Marriage was a metaphor used repeatedly at the recent two day Education Institute Leadership Summit “Building Capacity through Partnership and Collaboration” — itself a partnership of OLA, LAA, BCLA and SLA. Over 90 delegates representing a cross-section of the information industry from across the country laughed, argued, listened, discussed and learned along with Ken Roberts, OLA President and moderator for this event, as a great group of dynamic, thought-provoking speakers shared their passion for and experiences with different partnerships. They presented us with some fundamental principles for building partnerships and alliances, case studies and lessons learned. We were offered vision: “Look outside your immediate sphere. Build a bigger tent!” “Push the envelope — you can always pull back!” “Build sustainability to ensure long term success!” And we were challenged — sometimes uncomfortably so: “Librarians are on the peak and just about to fall off the cliff.” “If public libraries didn’t have a monopoly, we wouldn’t be able to compete.” “Content is critical to a civil society. We need more activist librarians.”
Opening keynote speaker, Glen Murray, the former mayor of Winnipeg, told us to imagine the possibilities. “We’ve all experienced some challenging times in the past 10 years. We’ve seen a disconnect in our value sets, pitting culture / arts / community against pipes / pavement / police.” He urged us to take the kernel of an opportunity out to our corporate leaders, government officials, unions and challenge them to become full citizens.
Deb deBruijn offered us the principles of partnering and concluded with the image of the “human pyramids” she had seen in Barcelona, Spain. “Together we are stronger.” And while building a human pyramid – or a partnership – may look easy, like all aspiration and achievement, it actually requires careful planning, strategizing, practice and hard work.
Daphne Wood from the Hamilton Public Library together with the Event Production Representative from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats talked about how they developed their game plan during the pre-season, created a win-win-win strategy based on under-promising but over-delivering which resulted in a touchdown for both their organizations.
We heard about the model of The Alberta Library from Lucy Pana where they created a collective vision of library service based upon their community values of lifelong learning, leadership, respect and openness. “Mostly we got it right!”
An extraordinary marriage between San Jose Public Library and the University Library of San Jose was presented by Jane Light of the San Jose Public Library. This arranged marriage between two (mostly) willing partners allowed them to set goals and respond to leadership challenges. Result: “This is what a learning community is!”
Deb deBruijn and Lucy Pana came together to lead an interactive and dynamic debate about partnering skills. Once we had agreed that the categories of political skills, people skills and business skills were well-assigned, we realized that the dilemma was: “Do we always need to build it — or can we buy it?” Sometimes it makes sense to hire the expertise in rather than always having to do it all ourselves.
Rebecca Jones moderated the diverse panel of Mike Ridley, Liz Kerr and Darrel Skidmore in a discussion of real-time implications for partnerships and alliances — specifically the Ontario Digital Library and the Federation of Public Libraries initiatives. “Is it time to stop dating and just move on?” Hopefully not.
The closing keynote was offered by Dr. Catherine Henderson who demonstrated her “keep your sense of humour” partnership style while describing the challenges in bringing the Bell Centre for Creative Communications to fruition through working with various not-self-evident partners. One of her many pearls of partnership wisdom: “There’s a fine balance between vision and hallucination!”
This was no hallucination. Having set a lofty programming goal, this Education Institute Leadership Summit offered us a sound vision: partnerships come in many forms. And all libraries need these various types of partnerships to build capacity, strengthen their positions, and meet changing needs. With all the nodding heads I saw in the audience, many of us are saying: “I do!”
Juanita Richardson, MLIS, MBA
Licensing Management Consultant, CEDROM-SNi
juanita.richardson@cedrom-sni.com