STATE OF THE LIBRARY,
2006
The theme of this year’s
State of the Library address is “change.”
In many ways, this has been the theme for the past several years, but I
would say that the changes we have experienced in the past several months, and
those we will embrace in the coming months, will be more palpable to us in many
ways.
The world outside us
continues its speedy twists and turns, most markedly in communication, as well
as in publishing, and is
reflected in our institution and
its strategic ventures. Inasmuch
as the Library is always the microcosm of the community we serve, we can say we
are in the eye of this storm in every sense of the word. The students we are now serving and those
we will serve in the next few years come
from an environment that is increasingly virtual and dynamic. It’s hard to believe that it could become
more so than it already is, but indeed, technology is propelling new ways of
teaching, learning and communicating that we
as the Library must understand and embrace, and strive to lead whenever
possible. I know – you know – that we are more than up
to that challenge, but it requires that we innovate and adapt more quickly
than ever to stay even with or ahead of the
curve.
Over the past few years,
Paula has challenged us to face the changes in our environment and make
necessary alterations in how we interact with our users
and our partners both in the
academy and in scholarly
communication, and we have benefited
as we have moved forward. We have
wonderful examples of how well we are doing that, and I hope you will agree
that the power point review in the last half hour highlighting just
a few of our many successes in
the past year can bring us much satisfaction
as well as anticipation for the future.
More on that in a moment -
first I would like to turn our attention to personnel changes that we have
seen and will see in the next
several months.
As we
know, Paula has been tapped to serve as the Interim Chief Information Officer
for the next several months, while I am standing in her stead. We have a new AUL for Services coming on
board as well. We have recommended that
Scott Walter be appointed to this post, and we are awaiting Board of Trustee
approval of this appointment at the September meeting this week. If all goes as planned, we will welcome Scott
here later this month. With Scott’s arrival, we face the departure
of our well-loved colleague and friend, Bob Burger. While we will have plenty
of opportunity in the
upcoming days to thank Bob for all his
gifts to the Library, theis
institution and our profession, and to roast and congratulate him on his
retirement, I do not want to let the chance pass to say thank you to him
especially for his work in developing a new job in this Library, the AUL for
Services, and for making so many of our work lives better and happier.
We have had other
new faces come to join
us in the past year (name
them, ask those present to stand.) Aand
we have had other colleagues who have retired or about to retire. If you are in one of these groups, please
stand and let us take a moment to both welcome and thank them.:
(name them and ask
to stand if present.)
We
have lost our work
mates and
friends, and we have
celebrated their lives and mourned the loss of them. Linda
Ackerson and others, Fred
Nash, double-check on others. Those
of us who are new, those of us who have left or are about to leave, and those
of us who continue to serve here know that it is a rare privilege in life to be
given the opportunity to work in this
Library. We are an exceptional gang: very
smart, very creative, caring, independent in spirit, and we don’t hire
just anybody. As Bill Mischo said so well at our July
faculty meeting, we need to remember that when we do our work – whatever that
work might be in this Library - we touch
the world through our users, and they take a little
bit of us out into their lives.
I want to talk a little
bit about Life Without
Paula. Many of us are worried that she
will be spirited away from us, once the Provost and the rest of the campus further
understand her many talents. Paula has
assured me and I’m sure will reassure you a little later this morning that she
has no intentions of leaving the Library and in fact is already actively
engaged in recruiting people to the CIO position and is
serving on the CIO search committee. Paula’s work at CITES will strengthen our
connection to campus IT and will assure
that two key units on the Urbana campus will work even more collaboratively and
with shared values of excellence in service.
Paula will continue to
serve on the Dean’s Council and is now
also a member of the Provost’s cabinet. Our new Provost, Linda Katehi, has a lively
intellect and a strong commitment to team-building, and she has made me feel
most welcome. All of these things bode
well for the continued
success of the Library.
I am continuing my
weekly meetings with Paula, and do not
hesitate to call on her
for guidance whenever I have a question.
I have promised myself that when she returns, she will have little cause
to look around and say, “What the heck happened here while I was out??” It is very important to me, as I know it is
to you, that we not lose any of our momentum over the next several months. We have a lot of challenges and opportunities
to address and I have no intention of missing our stepping forward. I expect to seek advice from the Executive
Committee, the AULs and the Administrative Council as Paula has done, and I
will strive to be as transparent about decisions as I can be, and trust that
all of you will share your advice, your opinions and your concerns with
me. I hope that over the years you and I
have built a collegial relationship and
mutual trust that will keep us moving
ahead together. I will be representing the Library at the
national tables: ARL and DLF for example, as well as in the state. Paula will continue much of her work with
Development efforts, and maintain the
excellent relationships with our donors that are so important to our
success. She
also will continue to serve on the CARLI Board of Directors, a valuable
alliance that will assure that we remain involved in the many new initiatives
that CARLI is undertaking in the state.
How long can we expect
this arrangement to be in place? From my
experience in recruiting an AUL for Services, I would expect that it might easily
last through this
academic year. I have told Paula and the Provost that I am
here to support and represent the
Library during the CIO search as long as I am
needed.
I have also told Paula
that it is my intention to retire when this assignment is done. This is not a decision that I arrived at
lightly – I truly do love my work in our collections and could imagine
continuing in that work for many years to come.
But life brings choices,
and I have this rare opportunity
to draw my sphere closer in to my sons, who are at the ages when I believe they
will benefit the most from my time and energy.
This is my chance to try out “the road less traveled” – and trust me, I have
had plenty of time on the “road most traveled,” or I-74 as most people call it.
I don’t intend to stop working. Rather,
I look at this change as
a chance to re-invent myself, and
I will be actively looking to find useful ways to use the
my knowledge
and experience. I have gained. But for now, my focus is the
Over the past 6 years,
Paula has used the State of the Library address to establish some guiding
principles for the year ahead, and to reinforce our shared vision of the
University Library. I have spent some time
reviewing the past six State of the Library addresses, and
admire both the consistency of her message and how far we have come in meeting
the goals she has set forth. The
underlying themes include the need to improve our facilities, improve access
to our collections, preserve our
collections, build a coherent service model that responds to the changing
culture of our users, and train and
develop our staff. Think how far we have come:
With improvement in our
facilities:
§
we are well in to the
§
we have a new home for
our newspapers and a re-conceptualized History, Philosophy & Newspaper
Library that is packed with users, many waiting to get in when it opens
§
our Learning Commons is
a fever of activity, readying for a fall openinglaunching, and
Undergrad boasts a state of the art classroom
§
like it our not, we have
Tunnel Vision in our
§
we have a Conceptual
Plan for renovating our Main Library building, and are beginning discussions on
campus with moving to the next phase
§
the Rare Book and
Manuscripts Library has been remodeled into a much more usable space
§
the Natural History
Survey Library has moved to new user-friendly quarters
§
our Chemistry Library is
moved and with a new service plan that celebrates the strong and steady move of
chemical literature and chemists into the digital age
§
the Funk Agriculture
Library is heavily-utilized and embraces campus-Library collaboration
§
our state-of-the-art
conservation laboratory is up and
running and beginning to add the staff it needs
§
We can see the floor in most
of the book stacks
With
improvements in collection access:
§
Development of the ORR
§
Ability to ingest
bibliographic records for large collections
§
Voyager, and all its
components that bring us an integrated system
§
Re-emergence of a core
cataloging unit, with a renewed emphasis on meeting and leading in national
standards for authority work
§
Addition of metadata creation
into our regular cataloging and access work
§
Retrospective conversion
of a significant portion of our Marcette
records, with further work underway
§
Detailing of our “hidden
collection” in our Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, and awarding of a Delmas
grant to catalog these items,
along with use of our NEH Challenge Grant money to describe and preserve
existing collection items such as the 500+ volumes of Spanish plays that have
been an quiet treasure in our book stacks for many years.
With
improvements in preservation:
§
Development of a real
preservation unit, and the addition of a preservation administrator
§
Deepened understanding
of the environmental needs of our book stacks, with important data on
conditions to help us sharpen our requests for help
§
Awarding of grants to
address the preservation and access needs of some of our most
significant collections, such as the Sandburg Collection
§
Development of the
brittle books reformatting program
§
A binding
program that is streamlined and flexible to meet the needs of our changes in
publishing and acquisition
§
Dynamic collaboration
with other institutions, such as our work with Cornell and others on the USAIN
preservation project
§
A disaster plan, along
with documentation and training
§
Preservation training
outreach to the state
With a
coherent service model:
§
Annual surveys of our
user groups, with feedback informing our service decisions
§
Deployment of librarians
to where faculty and students work
§
Reference chat and IM - plus
communicaton channels in MySpace and Facebook - ,
so that reference help
is available not only when our users want it, but HOW and WHERE they
want it
§
Development of a strong
information literacy program that builds on our
connections with the campus community`
curriculum,
particularly through first-year composition and University 101 courses
§
Rethinking of hours, and
extended hours for key library locations
§
Establishment
of outreach activities such as the Bookmarket at the Square,
Printer’s Row, and the Library Fall
Festival
§
Building of closer ties with
between our
collections and information technology work
And, a
commitment to training and development:
§
Appointment of a
part-time training coordinator
§
Development of new ways
to deliver training, such as through games
§
A full-fledged graduate
assistant for the training program
§
An untenured librarians’
professional development program
§
Training sessions in
technological tools and services
Last year, Paula
challenged us to some a
less tangible but
nonetheless deeply important challengesexamination
in of
how we work.
She asked us to be more audacious and daring; to treat
each other collegially, with dignity and respect
and to collaborate more; to
work on building a central infrastructure that allows us to share resources for
common tasks; to come to a deeper understanding of the
habits and expectations of new generations of students;
to focus on the global changes that
are impacting fields of study, higher education in general and UIUC in
particular; to do better
by our print collections;
to step back from our quest for perfection
and look to assessment tools to help us make good choices for where we put our
efforts; to understand our Library as place;
and, to invest money and time in
development, grants and contracts.
Each of us will need to
grade ourselves on how well we are doing in our treatment of one another, but
I must offer an observation that only an oldster can make: I recently
beganam now once again
attending Executive Committee meetings after a lengthy
hhiatus of several
years. I served on EC during some deeply
tumultuous times in previous Library
administrations, and
left with many experiences
of disagreements
with Library administration that
I wish to forget. Thus the
thought of once again going to EC meetings
produced a visceral reaction and some
trepidation. I am happy to report that
EC is a healthy group, not without plenty of debate and dissent, but collegial
and focused. I can think of no better
bellwether for our Library with than
a healthy Executive
Committee, and I congratulate Paula and my colleagues for building that.
Our budget restrictions
have encouraged us to thinking collaboratively about
working in new ways, although
we still have work to do in that regard.
We have brought gaming into the Library and into the planning for our
institutional repository and have taken a lead among research libraries in this
regard as well; we are well on our way to beginning
to streaming
audio and visual material to our users, and I believe that the more we build in
these directions, the more vital we will become to the success of this
campus. The
network upgrade that we are seeing in the Main Library reminds us that we will
continue to have new capabilities in offering up our collections and
services. We have the opportunity – now
enhanced with Paula’s work in CITES - to think beyond wireless technology and
imagine new ways of using technology to communicate. We have done very well by
our print collections and
have also taken a strong leadership role nationally in stewarding our print journal
collections for the users of the future. We are moving into
digital preservation, and will soon enough find ourselves in a position to plan
for developing professional positions in digital curation. We have put
our arms around our Library as place, and put
on paper what our dreams look like
for a Main Library facility to house the
future of our collections, our
services, our users and our selves. Our
grant program is
healthy, and we have been awarded over $5 million in grants in the past few
years. Our ORR had some 5 million items
downloaded in 2005, and that number keeps growing.
In short, we have so
much to be proud of, and it offers a wonderful springboard for us to continue
our efforts to become the Library we envision and desire to be. I would like to lay out for us some areas on
which we must focus our energies in
this coming year. There are
13 items, and I refuse to be superstitious about that:
1.1.
The
Scholarly Commons: over the course of the
next year, we will engage in further planning for the development of the
Scholarly Commonsa scholarly
or research commons, to complement our
Learning Commons. While we cannot know
at present when we might have the money necessary for
the physical work ofto
establishing
a physical space for this
programe Scholarly
Commons, we can still develop
and implement the intellectual work that is, after all, the heart of it. Under the leadership of Beth Woodard and the
Office of Services, and with the advice of the AULs and the EC, it
is my intention that this program should be
well-articulated by the time we gather with Paula for
the 2007 State of the Library address.