2024 Core Forum

Professional development is critical to the learning of new skills as well as building long term career success. Each type of activity has its benefits and while there aren't necessarily drawbacks, there can be more useful opportunities than others. Being in an information and education centered field, there are nearly endless training sessions and webinars. These are useful for keeping up with trends but not the best for deepening internal knowledge and interpersonal understanding. One of the tools to help you survive and thrive through change and stages of advancement is to develop a Professional Peer Network. These networks can offer more consistent and interpersonal engagement that support your journey of growth and learning. If mentorships and coaching programs are about structured development, professional peer networks are informal but no less critical to success and growth. More than friendship, less than coaching, a peer network provides connection to people at the same career stage, a support system that understands your work, and two-way learning giving as much as you receive. The same small trustworthy group allows everyone to meet challenges, celebrate successes, and move forward with each individual's goals. At this interactive session, attendees will have the opportunity to share their experiences with networking and crowdsource additional advice for developing their networks. Join us as we share some of our achievements and opportunities from public, state, and nonprofit networks to help you start on your own journey toward relationship-centered, collaborative professional development.

This presentation takes the US Army's Troop Leading Procedures and adapts them to a library setting, showing how they were successfully implemented in my institution's recent large weeding project. This was a multi-faceted project that included weeding 10,000 books from our 50,000+ collection, moving certain collections to new locations, and creating two new collections: a dedicated Fiction collection and a Graphic Novels / Manga Collection.

Feeling overwhelmed by the ever-growing list of e-resource projects? Join us as we explore our journey of implementing Planner, Microsoft's project management tool, to streamline our workflow and bring clarity to project chaos! We'll share practical insights on how we use Planner's features, such as kanban boards, task assignments, and progress tracking, to gain a more complete understanding of workloads and the amount of time it takes to complete a project. We'll highlight the transformative impact Planner has had on the Collections Team by reducing stress and frustration, increasing efficiency and productivity, and enhancing communication and transparency. Visit our poster and discover how Microsoft Planner can help you!

Research libraries are experiencing rapid change in response to changes in scholarly communications and library collections, and libraries stand to benefit from learning from each other's experiences in this regard. This poster will highlight the work of one university library to combine the functions of scholarly communications and collections into a unified division that emphasizes diversity and inclusion, data-informed decision making, access and accessibility, and communications. Poster presenters will share practical information about what's worked and what hasn't in bringing together these areas of work to provide the latest in information services to the university community. Participants will learn from lessons in leadership of research library services.

Librarians and administrators depend heavily on support staff to carry out the day-to-day operations that keep our libraries open and accessible to our users. Despite the importance of their work, they are often compensated poorly compared to the professional staff they work alongside and have fewer opportunities for professional development, resulting in burnout and low job satisfaction. Not only this, but Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), based on existing literature, are found in a greater proportion in this category of workers compared to their professional counterparts, highlighting an overall racial disparity in the library profession (Sanchez-Rodriguez, 2021). In this poster presentation, we will identify potential topics of concern to library support staff members, such as compensation, job satisfaction, and recognition for their work, based on existing literature and conversations from support staff members across the library profession. We will then outline possible solutions that librarians and administrators can implement to improve conditions for their staff as well as the overall working environment. Finally, we will discuss how we will implement a mixed methods research study that focuses on the lived experiences of support staff at academic libraries to learn how to improve their job satisfaction and working environment. Reference Sanchez-Rodriguez, N. A. (2021). In pursuit of diversity in the CUNY library profession: An effective approach to leadership in academic libraries. Journal of Library Administration, 61(2), 185-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2020.1853470

This poster explores what it's like to lead a library that is experiencing frequent significant changes. This includes transitioning from a joint operation to serving a single institution; changing which subjects and departments are served by the library; significant staff turnover; and technological turmoil. It explores the questions:   How do you provide a steady hand internally and a flexible appearance externally?   How do you design an organizational structure that can provide strength and agility simultaneously?   What does success look like over time?   Can you think strategically within an uncertain identity? While not every library experiences these changes, all libraries struggle with some of these questions some of the time. And importantly, it will consider how library leadership can affect the morale and development of library staff amidst these changes.  

Budget issues and the changing needs of students and faculty on college campuses are forcing libraries nationwide to rethink the support they provide for the campus community. In this presentation, we'll look at the process of leading a group of librarians through assessment and potential changes to a liaison program at a large R1 academic library. This will include the planning and information gathering before the assessment began, strategies for managing the emotions and worries of large scale change and a look to what the future of library support for academic departments on campus holds.

After moving from library assistant into the position of Cataloging Librarian at a mid-size institution, this presenter also began supervising one full time employee and co-supervising another. This created an opportunity to reflect on the current workflows and protocols for Technical Services as well as decide on their leadership style. This includes bringing institutional knowledge into official protocols, working with others in Technical Services to align workflows, and cooperating with other supervisors when managing more than one employee. This was done while there were significant personnel changes at the library, including the Dean of Library Services. This on-going process created opportunities for personal reflection, a guideline of expectations for Technical Services, and how to best support direct reports.

View on online version of the poster at PSU's Digital Commons.

This poster visualizes the workflow that our scholarly communications team designed to ensure that faculty are set up with ORCID accounts. This collaborative effort involved educating law school faculty on the benefits of persistent identifiers, creating a scholarship database out of a Microsoft SharePoint site, and finding the most effective ways to utilize the individual strengths of various staff and librarians within the law library. A representative from the scholarly communications team, the metadata librarian, will be on site to walk attendees through the workflow, talk about their experience with ORCID as a product, and answer any questions related to the poster project.

Leading staff in an ever-changing, unpredictable environment can be difficult. Right now, library staff at every level are facing new (and old) challenges to their emotional well-being at work. When both staff and supervisors are feeling overloaded, it can be hard to find the time and space to lead staff effectively. Coaching can be a powerful tool for proactively supporting staff, even in times of constant transition. In this session, we'll discuss the impact that coaching methods can have on building resilient employees and teams. We'll share tools and techniques that help supervisors create intentional space for thoughtful, productive conversations with staff that address concerns, provide feedback, and enhance professional development. We'll discuss ways to create a habit of using coaching skills and how proactive coaching sessions can positively impact your employee development and team-building efforts. Join us at this session to learn how adding coaching to your professional toolbox can yield substantial benefits.

Librarianship, along with other public service and care professions, is facing a self-care crisis. While all levels of a library’s organizational chart are susceptible to burn-out in our challenging climate, a significant pressure is placed on managers to look out for their employees and hold everything together. This workshop is designed to assist library leaders who are struggling with burn-out, harsh inner critics and imposter syndrome. The workshop will be a mini-retreat wherein the participants will engage in facilitated conversations, journaling, and guided meditations to develop compassion for themselves and build resiliency in community with other library managers.

As library leaders transition into new roles, it is anticipated they will encounter various challenges at their new institution. These challenges may include issues such as space shortages, team vacancies, low staff morale, or new library administration. There is an inherent expectation that new managers will grapple with at least one of these challenges from the start. However, what happens when these leaders find themselves facing multiple challenges simultaneously? As it's often said, when it rains, it pours. This session aims to provide insights into effectively navigating these challenging waters and redirecting the downpour to overcome each obstacle, no matter the number. Attendees will discover how one library and its staff turned adversity into an opportunity for growth, restoration, and revitalization. The session will explore how the library leveraged collaborative cross-campus partnerships, capitalized on staff strengths-building opportunities, and fostered the development of a healthy work environment amid challenging circumstances.