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Rebecca Jones posted this in Tech & Tools on May 4th, 2012 Special Post by Graham Lavender:
Last night, I attended a webinar by Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), who chatted with moderator Steve Hargadon about the NMC Horizon Project. You may be familiar with the Horizon Reports, which track the top technology trends for the coming five years in higher education, K-12 education, and museums. The Horizon research has significant implications for libraries and the broader information field, but before discussing that, let’s go over yesterday’s presentation.
Johnson was proud to say that the Horizon Project has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. They published the first Horizon Report in 2004, at which time they were focused solely on higher education because that was what they were familiar with (Johnson worked in the field for many years, including a position as president and CEO of Fox Valley Technical College in Wisconsin). He also feels that at that time, no one was working across sector lines, so they stuck with higher education. Four years ago they began looking at K-12 education, and there are now three separate editions of the Report, each published annually: higher education, K-12, and museums. In addition, they produce regional technology outlooks, which are specialized reports that are usually funded by either a coalition of educational institutions or the local government, and these cover regions around the globe.
Each Horizon Report begins with a group of 45-50 experts from at least 20 different countries weighing in on what they believe to be the most important upcoming tech trends. The NMC draws these experts
Continue reading Horizon Reports: Tracking Trends
Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM on May 1st, 2012 Juanita Richardson, new associate to Dysart & Jones Associates, is candidate for SLA Presidency. Kudos to SLA for running q & a’s to help the membership get to know more about the wonderful slate of candidates.
SLA: When did you first join SLA? What made you decide to join then, and why do you still belong today?
Juanita Richardson with two SLA Past Presidents, Jane Dysart & Stephen Abram, at OLA Superconference
Juanita:
I joined SLA in 1988 when I landed my first job as Assistant Librarian at ScotiaMcLeod (an investment bank) on the advice of my boss, mentor and friend, Angie Devlin. I had been aware of SLA but, being new to Toronto at that time, didn’t realize how strong the SLA community was here. I was – if you can believe it – a very shy young librarian and Angie convinced me that reaching out to the SLA community would be a great way to develop professionally and personally. How right she was! REASON #1: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
In less than a year, I was asked to take on my first “task” within the chapter: I was responsible for thanking our speakers at one of the chapter meetings. The speakers that evening included Stephen Abram, Rebecca Jones and Deirdre Grimes. I don’t remember what they talked about but I certainly remember how nervous I was. I had never done any public speaking before! I had already written out my little thank you speech – completely unrelated to anything
Continue reading Juanita Richardson: Q&A’s for SLA President Candidate
Rebecca Jones posted this in Leadership on April 30th, 2012 I recently met Graham Lavender, a recent MLIS graduate seeking employment in the GTA. Many colleagues ask me “what’s the caliber of the new grads?” My response? “Awesome.” These new grads are ‘out there’ — networking, taking extra courses to further their insights, gaining experience with different types of positions, and writing. And, most importantly, they are contributing to and participating in professional associations. Like so many of us, they recognize that CLA, OLA, SLA and many other library associations are OUR associations: they are foundation for networking, advocating, learning, and, as Graham writes here, leadership development.
Graham is a talented writer, and I thank him for letting us share his thoughts on leadership development through our professional associations. For more writing by Graham, check out his blog at grahamlavender.com. Here he reflects on his involvement with associations in Montreal, where he worked for two and a half years as a liaison librarian at McGill.
By Graham Lavendar
For many, library school is a time of heady optimism and ambition. Students graduate with the desire to land a job and immediately set to work improving their new library, armed with a post-graduate degree’s worth of theory and best practices. Unfortunately, most entry-level librarian positions do not include leadership as a core duty, and this can leave new professionals feeling impotent and unappreciated. Why should someone with twenty or thirty years of real world experience (in addition to an MLIS and possibly numerous publications and other scholarly work) be given leadership roles over
Continue reading Leadership Development Through Professional Associations
Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM on April 26th, 2012 This is great!! The news coverage of LiLi: Fraser Valley Regional Library’s mobile initiative (not an app – a loaded car!). We reported on LiLi’s conception last week. Here’s her debut!
The ink on Innisfil Public Library’s Strategic Plan was barely dry when they made great strides toward their Vision of “sparking ideas to ignite a creative and dynamic community.” How? By launching, that’s right “launching” their Strategic Plan with a community party, complete with an Academy Award. Yep, Oscar - the big, heavy gold guy.
Academy Award winner Colin Chilvers, renowned for his creative visual effects on movies such as Superman, Tommy and X-Men, applauded the Innisfil PL’s strategies: “I like helping people sell their ideas,” he said, “These people are trying to bring different things to the library, not just books. I’m happy to be here; not enough people support the library.”
Colin Chilvers, with his friend "Oscar" speaks at the Innisfil PL's Strategic Plan Launch
The Library’s strategies are to position the Library a hub for discovery and exploration, design and construct creative, collaborative space, develop a strong community presence, and cultivate a “hacker ethic,” and foster a culture of innovation. Their unveiling of the Plan touched on all of their strategies — bringing the community together in a fun Saturday evening, with live music, staff demonstrating their 3D printer and digital repository for community history, and Library alive with conversation, interest and laughter. A local business owner spoke of the recent “Let Us Surprise You” community contest in which the Library partnered with Hardie and Company, a local advertising and branding company, saying “I am continuously impressed with the initiatives of the Innisfil Public Library to unify our communities”.
We’ve always admired
Continue reading Oscar-Winner Launches Innisfil’s Strategic Plan
Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM on April 13th, 2012 Smitty Miller, Community Develop Librarian for Fraser Valley Regional Library (Abbotsford, British Columbia) ”gets it.” She REALLY “gets it.” She “gets” that libraries need to be “in” the community, not just think the community is going to come “in” to the library. She “gets” that community development is about interaction and conversation. She “gets” that the library needs to be a fun, happening place, connecting with people where people are — “at food banks, shelters, senior homes, and other community hubs.” And she’s done it. WOW has she done it!
I had the absolute privilege of meeting Smitty 2 years ago when she’d been asked to lead the Library’s project to bring in a book mobile service. After doing her research into bookmobiles (if you want to know anything about bookmobiles, just ask her — the conversation is worth it – she’s infectious!), she put forth to the Library that developing deeper inroads (ok, the pun IS intended) with the community demanded a different type of librarymobile. Different they got.
This is LiLi – Library Live and On Tour! A “mobile initiative’ LiLi is a 2012 Nissan Cube, designed to deliver the library to people by “shattering stereotypes and misconceptions about library services. LiLi is an adult literacy initiative “targeting folks aged 19+”, first by getting their attention, then prompting conversations, making friends and then offering services.
LiLi, “the coolest little library car you’ll ever see” features: undercarriage glow (oh yeah!!) the back opens to reveal a mounted 40″ plasma digital
Continue reading Now THAT’S a Mobile Library!
Rebecca Jones posted this in Conferences on April 11th, 2012 Juanita is a candidate for the SLA Presidency. The candidates responding to questions that will better acquaint the membership with the candidate’s perspectives and opinions.
SLA 2012 Leadership Summit: Liz, Juanita, Gloria & Allison
SLA: Question: What sort of advice would you give to professionals, both newly minted and more seasoned professionals, who might be interested in nontraditional career paths?
Juanita:There is no such thing as a non-traditional career path. Our background and training have provided us with the skill set to select, acquire, organize, manage and share information. While these skills are fundamental to a traditional library environment, they are also fundamental to any organization where data / information / intelligence / knowledge is at the hub of that organization’s business. And in this knowledge economy – and in the face of the information explosion that is the Internet, more and more organizations have come to recognize the importance of information.
The pace of change combined with a sophisticated technical infrastructure to manage information has reached a stage where NOT having staff in place to manage not just the technology (the “pipes”) but the actual content, the data, the intelligence, the “water” means that that organization is not capitalizing on the one quality that can differentiate one company, one university, one country from another: our intellectual capital.
This is our moment. The time is now to expand beyond our traditional environments and take on new challenging roles in career paths that are, in fact, the exact right fit for us.
Continue reading “Traditional” Career? What’s That?
Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM on April 9th, 2012 Great news for those of us that cherish high-quality news and authoritative articles about the information industry: Gary Price and INFOdocket have joined Library Journal! “As it has been in the past, INFOdocket will continue to be the place to find hand-picked news, reports, and links related to the hot library and publishing topics of the day. But now it will also serve as something of a first-pass site, providing context and coverage that will feed into the full reporting coming from the LJ News team.” Congrats to both Library Journal and INFOdocket!
Rebecca Jones posted this in Conferences, Lib, IM, KM on March 30th, 2012 Purdue University’s Management and Economics Library has undergone a complete redesign. Hal Kirkwood, Associate Head of the Library and Tomalee Doan, Division Head of Business Libraries, shared the Library’s experience at CIL2012’s post-conference workshop, Transforming Services & Spaces. Their focus was to create spaces totally aligned with their vision:
And they did so in carefully managed phases.
Check out their prezi. And thanks to Hal and Tomalee for sharing their insights with us.
Rebecca Jones posted this in Conferences, Leadership on March 29th, 2012 The theme of Michael Edson’s keynote at Computers in Libraries 2012 last week was “think big, start small, move fast.” Thanks to Information Today (CIL producers & publishers) and This Week in Libraries for their video coverage of all the keynotes and many presentations. I encourage you to grab a coffee or tea, and, if you work with co-workers, grab them too, and view some of these resources. Erik Boekesteijn’s interview with Michael is below, so maybe you could start with this one. Pay particular attention to what he says and the implications for strategic and operational plans:
Think Big: dream, imagine and design the experiences you envision for your library, your organization, your clients, your staff, yourself Start Small: identify the initiatives that will lead to the dream that are doable, that give you wins & successes to maintain the momentum so crucial to keep going Move Fast: get to it, today. As Michael says, what cost thousands of dollars & personpower a few years ago can now be piloted for a few thousand within a matter of weeks. Do it. Now. What’s the worst that can happen? To Jane & I, the worst that can happen is that you don’t move fast, & someone else does, leaving you way behind.
Other gold nuggets Mike left us with to consider: “The tangible value of the present moment needs to be exploited.”
“Every user is a hero on their own epic journey and it is
Continue reading Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast
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