ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Dumont and Maloy share plans for ACRL: Vote in the election this spring

Ed. note: C&RL News offered ACRL candidates for vice-president/president-elect, Paul

Dumont and Frances Maloy, this opportunity to share their views with the membership. Although many of the issues facing ACRL are discussed informally at meetings, we want to use this venue to provide a national forum to all members. We hope this will assist you in making an informed choice when you receive your ballot this spring.

PAUL DUMONT

“Reason and judgement are the qualities of a leader.”—Tacitus

“Judge a leader by the followers. ”

—Anonymous

What an honor it is to stand for the presidency of ACRL, the largest division of the ALA, with a membership of approximately 11,000 academic librarians, information professionals, and interested individuals. ACRL is acclaimed for its spirit of dedication to service and advocacy for all academic librarians and information professionals. Through its chapters, sections, discussion groups, committees, and task forces, ACRL members will lead our profession through the challenges currently facing academic libraries.

As academic and research librarians, our overarching goal is to provide services to our students and faculties to further improve learning and research in all academic institutions. To achieve this goal, the profession and the libraries we serve must flourish. We must work collectively on an almost daunting number of critical issues identi-

Paul Dumont

Frances Maloy

Copyright 2002 Tim Wilkerson fled by the ACRL membership, task forces, and association leaders over the past couple of years.

The challenges

Among the issues are 1) recruitment, education, and retention of librarians; 2) the role of the library in academic institutions; 3) the impact of information technology on library services; 4) digital resources in our libraries; 5) scholarly communication and publishing; 6) the role of academic libraries in teaching, learning, and research; 7) marketing our academic libraries; and 8) funding for our libraries in the academic enterprise. These are but a few of the many challenges that have been identified as critical by our members, the Board of Directors, and the strategic plan.

Some of the issues mentioned are currently being addressed by ACRL. In 2001 ‚ ACRL President Mary Reichel established the Focus on the Future Task Force whose chair, W. Lee Hisle, reported on the task force’s progress in the November 2002 issue of C&RL News. ACRL President Helen Spalding has created a complimentary task force, chaired by Maureen Sullivan, to look at the future of ACRL as an association and has participated with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to appoint an ACR1/ARL Joint Task Force for Recruitment into the Profession, led by Shirley Baker and Hannelore Rader. Spalding has also created a task force led by Ken Marks to develop the ACRL @ Your Library Campaign. This group will roll out its first training sessions on how to develop an academic library marketing strategy at the ACRL National Conference in Charlotte.

About the authors

Paul E. Dumont is director of educational resources support services for the Seven Colleges Dallas County Community College District, e-mail: Pdumont@dcccd.edu; Frances Maloy is leader of the access services division at Emory University, email: libfm@emory.edu

Spalding has also appointed Board member Theresa Byrd as chair of the ACRL Spectrum Scholar Mentor Task Force.

The Board of Directors has incorporated these initiatives into its strategic plans and the divisions’ sections and committees are including them in their activities. The Board continues to support diversity in the profession through its generous contributions on your behalf to the ALA Spectrum Initiative.

President-elect Tyrone Cannon will be working with academic libraries to embrace the new resources revolutionizing the cooperative sharing and equitable availability of information and information literacy. All of these initiatives are important and will have, if successful, a powerful influence on the good of our association, our profession, and our campuses.

I don’t want to identify a new theme that will pull resources and attention away from these critical initiatives that are moving forward. I pledge to lead ACRL to the successful accomplishment of these ongoing initiatives. Success in each area will be different, but, taken together, I will guide and shepherd them to concrete, measurable outcomes. I will also continue to foster and further develop ACRL’s culture of opportunity for talent and leadership, providing opportunities for members to serve and contribute to the future of our profession.

Service

I have been an active member of ALA and ACRL for the past 30 years. I have served you on many ACRL committees, sections, councils, task forces, and boards.

Some examples of my ACRL service are my many years of service with the Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS) as section chair and my service as a Board member, chair of various committees, and Texas Chapter representative to ACRL Chapters Council.

I am very proud of receiving the 1992 ACRI/ CJCLS EBSCO Community College Learning Resources Leadership Award. I have just completed four years on the ACRL Board of Directors and have, in the past, served on ALA and ACRL statistics committees as well as ACRL nominations and awards committees. I cuπently serve on the College and Research Librarieseditorial board.

Beyond ACRL service, I chaired the Texas Library Association College and University Section; I am past chair of the AMIGOS Board of Directors and currently an elected AMIGOS representative to OCLC Members Council; I have served on many committees of the Texas Library Association and recently completed two terms on the Texas State Library TexShare Advisory Board.

Does it seem as if I can’t say no? Well, I consider professional service a privilege—I learn so much and make deep friendships—and as a responsibility, I want to make academic librarianship better because of my having been an academic librarian! In any case, professional service has been an important part of my career, and ACRL has been my venue of choice.

The road ahead

With the help of ACRL members, through chapters, sections, discussion groups, committees, task forces, and leadership, I would like to work with all of you. What would we work on together? In reviewing what’s on our collective plate now, it seems to me imperative that ACRL position itself to lead our profession through the challenges ahead.

ACRL must remain a significant partner with ALA and its Spectrum and @ Your Library initiatives. ACRL must continue the development of the Institute for Information Literacy and Harvard Leadership Institute. It is imperative that the ACRL leadership support Susan Martin, program officer for scholarly communications, and the Scholarly Communications Committee, led by Ray English, in their SPARC efforts. The ARL/ACRL Joint

Task Force for Recruitment into the Profession, as well as the ACRL academic and research library campaign will provide the ACRL leadership with a roadmap we can use to respond to important problems facing our profession. These efforts, along with the work of the Focus on the Future Task Force, represent the best academic library talent serving all ACRL members. I would like to use my effort and energy to lead ACRL into the brightest of futures and ask for your support.

Each new ACRL president is steadied and strengthened by the solid foundation built by past presidents and past Boards of Directors. As I look to ACRL’s near-term future (three-to-five years), we have a lot of unfinished legacy initiatives on our plate. Through these initiatives we have collectively started to explore and define:

• What it means to be an association in the 21st century.

• What the future holds for us, our association, and our libraries.

• The ways in which we might become more successful at influencing and changing that future.

Seven issues to focus on

I would posit that the efforts we now have underway are critical to ACRL’s ability to affect the course and future of information access and delivery of services to our students, faculty and institutions, that we need to commit deeply to them and shepherd them to completion. Many of you have had experiences of good efforts that fail to become implemented and mainstreamed. It is important that ACRL leadership, as well as all of us as members, focus our collective energy on the following seven issues:

1. Define what our future membership will look like.

2. Influence the course of scholarly communication.

3. Raise the awareness of North America’s educated public about the value and role of academic libraries.

4. Recruit and provide opportunities for new and diverse members in the academic library profession.

5. Define the role of and secure funding for the library in the academic enterprise.

6. Lead our institutions in digital resource development.

7. Develop strategies for funding the future direction of our ACRL.

All of these issues are vital to the healthy future of ACRL and our profession. As ACRL President, I will work closely with the elected Board of Directors to guide, nurture, and manage these and other new initiatives to fruition.

A healthy association needs a steady stream of new ideas and initiatives, but it also needs time and energy spent on ensuring the very best outcomes for what it starts. All the initiatives are complex, multiyear, multithreaded, and bravely undertaken efforts. To ensure that ACRL’s efforts really result in concrete outcomes is a task I would welcome. It is something I am very good at doing. I have lots of experience in working with diverse groups and points of view, building toward common goals.

These initiatives are each vitally important to our future. Each of these needs our collective care. That is my theme, “Leading for collective care! Working together to define and shape our future. ”

FRANCES MALOY

Being a part of a vibrant organization such as ACRL has energized me and my library career, and it is a great honor to be nominated to stand for vice-president/president-elect. ACRL provides leadership for librarians, contributes to the continuing education of librarians and academic administrators, and advocates for the work of librarians, libraries, and the needs of the people we serve. I am very impressed with the new initiatives ACRL is undertaking, such as SPARC, Spectrum fellows, information literacy, and the future of ACRL. I fully support the strategic plan and I think it is visionary while also pragmatic and achievable.

Theme

As president, I will focus on two themes: the integration of academic libraries into the teaching and research activities of their institutions and the relationship of the academic library with the university’s campus life.

I believe that the mission of all academic and research libraries is to further the learning, teaching, and research goals of the institution it serves. We directly impact the ability of the institution to meet these goals. I will champion the library’s role as integral to the teaching and research processes and the librarian’s role as a partner to faculty and researchers. ACRL has already made efforts in this area through initiatives such as its advertising campaign in the Chronicle of Higher Educαtiσn and its awards of excellence to a college, university, and community college. To promote this theme, my president’s program, columns in C&RL News, and discussion groups would be focused on how libraries and librarians can become more integral to the teaching and research activities on their campuses.

I also feel academic and research libraries should embrace their ability to affect another education arena—campus life. We know a college education doesn’t just happen through the classroom; doing research, extracurricular activities, the diversity of the student body and managing the pressures of campus life also play an important part. The library has a great ability to affect the quality of a student’s experience not only through its collections and services but also by serving as a central gathering place for students through an open environment and being a cultural center for the campus with exhibits, discussions, and speakers. As academic librarians, I think we do not fully realize the impact we can have on the climate of a campus. I am interested in exploring how academic and research libraries can expand their relationship to campus life and the broad goals of the institution.

Strategic direction priorities

I am particularly interested in two of the ACRL strategic directions—how we can attract, retain, and grow talented people to academic libraries as a career and how the ACRL office can achieve excellence in service to its members.

The shortage of qualified applicants for positions is well documented, and my own library is challenged to fill positions requiring specialized knowledge and skills and management experience. ACRL is already involved in many initiatives to help attract and grow talent.

ACRL can play a role in exploring how we grow and promote staff in our libraries who do not have library degrees. This type of employee can be a technologist, a cataloger, or bibliographer with a master’s degree or Ph.D. in a subject field, a manager with many years of experience, a recent college graduate with fresh and creative ideas and the energy and drive to implement them.

How do we include these employees in our field? How do we provide opportunities for these employees to continue to grow and be recognized for their accomplishments in our libraries? How do we promote librarianship and a degree in librarianship to these talented people? What is the role of a professional organization dedicated to librarians and librarianship? Finding answers to these questions should not only help us all clarify what it means to be a profession, but should also help us to hire and retain competent people.

As a participant in a discussion on the future of ACRL in a leadership forum at Annual Conference last summer, I was struck by two things: first, many of our members are not aware of all the ACRL initiatives and, second, members expressed frustration with the ALA bureaucracy.

Many suggestions for new initiatives were things ACRL was already doing. We need to find more effective ways to promote ACRL’s services and programs to its members. While communication problems in large organizations will always be a challenge, I am interested in exploring how we can better educate ourselves about all of the ACRL initiatives.

While it is important to identify the work the ALA offices do on our behalf, we need to recognize the dissatisfaction ACRL members express about the ALA bureaucracy.

I am interested in working with ACRL leaders and the office staff on finding ways to address this dissatisfaction. I am curious as to what the dissatisfaction is about, so that we can identify aspects we might be able to change in our relationship to ALA, where we can create workarounds, and what we need to accept.

Strengths

I have been active in ACRL for nearly 20 years and have served in a variety of capacities. From this experience, I understand what it is like to be a member of ACRL and, as president, I will be sensitive to the needs of members. My 20 years experience in libraries, at both a small college and a research institution, and my experience as an ACRL board member, enable me to understand and represent our diverse membership. The experience I had with leading my library’s organizational redesign project for three years taught me how to manage complex and emotionally charged issues, while staying focused on the end goal. I also gained extensive experience leading groups in discussions and in making decisions. I have excellent listening skills and can articulate key points clearly. I am truly interested in getting to know other people and developing effective relationships with them.

Finally, I am dedicated to the profession, and I love being a librarian. I am a librarian because I personally cherish the values libraries stand for— respect for differences, freedom of inquiry, freedom of expression, and open access to information. As your president, I will enable us to work together to keep ACRL strong and effective while strengthening our own positions in our institutions. ■