Building Supportive Organizational Cultures in Libraries
Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at Binghamton University, University Union
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8:00-8:45am – Registration and breakfast
8:45-9:00am – Introduction and welcome
Andy Krzystyniak, ENY/ACRL President
Susannah Gal, Interim Dean of Libraries, Binghamton University
9:00-10:00am – Keynote #1: Advance Your Learning, Transform Your Institution – Mary Ellen Davis, Executive Director, ACRL
As change accelerates especially in higher education how can academic librarians respond to these changes to ensure they and their libraries thrive? What are the new roles for librarians and libraries and how can we prepare and adapt to them? What we learn in graduate school is just the beginning of a lifelong habit of learning. And we are not learning simply for learning’s sake, but to support our roles as partners in educating students, achieving our institutions’ missions, and positioning librarians as campus leaders in assessment and continuous improvement. If academic librarians are to develop habits of lifelong learning in our students, how can we do this if we are not learning ourselves? This session will explore new roles for academic librarians and how they can prepare for the work ahead.
Mary Ellen K. Davis has served as the Executive Director of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, since 2001. ACRL is the higher education association for librarians and it is dedicated to advancing learning and transforming scholarship. Under her leadership ACRL has advanced the value of academic libraries, built partnerships with higher education organizations, expanded open access to ACRL publications, strengthened the association’s programs, publications, and services. Mary Ellen’s career includes various positions at the American Library Association as well as positions at Central Michigan University, the Downers Grove Public Library, and Virginia Lake Elementary School. She has an M.S. in Library and Information Science and a B.S. in Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in education from Central Michigan University.
10:00-10:30am – Coffee break, vendor and poster sessions
10:30-11:15am – Breakout sessions
11:20-12:10pm – Keynote #2: Embracing Librarianship, Warts and All- Jessica Olin, Director, Wesley College Robert H. Parker Library
Even a little experience can make it difficult to remember what it was like to be new in your field, and academic librarians are not immune to this phenomenon. Novice amnesia is especially problematic when we bring new librarians into the fold, whether at our own places of employment or when mentoring at a distance. Mentors and supervisors, often mid-career and old guard librarians, sometimes have a reputation for liking the status quo, but this is a helping profession and none of us want to be exclusionary. As a core value of librarianship, mentoring should be re-evaluated and re-vitalized. We need to help early career librarians combat rampant cases of imposter syndrome and we need to encourage the spirit of true innovation. The quickest and easiest change we can make is to start owning our mistakes. The willingness to make missteps and learn from them, and to do so publicly, is one of the biggest things librarians can do to help other librarians.
Jessica Olin is the Director of the Robert H. Parker Library at Wesley College. Her professional interests include incorporating popular reading materials into traditional academic library collections, building communities at liberal arts college libraries, and bridging the gap between library science graduate programs and professional practice. In her limited spare time, she likes to cross-stitch, watch Doctor Who, spend time with her geriatric cat, and read lots of comic books.
12:10-1:30pm – Lunch and business meeting
1:30-2:15pm – Breakout sessions
2:15-2:45pm – Coffee break, vendor and poster sessions
2:50-3:30pm – Lightning rounds
3:30-3:45pm – Evaluation and wrap-up
3:45pm – Tour of the Glenn G. Bartle Library