Liminality Rules

I've spent the last three days attending preconferences or meetings here at ALA. I spent Thursday at the Taiga forum, designed to bring Associate University Librarians or Assistant or Associate Deans together to talk about issues of the day. This is the third forum and the second that I attended. My colleague Mike Furlough was also their along with 78 other library administrators. In preparation, we read Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, the keynote speaker . He is an advocate of he digital environment and user control. At the end of his talk, someone in the audience asked him about his use of libraries and he said he didn't use libraries -- that he got an advance for his book and if he wanted a book, he just bought it.
This is one of the few spaces in which librarians at the same level and of different backgrounds can meet and talk about concerns and I hope it continues. The planning committee did a great job and Beth Camden was a perfect host.

Committee meetings started in earnest on Friday. The AULs for Technical Services in the large research libraries met Friday morning. The set up was fair, though the Philly crew snapped right into action when asked, the topics interesting and there were about 200 people in the audience. This was my first meeting as chair and I confess to being a bit nervous, but it went fine.

I'm watching and reading John and Elyssa's blogs with interest as they bring their cool hand helds to the conference and will be interested in hearing the results of their use. This conference more than ever has shown me how woefully outdated my laptop is and how useful a small device to take notes, get my email, phone, and text messages would be. Ah, and that I could listen to music on while I walk and take pictures for my Facebook site with. Hmm, sounds a bit like an IPhone, doesn't it?

I'm writing an article for the journal "Technicalities" on working in a consortial environment. Throughout my career in librarianship, I've worked in one consortia or another. The first was in OhioLink which is a fantastic consortia. Led by Tom Sanville, OhioLink is the best example I know of a multitype consortia that has saved millions of dollars for taxpayers in Ohio. Which leads me to the one reason why consortial arrangements are beneficial: it can be economically advantageous. Tom negotiating for all of OhioLink can strike better deals than any library could do beneficially. Next, I worked in Illinois, in the ILCSO, now CARLI consortia. Additionally, the University of Illinois at Urbana, like Penn State, is a member of the CIC. Which brings me to another reason why consortia are great: wonderful colleagues. If I have a question about something and I need an answer both quickly and trustworthy, I can query my CIC colleagues and one or more of them will share their expertise, their knowledge.

So, I pose the question to any of you: what benefits do you see working in a consortial environment? Are there any downsides?

I have been given the privilege of sponsoring a team responsible for implementing the Libraries' content management system. I spent some time with the team today and started to wonder, "what makes a team a great team?"

Team members on this team come from two different organizations, the Libraries and Digital Library Technologies, a unit within our campus IT organization. Within the Libraries, they come from the IT unit, Cataloging and Metadata Services, Public Services, two of the Campus Libraries, and Library Administration. This is truly a cross functional, cross generational, cross cultural team. However, they have managed to all pull together and do an excellent job of completing the first phase of a very difficult implementation.

Why was this group able to work so well? Several of them had different ideas. "We compromise" said one of the DLT team members. "We work hard and have fun" said one of the folks from the Libraries. "I've been on lots of teams, but this has been my best experience" said yet another. "I can't wait until we move to the basement so I can be next to Janis and Lance" said one of the folks from the Libraries IT unit.

I wish I could replicate this recipe for good teamwork. It seems like they have a few things going for them: 1) an empowering team leader; 2) a common goal and mission (to get this system up and running) and a sense of purpose 3) genuine fondness for one another 4) a variety of necessary skill sets, and finally, administrative and budgetary support.

So, here's hoping that the next phase of implementation goes as well as this phase. Congratulations on a great job.