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 they said, I’m sure!  – waiting my moment when I would have to step up.  At the podium, there were small gifts I was to give to each of our speakers to thank them.  I read out my little speech, without looking at anyone on the stage … and raced away from the podium as quickly as possible … leaving the gifts behind at the lecturn.  Fortunately, Stephen, Rebecca and Deirdre had the grace to simply help themselves to the gifts without pointing out my oversight.  Even more fortunately, this was only my first of many roles with the Toronto Chapter, culminating in Chapter President in 1995.  REASON #2: ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN A NO-RISK ENVIRONMENT.

Why do I stay?  That reason is the easiest of all:  REASON #3: SLA IS MY CONNECTION.  When I talk about our annual conference, I talk about the chance to get together with 5,000 of my closest friends.  I have discovered that that very vibrant, welcoming community exists far wider than just in my local chapter.  As a member of SLA, I am a part of an extended network of professionals who work in a variety of different environments within many different industries.  It is my pleasure to be connected to this community and to contribute to the vibrancy and good health of our association.

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 someone with a head full of good ideas and a crisp, uncreased, and perhaps even framed degree? What an outrage!

Fortunately, leadership opportunities are available even if they are not part of the duties of a given position. In my experience, professional associations have been a terrific source of leadership possibilities, and some of these opportunities are more obvious than others. In my first two years as a librarian, I’ve identified and taken on leadership roles in three different ways. Sometimes opportunities will present themselves to you, and all you have to do is accept the offer. Sometimes you will see an opportunity advertised, and you will express interest. And finally, sometimes you will identify an organization you’d like to work with, and then inquire to see what opportunities are available.

My first leadership role presented itself to me within a month or two of beginning my first professional position; I received a phone call from the outgoing Past President of the CLA Montreal Chapter (at the time, an Interest Group of CLA) asking me to join the executive as the new President Elect. The outgoing Past President was someone I had become acquainted with through local library events when I was in the MLIS program at McGill, and I felt honoured that she thought highly enough of me to offer me this invitation. I readily accepted, and soon I was working with the President and Past President to organize events and take care of other Chapter business. I consider this to be an important leadership role because of the flexibility and room for creativity we had on the executive in terms of coming up with activities that would best serve our members and the Montreal LIS community in general. CLA Montreal holds an informal series of themed get togethers called the Salons des Bibliothécaires, as well as more structured workshops and lectures. Promoting these events has allowed me to learn a great deal about the use of social networking sites in a professional context; although email was the most important tool for advertising events, we also used a blog and a Facebook group, and we had a wiki to share information among the executive. Another leadership challenge with this group presented itself at the CLA Conference in May, when all Interest Groups were dissolved. The executive all had to work together to create a vision for the new Montreal Network. We wrote up our Terms of Reference, gathered the requisite ten virtual signatures, and finally this fall we officially became a Network. Of course, not everyone will be fortunate enough to have this kind of opportunity come knocking; I certainly benefited from being in the right place at the right time. However, if you keep your ear to the ground, you will probably hear about groups that are looking for new members, and this technique has worked for me as well.

When the Re:Generations Committee (at the time, a committee of CACUL, which was a CLA Division under the old structure) put out a call for new members, I was eager to join. I had learned about the group (affectionately known as Re:Gen) as a student and was familiar with the work they did to encourage students and new professionals who were interested in careers as academic librarians. Unfortunately, in the chaos of beginning my first professional position I missed the deadline, so I wasn’t able to become a member, but I was welcomed aboard as a writer for the Re:Gen blog. I had been blogging on my own for a while, but it was a valuable new experience to participate in a multi-author blog. A year later, I made sure to submit my CV and writing sample on time, and I became a full member of the committee. One thing that made this experience unique for me was that the committee members were spread out across Canada. This was my first time participating in meetings over Skype, and it worked more smoothly than I had expected; we had to take various time zones into consideration, and once or twice we lost someone due to internet connection issues, but overall it was an effective way for us to hold our conversations. I was interested in being involved with the resume review service (open to all CLA members, but aimed at students and recent graduates applying to academic positions), but I was concerned that as a new librarian who had never served on a hiring committee, I would not be suited for the role of Resume Review Coordinator. In the end, I teamed up with a more experienced committee member, who gave me some guidance, and between the two of us we gave feedback to everyone who submitted a resume to the group. Another project I took on through the committee was organizing a panel of academic librarians to speak to MLIS students about their careers; I brought in four librarians from three different universities who had a wide range of experiences to share. While I was lining up the panellists, I coordinated with the McGill CLA Student Chapter to determine the most appropriate time for the event and to make sure it was promoted sufficiently to students. The committee also gave a similar panel discussion at the CLA conference in Halifax, which we geared towards students and recent graduates who wanted to know what it was like to be an academic librarian. I both convened the session and participated as a panellist, and it was a great success, due partly to the experienced committee members who had been involved with a similar presentation the year before and had insight into what would work and what wouldn’t. Although Re:Gen has been disbanded since the changes to CLA’s structure, there are plans to create a Network with similar goals, and I’m glad I took the chance to work with the group while I could. Even if you don’t hear about an opening, though, leadership opportunities are often still available if you’re willing to ask around.

After attending the Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference in 2010, I was sufficiently impressed with the organization that I decided to become involved (without decreasing my commitment to CLA, of course!), so I contacted a member of the SLA Eastern Canada Chapter executive and asked whether there was anything I could do to help. Sure enough, they needed a Chair for Awards & Honours, so I immediately volunteered to be in charge of the two annual awards: the Anne Galler Award, presented to one student from each of the MLIS programs in the region (McGill, Université de Montréal, and Dalhousie), and the Member of the Year Award. My responsibilities have included soliciting nominations from the membership and announcing the winners at the awards ceremonies. Although all of the roles I’ve described here have included challenges of communication, my work with SLA has been unique in that the meetings I’ve attended have been conducted mostly in French. While I did take French all through high school in Toronto, I didn’t have much chance to put it to use (aside from a brief immersion program one summer) until I moved to Montreal to start my MLIS, so my skills are rather basic. Participating in meetings was intimidating at first, but all of the Executive and Advisory Board members were very friendly and patient, and I soon felt at ease (it also helps that they all speak at least some English and are willing to bail me out when necessary).

Leadership opportunities through professional associations may come straight to your door, they may be announced, or you may have to go looking for them, but no matter how you come across them, I would highly recommend taking the plunge. There may be moments when you worry that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, but I expect that you will find yourself surrounded by people who want you to succeed. After all, we’re librarians. We’re here to help.

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.

Working with SLA, James has undertaken the Loyalty Project to ascertain how SLA members fit on a scale of relationship levels and what percentage of the members are “loyal”.  Based upon a statistically significant survey, the following profiles SLA’s relationship levels with members today:

What’s the “ideal” relationship level for associations or brands?  20% of the members are loyal, as seen here:

SLA’s opportunity is to move the “Predisposed” members to being “Loyal”. How Can SLA Get Members  To Love It?  To Really, Really Love It?

The SLA Chapters have a great opportunity to drive loyalty. Chapters are the units “on the ground” with the potential for frequent interaction with the membership.  There are 4 elements to develop a loyal relationship level:

1. Increased engagement
2. Forgiveness
3. Advocacy
4. Retention

In Chapters, 20% of the members are “engaged”.  Therefore, 80% are just “transactional” – they pay their dues … but they probably would like to be more engaged with their Chapter.  And therein lies the opportunity – because there are 3 elements required to CREATE loyalty:

1. Trust – 87% of members surveyed reported trusting SLA
2. Belonging – 62% of members reported feeling a sense of belonging
3. Sense of greater purpose  – 56% of members perceived that SLA has a vision

The level of trust reported meets the “ideal” for an association.  However, the level for belonging is off target.  What can we, in our local Chapters, do to promote a feeling of belonging?  This was the challenge issued to all the unit leaders at the recent SLA Leadership Summit.  Much discussion ensued.  I believe that, for an association such as SLA, this is not that great a challenge.  So, come on!  Get engaged!  How can we promote the sense of belonging so that ALL SLA members feel that they are part of an active, interested community?  We want everyone to feel the love!

This blog post is being posted to Future Ready 365 today.  Are you a future ready information professional?

A few weeks ago Jane Dysart, Kim Silk and I were fortunate to hear Daniel Pink talk at the Rotman School of Management Life-Long Learning Conference for Leaders, ‘How to Get Your Business Back to Reality.” His latest book, Drive, bases “the surprising things that motivate us” on 40 years of human motivation research (here’s a pdf summary of Drive).  It wasn’t his discussion about what does or doesn’t motivate us that caught my attention, although that is fascinating and worth a blog post(!); it was his discussion about the need for organizations to challenge and re-think base assumptions on which they are building their strategies.

I’m increasingly concerned that that the library sector and information profession must do just that: challenge, re-frame and quite possibly re-think our base assumptions and the practices and approaches built on those assumptions. Pink re labels assumptions “orthodoxies”.  Labelling and viewing what we, as a sector and profession view to be truths as “orthodoxies” rather than assumptions forces us to see the deep-rooted concreteness of these “truths”.  It is these deep roots that make it somewhat painful to question the validity of these orthodoxies today and, more importantly, tomorrow and into the future.

I laugh, both because laughter is healthy and because for a profession that has an orthodoxy (yes,  a truth – an assumption!)  of finding and delivering answers to any question, we aren’t really too comfortable asking and considering questions about our practices, approaches, strategies or organizations. I don’t think we’re really any different than any other sector; wrestling with those types of questions is akin to wrestling itself – invigorating for some, uncomfortable for others and the outcome is unknown.  And, yet, to be future ready we must challenge those orthodoxies and ensure our practices, perceptions and approaches are ready for the future – whatever that future may hold. I may not like wrestling, but I absolutely the thought of seeing the library sector or the information profession perceived as irrelevant in the future, so I’m willing to be uncomfortable and to engage in the challenging discussions and re-framing required.

SLA is designing its future. Next week the Board will begin considering the assumptions and “orthodoxies” held true by an association that’s more than 100 years old. SLA’s future for the next 100 years will be designed by standing in that future as Jane Dysart challenged the association to do in Information Outlook in 1993 when she was SLA President.  Jane has always questioned orthodoxies, often without even realizing she’s doing it, because she is naturally curious. She has taught me so much about the value – and fun! – of curiousity.  Curiousity leads to discoveries. We need to be curious about what type of association will be indispensable to an indispensable sector and an indispensable profession. We need to ask questions about what that association will “look like”, how it will enable its members and how members will enable it. How will the association differ from other information and library sector associations?  Will members come together at an annual conference in the future? Why? How? What services will so delight members that they’ll prize the association above all others?  Curiousity rarely, if ever, “killed the cat” and it will help us discover the questions, re-frame our assumptions, and design the future we want, need and will delight in.

Get involved in SLA’s Strategic Vision Project. Stand in the future & see the SLA that will be indispensable for you – and contribute your voice here.(http://futureready365.sla.org/05/27/sla-strategic-vision-project/)

Jane Dysart, Juanita Richardson & Kim Silk at SLA2010

Yo.  That’s a premise. Holding much promise & peril.  Every evolution, revolution & innovation brings promise & peril.

And that’s what struck me as I gave a talk about Thinking Strategically & Critically.  As we consider & question our assumptions regarding access and resources, we open up possibilities. And, with possibilities — with dreams — with change comes promise & peril.  Speakers here are talking about artificial hearts, artificial skin — incredible potential, promise & peril.

Is it scary to redefine our services, our roles & processes? It’s far scarier NOT to. No peril? Then no promise.

SLA is 100!

It must have been a very interesting world in 1909.  Here are three immediate (to me) organizations celebrating their centennials.  The Special Libraries Association, an organization representing 12,000+ librarians with specialized collections and services in corporations (law firms, banks, pharmaceuticals, manufacturers, hospitals, ettc) around the work, celebrates their centennial this year.  The Toronto chapter of SLA is having a gala to celebrate next month — I’m very excited about attending.  The association’s 100th annual conference is being held in June in DC (where SLA’s HQ has been for many years, including when I was President in 1995/6).  Should be a great event starting off with keynote speaker Colin Powell.

And now we are into ice hockey NHL playoffs and the Montreal Canadiens are 100!  Check out the many jerseys and logos from their past.  I am not a Canadiens fan but I certainly respect their longevity and strength over the years.  It will be interesting to see what’s in their future.

Leons is a furniture store in my area and it is 100 years old too.  Quite a history.  I was most impressed that the current CEO went across Canada celebrating with all the employees.  Nice.

Donna is also very active in her Capital Hill community and is currently the Chair of the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee.  The market will be moving back to its historic building in July following rehabilitation after a devastating fire in 2007.  Donna will be receiving the Capitol Hill Achievement Award at a dinner benefiting the Capitol Hill Community Foundation on April 22, 2009.

Donna is very active in the library community.  She is a past president of the Special Libraries Association, a former member of the Governing Board of International Federation of Libary Association and Institutions (IFLA),  and on the advisory committees for Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian.