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Sometimes we are very fortunate and have the opportunity to find ourselves in an immersive experience.  Opportunities afforded to librarians include Rare Book School at the University of Virginia or perhaps Instruction and Information Literacy Immersion sponsored by ACRL.  This week, I'm at the Harvard Leadership Institute for academic librarians and it is truly a transformative, immersive experience.  I'm going to blog about this over the course of the next few weeks so that you can get a glimpse and a flavor of my week here at Harvard.

I want to spend some time writing about my impressions of Harvard as this is the first time I've had the opportunity to spend significant time here.  I find it full of juxtapositions or extremes.  First, there is so much privilege here.  Students of means, intelligence, entitlement and the same could be said for the faculty.  I stood in line in front of two professors who were talking to one another, without regard for the ever lengthening line behind them, as if everyone else except them was an afterthought.  Juxtapose that with one of the most caring, kind, well respected librarians who is a living example of a caring administrator. Then there are the library collections that are unparalleled in North America.  Some of Harvard's libraries are pretty much the same as they've always been -- but then there are some, like the library at the Harvard Law School that are being transformed by their new leaders into something that will serve the students of the 21st century and beyond.

There are the students -- young, brilliant, many of whom are legacies --- their parents, and grandparents went to Harvard, but there are also students like the intern assigned to us who is a first generation Harvard grad.  He grew up in Texas in the suburbs of Dallas as one of three children who knew that he wanted to come here and study government and health policy.  What a tremendous example this young man is setting for his younger siblings and how proud his Texas-educated parents must feel of him.  In contrast there are the people who live on the street -- under bridges, in the squares, and in the parks, looking for food, and not having shelter.  I wonder what this world looks like through their eyes.

Then there are features that I love -- the huge number of bookstores full of all kinds of literature.  As I walk down the street, I hear French, German, Spanish, Chinese -- a tremendous array of languages from all over the world. 

If one is looking for a transformative environment, Harvard can definitely be that place.  You just have to open up your soul. 

One way to insure a productive meeting is to do your homework with meeting preparation. 

1.  Call for agenda items halfway between your last meeting and your next meeting

2.  Call for agenda items again halfway between your first call and your meeting

3.  If there are items for consideration and action, make sure everyone has them at least two days ahead of time so that they can be read and digested.

4.  Make sure you have a minute taker for the meeting

5.  Depending on the topic, it might be necessary to have a pre-meeting meeting with some key people.  If there are controversial topics and a decision needs to be made, some pre-meeting preparation might be advisable. 

I'm going to start putting some of these in to practice.

I'd also like to thank Lisa for letting me know she couldn't comment on my blog.  I think I changed the settings so that non PSU folks can comment.  We'll see if it works.

 

A friend of mine and librarian that I respect, Lisa Hinchliffe, Head of the Undergraduate Library at UIUC, wrote to me (on Facebook since she couldn't comment on my blog, but I'm working on that) today and said the following:

You might ask the "newer" librarians what they think makes for a good f2f meeting. I'll give my two cents if you don't mind - (1) an agenda sent out ahead of time and (2) clarity on the intended outcome of each agenda item - is info being solicited, the group making a decision, or just info being communicated.

John Tropman in his book, "Making Meetings Work" second edition, says that excellent meetings contain four features:

1.  Decision accomplishment - decisions are made and closure occurs and people move on

2.  Little decision rework, i.e., "The group did not have to get together to decide again something that had already been decided or, as likely, had been avoided."

3.  Decisions made were Good

4.  People have fun at the meetings and they feel their time is well spent.

I imagine that it is that fourth feature that is often the reason why meetings fail...people don't feel their time is well spent.  They feel that if anything, it is a waste of their time to be sitting in this un-fun meeting.  I sometimes wonder if bringing laptops to meetings, which I've started doing too, so I'm not being critical of others, is a way of mitigating the boredom in meetings?

In any event, for the meetings that I control, I'm going to do better at 1) putting together an agenda and 2) making sure if there is a decision to be made, we make it and move on.

Next blog entry about meetings will be meeting prep (thanks Anne, for the suggestion.)

I'm going to spend the next few blogs talking about working styles and one of the first topics I want to write about is meetings.  One of our very bright, new librarians said something the other day (and I'm going to paraphrase him since I don't exactly remember what he said) that got me to thinking.  He said, "people my age work differently.  We work with software to help us manage projects and we don't need to meet as frequently."  This got me thinking because we spend a lot of time in meetings.  I happened to have 9 scheduled events today.  Usually it's not quite that many but it's often between 7 and 9.  It got me thinking about whether we use that time as efficiently and productively as we might. 

So I asked two other librarians, very close to his age, how they felt about meetings and they said that they felt similarly. They thought that some of the time they spend in meetings could be better spent doing other things and that some of the discussion could be done into another, virtual space.

Why do we have so many meetings?  Well, we're a very inclusive and collaborative organization.   That tends to lend itself to having a lot of meetings.  But are there other ways to collaborate?  Could we be using wiki space more and F2F meetings less?  What about meetings that are spent doing updates?  Is there a better way?  How can we use that really important F2F meeting time more effectively?  I'm not sure I have any answers, but I'm going to personally try some different models.  Change, as some say, is an opportunity for growth and sometimes people my age can change too. 

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?