ALA can do for us as a profession?

I think ALA is most effective when it works as an advocate for public libraries, promoting the contribution that public libraries make to communities across the country. Our public libraries are a tremendous achievement of this society, really unique in the world, and yet one that we cannot take for granted will always be there, especially as local governments are hard hit economically.

ALA and its divisions also serve as a valuable professional development opportunity, where people can find leadership and other opportunities even if their jobs do not offer them the chance to develop in that way.

Are there any other professional associations or consortia that are more important to you than ALA?

Actually, ALA is pretty important to me. LITA is my primary home in ALA, and I try to stay involved with LITA committees, etc.

Closer to home, the Triangle Research Libraries Network is an important professional connection. TRLN is very active both in developing shared services and sponsoring information sharing and professional development events for staff at the TRLN libraries.

The Digital Library Federation (recently folded into CLIR) and the Coalition for Networked Information have been important associations for me as well. Both organizations hold semi-annual meetings where members can share ongoing work.

What data do you wish you had available to you in figuring out how well the library is meeting its constituency’s needs?

Data about fast-changing areas, such as discovery, would be useful to have. I’m concerned that we understand only in a sketchy way how our different users are finding the information they need, and where and when that leads them to library collections or to library-provided tools.

Two or three years from now, what will be the minimum requirements for a really good library website/catalog? What will its users expect it to be able to do?

I anticipate users will expect to have to interact with the library website or catalog much less, or hardly ever at all—which, I note, is hardly a provocative statement! The library website will continue to lead our users to information about our spaces and services, but our goal should be to make its footprint as minimal as possible in our users’ lives. The resources they can get to by virtue of their institutional affiliation should be seamlessly linkable from course sites and search engines. For this to happen, linking technologies, like OpenURL, will have to work even better than they do now. But we also will have to make this vision a priority—from negotiations with information providers to how we make local investments of our staff time and development resources.

Do you foresee anything changing the dynamic between libraries and information providers?

One frustration for me is that we have not had much success in buying/licensing just data; providers will only offer data in the context of their products, their interfaces. Had libraries been able to buy metadata for scholarly articles, for instance, we could have conceivably developed reasonable metasearch solutions. But that time is passed, now, with Google Scholar. Good data to support reference linking services is still hard to get, and it hurts our services. Quality metadata to drive OpenURL-based services for ebooks is also an area where the information ecosystem has a ways to go. Ebooks themselves have all kinds of platform restrictions that create challenges for libraries. But whether libraries have now, or will ever have, the leverage to get access to more open content is debatable. As the market consolidates around Google and a handful of major publishers, we will likely increasingly be at their mercy, in terms of APIs into their content and services. Even if that’s the case, though, there’s much that can be done with those tools; I think libraries by and large underutilize those opportunities to develop integrated services that are already made available to us.

What could we be doing to better utilize the available tools?

Just looking at the catalog, there’s no reason that any library should be running a last-generation ILS OPAC interface. There are open source and relatively low-cost commercial options that can give your library a current, faceted interface with good relevancy in keyword searching. There are also a range of APIs from Google, OCLC, LibraryThing, etc. that should be employed to make searching the catalog a richer experience, better integrated with the larger information environment.

Is there anything we could do to that would keep us from being at the mercy of Google and the major publishers?

I’m much more concerned about being at the mercy of publishers than Google. Google has advanced access to information worldwide far more than libraries ever could dream of doing; where they encroach on our area they are changing the paradigm for the better (for example, full text-based rather than metadata-based discovery of books).

Scholarly publishers, operating in an increasingly consolidated market, will continue to raise prices beyond inflation and restrict libraries through complex big deal licenses. They do have us at their mercy. Open access may be the eventual solution (and I think it is) but, in the interim, the detrimental impacts of their dominance (smaller market for monographs, for instance) will continue to be significant. One thing libraries can do—and many have done—is never again enter into big deals, where flexibility is traded for cost savings. Another thing libraries can do is to be less fixated on collecting for posterity. Scholarly work is increasingly preserved beyond our walls: a significant percentage of the best articles are already openly available on the web (and this segment is growing), while another significant percentage is made openly available by publishers after an embargo period. Libraries, collectively, will have to be less dogmatic about licensing (and replicating) complete and official versions of the STM (scientific/technical/medical) literature. At risk are two dimensions of our mission that have historically (and justifiably) defined us as research libraries: developing collections of significant breadth to meet the needs of all our constituents and maintaining the capacity to invest in new services.

If a large library had to make big cuts, what are the first expenses that should go? What are the programs/positions, etc. it should absolutely protect?

This is very much a local decision and depends on where the library has already had to cut back and where its strengths lie. While downsizing is an opportunity to be strategic about positioning our organizations for the future, I don’t think we’re yet in a climate where our parent institutions will tolerate unbalanced cuts, i.e., cuts that too disproportionately affect either collections or services. One of the provocative statements (or perhaps two) addresses the need to reduce speculative spending;⁶ I think that will have to come to pass, and sooner rather than later. I also think we’ll have to get out of the local catalog business within a couple years, and that has significant implications for our technical services staff. Digital library development is still starved in most institutions, resulting in the poor discovery tools and websites that we see now. How each library faces these challenges, both the process they take and the outcome, will reveal much about the character of an organization and its leadership. I also see that libraries will have to focus somewhat less on serving the broader library community and community of future scholars, and much more on their mission within their own organization.

For libraries with limited resources, there’s often a tension between serving the broader scholarly community and meeting local needs. How do you see this playing out?

This question gets at what I think is a big challenge for us. Our special collections may be where we are unique, and can make the greatest contribution to the cultural heritage community at large, but they will never be where we will make the greatest contribution locally. And the path forward (digitization) is expensive. So the question arises, why would—or should—our universities fund that work? One of the Taiga statements mentioned that these efforts would be privately funded, and I think that will have to be the case, although this will result in organizational inefficiencies and relatively slow progress overall.

But special collections are not the future for most academic libraries. The future that we all share is becoming much better integrated into campus life, and closer to teaching and learning (there’s a Taiga statement about that, too, the “blended librarian” idea).

Let’s finish on a positive note. What have been some of your most pleasant surprises over the last five years? What’s happened for you professionally, for NCSU Libraries, or for the profession as a whole that’s far exceeded your expectations?

As far as NCSU Libraries goes, the biggest surprise has been that the state legislature funded a new library for NC State University. The $126 million library, the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, is currently completing the design phase and is scheduled to open in 2012. Librarians who have lived through retrofits and add-ons to existing buildings know how constraining that can be in terms of creating new spaces for users. The opportunity to participate in the design of new learning, collaborative, and research spaces, rich in technology and good design, has been a huge thrill for me. If we do this right, it will serve as a model for what an academic library can be going forward.

In terms of the profession as a whole, I would return to the topic of the new graduates that our library schools are producing. I would say that, without question, the graduates of the last five years are more well-rounded, smarter, and better prepared to make immediate contributions than at any time since I’ve been a librarian. These people are, by definition, our future. It’s up to us to give them the tools they need and the latitude to realize their potential within our organizations. If we can do that, libraries will have a bright future.

Thanks to Kristin Antelman for her thoughtful responses and her generosity, and to Stephanie Atkins, Beth Picknally Camden, Claire Stewart, and Hilary Davis for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1. The full quote by Alan Kay: “Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!” He said it during an early meeting of PARC members and Xerox planners.
2. Yegge writes later in the essay: “Incidentally, they hired plenty of other brilliant seed engineers who were equally responsible for Google’s great technical infrastructure. I’m just using this one guy as an illustrative example.” I’m doing the same. A lot of people are responsible for making NCSU, in my opinion, the best library in existence. But I got the sense, from my conversations that day, that they credited Kristin with keeping them all in line.
3. As Kristin noted, “I’m uncomfortable speaking for the group in that way, i.e., interpreting the meaning behind the statements or characterizing the discussions of the day (I couldn’t even accurately recall such, even if we didn’t tell people they were confidential).” I think this makes a great deal of sense, especially once you understand how Taiga works and the reason the statements were drafted.
4. Some of the writers who have been involved in the conversation inspired by the 2009 provocative statements include: Steven Bell (ACRLog); John Dupuis (Confessions of a Science Librarian); Meredith Farkas (Information Wants To Be Free); Steve Lawson (See Also…); Dorothea Salo (Caveat Lector); and Roy Tennant (Library Journal Digital Libraries).
5. The official version of the Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians is hosted at John Blyberg’s blyberg.net. For more on the Darien Statements, see posts by Cindi Trainor at Citegeist and Kathryn Greenhill at Librarians Matter.
6. Statements 2 and 7, which read as follows:

   2. In five years collection development as we now know it will cease to exist as selection of library materials will be entirely patron-initiated. Ownership of materials will be limited to what is actively used. The only collection development activities involving librarians will be competition over special collections and archives.

   7. In five years libraries will have abandoned the hybrid model to focus exclusively on electronic collections, with limited investments in managing shared print archives. Local unique collections will be funded only by donor contributions.

Thanks to Flickr user gynti_46 for use of the photo.

Since October something has been weighing on my professional mind: my abusive relationship with Google. I love Google, I don’t ever want to leave my Gmail, my Gchat, my GoogleDocs, my web searches, my Google Reader, but right now I wish I weren’t so dependent on it.

The weight to which I am referring is the proposed Google Book Search Settlement Agreement. Google knows with whom I e-mail and chat, for what I search, what blogs I read, and on and on. With the proposed settlement Google will take a further step in controlling my (and libraries’) information use and seeking behavior. Google will know what books I read, what pages I read, how long I read them, what pages I print, and what passages I copy and paste. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should stop reading immediately and read the 2-Page Super Simple Summary on the Google Book Search settlement agreement produced by the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy (OITP). Then, and only then, continue here at ItLWtLP.)

For those of you who aren’t going to go read this document, here’s my simple recap: The American Association of Publishers (AAP) and the Authors Guild filed a class action lawsuit against Google Book Search for copyright infringement. Instead of going to trial, the parties have agreed to settle out-of-court. Google has agreed to fund a rightsholder database called the Book Rights Registry, which will be run by the rightsholders (authors and publishers). Google will sell books to individual consumers, but rightsholders will have financial stakes in the product. Libraries will be able to subscribe to gain full-text access to books via the Google Book Search Project, mimicking the same model as many other library products. The proposed settlement has far-reaching implications for use of digitized materials in libraries, the role of fair use, and the future digital market. Unfortunately, many of the agreement’s facets are antithetical to the mission and purpose of libraries. In fact, some libraries, such as  Harvard, immediately pulled out of participation with the Google Book Search Project.

I won’t provide you with a more in depth analysis of the suit in this blog post. As I mentioned in my first sentence, this abusive relationship has been eating at my brain for many months and it’s just now beginning to solidify. What I do want to share is what I think we in the library community can do about the settlement. The stakes of the settlement are enormous, and neither the rightholders or Google represent libraries in this process. But we, librarians and the library community at large, are an ornery bunch. Aren’t we the community that took to court over the PATRIOT Act? Aren’t we the community that instigated a public outcry when Michael Moore’s publisher pulled Stupid White Men for being too critical of former President Bush? Aren’t we “radical” and “militant?”

Because I don’t want libraries, information advocates, patrons, or anyone else to be trapped in an abusive relationship with Google I would like to offer the following suggestions for what individuals and the professional community can do to protect and salvage what remains of our relationship with “the big G.” (And maybe even make this Google Book Settlement Agreement a bit more reasonable.)

Individuals

Educate yourself.

Knowledge is empowerment. Read through blog posts, documents, and news articles about the proposed settlement agreement. The ALA Washington Office is tracking most everything that’s out there and has made a nice little portal web site for you to use. Particularly useful is also the Guide to the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement. This longer document provides a broader view than the 2-page document. You might even consider checking out what Google has to say about the “groundbreaking agreement.”

Because the settlement is so intrinsically tied to copyright law and fair use, this is an ideal time to refresh yourself on the basics. Re-read Kenny Crews’s Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators and Carrie Russell’s Complete Copyright. Subscribe to blogs that deal with copyright such as librarycopyright.net or Karen Coyle’s blog.

Ruminate.

Ask yourself and think about the tough questions. During the Google Book Settlement: What’s in it for Libraries? panel at ALA Midwinter, Karen Coyle posed the following questions: Does the product serve my users? What will the collection be? What is the quality of the product? Panelist Laura Quilter pushed the panel participants and audience to consider the privacy issues presented by the proposed model for accessing digital materials through Google Books. As librarians we have a responsibility to protect our users. Mold and define your personal and professional values for privacy. This will be incredibly useful if you are put in a place to consider purchasing and implementing this subscription product in your library.

Be an advocate in your community.

Let’s face it. There are so many issues to follow in our profession, that chances are many of your colleagues might not know anything about this proposed settlement agreement. Talk with your colleagues and share with them what you have learned. Push your administrators to find out if any pre-emptive discussions regarding this product have occurred. What is the institutional stance on the settlement agreement and Google Books in general? By asking the hard questions of our supervisors and administrators, we are often able to generate institutional discourse.

The Community

Ask and discuss.

ALA has very bright and informed people working to understand the Google Book Settlement Agreement. Librarians who specialize in information policy, entire offices and committees that deal with legislation and lobbying for ALA interests. But this 300+ page legal document that is the agreement is confusing and still not fully understood by the library community. At the aforementioned Midwinter panel discussion, many things came to light that we (or at least I) did not previously know about the settlement. For example, the settlement will not allow for a subscriber library’s users to login via remote access and access their library’s subscription to the Google Books database. Users who are community members of a subscribing institution will only be able to access the resource “on campus.” Another fine example is how Google will serve public libraries with this product. Google will allow public libraries one access station to the product. Only one.

We need more fora in which to engage to find out exactly what the settlement agreement means to us and our users. Professional organizations, ALA, SLA, PLA, ARL and others should consider hosting more web-hosted seminars for their members on the subject. Moreover, hosting other kinds of discussion fora to ask questions and commiserate within the library community such as BBS or wikis or even blogs will be helpful to those of use who struggle to understand the issues inherent with the settlement.

It is also of import to note that during the panel at Midwinter Dan Clancy, Engineering Director for the Google Book Search Project, said he would like to be able to be available to the library community for more discussion. State libraries, consortia, or other large groups should consider contacting Dan and schedule a telecon about concerns.

Educate Google.

I would like to give Google the benefit of the doubt. However, the fact remains that Google is a business and will not implement policy or procedure based upon it being “the right things to do.” Rather, Google will make policy, and change procedure, as it is beneficial to business and the deep Google pocketbook. That being said, I think Google would attempt to take more responsibility for “doing the right thing” if the company were to realize that the proposed settlement model is not one upon which libraries will willingly spend their money. Just because Google will have a monopoly on the digitized books, does not mean that we should lower our standards for offering resources to patrons that are easy to use and ethically implemented. We, as a community, need to share with Google the ethical principles and best practices that we have worked so hard to develop—of particular relevance, the Principles for Digital Content, and the Principles for a Networked World.

Develop position statements, draft and pass resolutions, or take other governmental action.

A unified voice of librarians can be a powerful thing. Moreover, if professional organizations such as ALA, whose membership is purported to be 65,000 (according to the ALA Annual Report), use their position as the good stewards of knowledge and information, we have the ability to put up a good fight that might yield some positive results. Currently the Washington Office is working to gather ALA membership input so that it can issue a position statement or take other action on the settlement. (I don’t even know the proper channels to let ALA where I stand on this issues. To this end, ALA should consider creating a system that enables soliciting and gaining membership comment when warranted.)

ALA Council should also consider passing a resolution regarding the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement. It is not out of the question that this kind of political activity will help the organization to retain its integrity and ethics regarding privacy, information policy, and what best serves libraries and patrons.

ALA and other library organizations should consider future legal action. It seems to me that libraries would have a good case to bring forth their own class action lawsuit. This might be a last case resort, but I do not think we should not sit idly by if a large market-driven product were to threaten the library community’s ability to best serve the public.

Create support materials and documents for libraries to use.

Shortly after the court “okays” the Google Books Settlement agreement, libraries will face a “purchase or not to purchase” question for the Google Books subscription product. Navigating the ins and outs of the legalese in the settlement will be daunting for any library system, consortium, or lone library that chooses to buy the product. Having FAQs handy or even an ALA Toolkit on best implementation practices for Google Books would be a great service.

It doesn’t have to be a waiting game.

If we work now to understand what we can about the proposed settlement, if we start to evaluate the effect purchasing this product will have on our libraries and patrons, if we create a unified voice and foster discourse, then we will better be able to keep fires under control and perhaps keep our brains in our heads. Google is a powerful company, but powerful, too, is the voice of libraries and librarians. I firmly believe that if we continue to put our efforts toward understanding everything encompassed by the Google Book settlement issue, then we will better be able to serve our communities, and perhaps inform positive changes that will let us sit in better peace with our friend and enemy. This is my call to you, colleagues, to engage, think, debate, and defend library values. Take control and save yourself from this abusive relationship. Google can be a reference librarian’s best friend, but right now, with the proposed settlement, it is looking as if we are subject to continued abuse.

All Gizah Pyramids. Image from liber's photo stream.

“…i [sic] only renew [my ALA membership] out of a sense of professional obligation, and also because of the fear that i’ll [sic] put it on my resume and get busted as not being a member.” –c-dog

Membership in the American Library Association means professionals are bound together by the tenets of librarianship. Technically, this means we commit to these tenets in the form of dues payable to ALA. Being a recent library school graduate I am new to ALA membership as well as organizational involvement. However, I find that the previous statement points to perils inherent within ALA that could, if not addressed, lead to the organization’s downfall.

This is not a problem that has gone unnoticed by many within the organization. This year, I was part of the ALA Emerging Leaders program–a program intended to create more active ALA members and participants. In this program six Emerging Leaders projects centered around membership recruitment and retention issues within ALA and its various divisions. Other membership and participation initiatives include current ALA president Jim Rettig’s member participation initiative, not to mention the New Members Round Table (NMRT). Drawing on my Emerging Leaders experience, I would like to further examine ALA membership structures and provide suggestions that will help to topple this perceived “professional obligation” of ALA membership. We need to create an inspired and invested community of librarians and professionals who will feel proud to be an ALA member and to serve their organization.

In order to understand my suggestions, it’s important I provide some background on the current ALA climate and membership. There seem to be three general categories of ALA members, in the form of a pyramid. The base level, level 1, consists of those who pay dues and who have minimal investment in ALA as a professional organization; the middle and smaller group of individuals, level 2, consists of those who pay dues, attend conferences and are nominally to marginally involved in the organization; and the tip of the pyramid, level 3, consists of those who pay dues, belong to divisions and serve on committees. As I understand it, the shape includes the largest amount of members in level 1 and the fewest amount of members in level 3.

The basic problem with current membership and participation initiatives is that they do not target the largest population of ALA members, level 1. Members in level 1 are those who are most apt to say they are “professionally obligated” to pay their dues. Instead of bringing the movement to members, initiatives like the Emerging Leaders program, Jim Rettig’s “Craigslist of opportunities for members to get involved in ALA”  and the NMRT are initiatives that pro-active, motivated individuals will seek out. If we were able to mobilize level 1 ALA members by bringing community and participation to them, we could create a larger sense of community investment as a whole and dispel those attitudes of membership as “professional obligation.” Over time, this model of community investment would lead to a flattening of the ALA membership pyramid—changing the shape of ALA membership into one that is a globe of overlapping and active communities. In order to create this membership model, ALA, its members and leadership should investigate how to involve level 1 members in association activities and thereby create an organization comprised of a richer and more diverse professional community.

The financial membership model of ALA creates a certain attitude among members. Their investment in the organization is only as important as the amount of their check. Instead, ALA might consider adopting another membership model that incorporates service to the organization as a stipulation of membership. This is the model of both the National Honor Society and Beta Club. Requiring members to serve their professional community can only create a stronger community that better represents its largest constituent base. Examples of this service might be acting as a guest editor for a portion of American Libraries or other journals published by ALA divisions, writing op-eds for journals, or otherwise serving ALA in capacities, as they are able. Changing the parameters of ALA membership is something toward which we need to strive. While this service model may not be feasible to adopt for a good many years, there are other issues that we can address more directly.

Cost is a major deterrent for the increased involvement of many level 1 and level 2 members. Paying membership dues to ALA and its numerous divisions can be quite expensive. This deters individuals from serving on committees (one must be a member of a division to serve on a committee of that division) and contributing to ALA’s general body of work (one must also pay conference registration and travel to serve on committees). New librarians struggle with student loan debt and as a result do not have room in their budgets for personal memberships. They may also work for libraries affected by slashed budgets and national policy decisions and funding practices. In response to these conditions many libraries are no longer able to support their employees’ professional membership costs. This means that individuals must use their personal funds to pay for membership in ALA and its divisions. Coupled with travel costs to conferences, it is simply financially unfeasible for library professionals to participate on a higher level than they do (even before recent economic collapse).

A simple way to make conference attendance and professional development easier for those who cannot afford to travel is to create webcasts of conferences and workshops. We are in the age of virtual conferences and seminars, and they have proven successful. It should plain and simple be the standard that ALA conference programs be made accessible virtually. If pricing is an issue, ALA might consider creating a price structure for “virtual” attendance to ALA conferences. Members and their employers would be better able to afford this model of conference attendance and involvement. If ALA were truly committed to including level 1 members, then it would create and implement ways for individuals to engage virtually by using a combination of videocasting, chat programs, message boards, and other participatory and collaborative applications. Because of their ability to participate in professional programs and conference activities, virtual participants will feel as if they have more stake in ALA than they did before. Consequently, we will see these members begin to actively seek other avenues of participation with ALA.

The level 1 ALA constituent is not the only constituent that ALA should reach and better utilize to create an organization that reflects a community beyond “professional obligation.” There are level 2 participants who attend conferences. The next logical step would be for these members to engage in service opportunities such as sitting on a committee or hosting and presenting at professional programs. One way for ALA to show its commitment to these level 2 members would be to mandate a seat on every ALA committee for a new member or conference attendee. Soliciting member service via ALA governance and policy will show that the organization as a whole is committed to the needs of new members, member recruitment and member retention.

However, once a member begins to serve ALA as a committee member cost can still be an object. For level 2 members to become more engaged and sit on committees this object must be addressed. Most ALA committees require members to attend two conferences each year. Instead of mandating in-person attendance for committee members at both Midwinter and Annual Conferences, shouldn’t we be encouraging the use of those collaborative tools and technologies (chat, wikis, web sharing applications, online conferences, etc.) that we as professionals tout? If ALA were to move to a model of mandatory in-person committee participation at one conference a year, costs would be cut in half for committee members, thereby enabling more new professionals to better afford conference attendance and committee participation.

Conferences themselves need to adopt new models to attract greater participation. In addition to the mix of meetings, presentations and workshops that comprise ALA Midwinter and Annual meetings, hands-on professional service opportunities would enhance conference goers’ experiences. Instead of passively sitting in a conference session, librarians and conference attendees could engage in service learning workshops or service challenges. A group of professionals would be tasked to create a body of work to serve the organization or create a professional development tool in one day. The service could be the creation of a new resource guide, a new web portal, or a new best practice statement. Whatever the participants created, it would be a piece of professional work as well as enable professionals to network with others in their areas of interest. Producing a body of work will be more professionally satisfying to some conference goers, and will give a diversity of participation and service opportunities that will appeal to a larger audience.

New members will not be recruited nor will members remain active within ALA unless the organization as a whole engages in dialog about how to remain a viable, interesting, and diverse professional community. We need to advocate for and attempt to implement membership model and policy changes within ALA. These changes will encourage greater member investments in their organization and help to reshape the ALA pyramid into a globally shaped membership that is dedicated to ALA’s success. This will make our association a more diverse and stimulating organization of which we can all be proud.

We need to think creatively and to create programs and workshops that embrace virtual participation. We need to break the mold of traditional ALA membership. The next time you attend a conference or a committee meeting, bring up these issues and ask questions. Propose and implement pilot service projects at a conference and publish your successes and challenges. Help to create new models of participation and share them with your professional community. The more experimenting we do at a grassroots level the more we are able to best find the models of participation, service, and governance for a sustainable and successful ALA. By continuing to adopt these changes in ALA, the membership pyramid will eventually flatten and the globally shaped ALA membership can form.