National Library Workers Day

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my job, as an administrator, is to make things good for my direct reports. One of the simplest ways I can do that is to occasionally let them know how much I appreciate the work they do. I get everyone a little something for the winter gift-giving season, speak up about their successes in broader meetings, bring macarons regularly, and so on. One thing I've done every year since becoming an administrator is to acknowledge National Library Workers Day. I've also started trying to remind others:

Hey, fellow library administration types - Library Workers' Day is a week from tomorrow. In case you want to do something nice for your direct reports. (Doesn't have to be big, but I know I always appreciated feeling appreciated.) pic.twitter.com/gCHOJ0kz1X

— Jessica Dammit (@olinj) April 1, 2019

The thing is, you don't have to spend a lot of money to do this. Last year I bought everyone a zipper pull that says "READ" and this year, I bought everyone cute magnetic bookmarks I found on Etsy.

I also made cards for everyone! (For the record, I wrote individual messages to accompany the Target gift cards everyone got for the winter gifty. It's not always a one size fits all approach.)

The important thing is to mix it up. I have a lot of variety in dietary restrictions and preferences among the staff. It's easy to get gluten free macarons, but I also have someone who works for me who is vegan. I probably do overdo it with the cute things (I gotta be me), but even that balances out with highly practical Target gift card. Even the Target gift card was a thing that took conversation and consideration to pick. It's the one store in the area to which everyone has access, and I asked a few people for feedback before the first time I did it.

The gifts I give are never expensive, and I make sure to balance them out with real and specific praise for people's strengths and triumphs, but National Library Workers Day is an important holiday in my part of the world and I suggest other library administrators celebrate it in some way if they can.

Working with your CIO and IT, by Holly Heller-Ross

Note: This post is adapted from a talk that the author gave and the blog owner attended.

My career in libraries has taken me from a public, to a hospital, and now to an academic library. Along the way, I’ve picked up some experience working with information technology (IT) and currently serve as both Library Director and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a medium-sized public higher education institution - SUNY Plattsburgh.

The working relationship between library and IT at a higher ed institution can have a profound impact on the success of a library, so here are my thoughts on how to build and sustain one that is positive and productive.

First, recognize the CIO as a kindred soul with the same pressures library directors face. That will help break down any initial us vs. them thinking. Staffing, budget and time limitations, concerns about effective leadership strategies, the need to prove value and measure impact, insufficient space, inflationary expense increases well above any increases in higher education funding …all these things library directors face? Yeah, CIO’s face also and on a campus-wide scale!

Just take service hours as an example. For the library director students are always asking for 24/7 open hours, and most libraries are not staffed or budgeted to provide that. And then there’s the question of when to put your top performers or most skilled staff on the front lines? Should your librarians be teaching or developing online guides, or both, but in what proportion? Now imagine the CIO, who is asked to provide network, helpdesk, telecom, and information security coverage…also without the staff or budget to really provide that. Also wondering whether to task the software trainer with group workshops or one-on-one faculty conferences? Surely that’s something to bond over with a cup of coffee or tea! [Editor’s Note: Or a nice imperial stout?]

I’m not suggesting the only commonalities are ones of insufficiency though. The joys of problem solving, assisting faculty with teaching and scholarship, measuring impact on student learning and showing positive correlations, getting a great purchasing deal with a vendor, and mentoring staff through career pathways you’ve helped create are some commonalities you and the CIO can celebrate together.

Second, appreciate their goals and tell them about yours. One good way to keep up on IT goals is to read the EDUCAUSE “Top 10 IT Issues” annual article. This will provide both a listing and some good contextual material for general understanding of IT priorities. Once you have the basics, start to match your library top issues with the IT issues your CIO is likely to already be thinking about.

Like in any relationship, shared values and objectives make all the work and effort easier to align. Information Security for example, has been a Top 10 IT issue for quite a while, and will likely remain so. It might be time to engage in an Information Security Review of library resources, including database access, patron record storage and security, login protocols, off-campus and proxy access, and library web pages. Any improvements here will be gains for the library and for IT. Other possibilities for common goals include improvements to login-times and quick print, switching from custom quoted staff desktops to standardized purchases and images, assignment of off-campus proxy admin rights to a technology minded librarian, and collaborative training of student employees for efficiency. I’m sure you’ll think of specifics for your library, it just takes a bit of effort.

Then, share your library goals with the CIO or other IT staff. Feel free to share ALA and ACRL reports and white papers, your own assessment results, and your own strategic plans with the CIO and others.  Executive summaries will certainly be welcome, but some folks will want the whole thing, and as librarians, we can be ready to provide that at the drop of a hat!

Third, be clear about your priorities and their impact on students and faculty. Clarity enables boldness, as the inspirational posters read! Once you have established your priorities, make sure all your campus partners know what they are. 

Whether your priorities are facilities upgrades, green initiatives, patron or staff technology upgrades, improved technology support, library service enhancements for the teaching and learning environments, mobile technology improvements, or anything else, make sure people know what you care the most about.

Remember that your priorities are more likely to get attention when they fit in with an overall campus goal, and that timing matters! Like all of higher education, library impact on faculty teaching and scholarship, student learning and success, and institutional efficiencies, are what matters now. During the span of my career, higher education has shifted from input measures, to output measures, to impact metrics.  If your institution is focused on improving the learning environment and fostering student engagement and retention for example, my advice would be to also focus on that for your library. Let the other initiatives wait. Get in sync with your institution and that will make it much easier to get support from your CIO and all your other campus partners.

Fourth, keep the communication channels open and flowing at all levels of your organization. You probably already know how the library and IT intersect in the formal communication channels such as reporting, leadership teams, and organizational committees. Is this enough? Map it out and you’ll be able to see where there are gaps in substance or in timeliness. If there is an important committee that meets only once a semester, look for ways to supplement that information exchange with email updates or some other activity.

Then, dig a bit deeper to look for both informal communication channels as well as sub population channels that could be enhanced.  Do you have vertical and diagonal communication channels? Can you arrange for other affinity groups to collaborate and communicate? For instance, could you and the CIO put a group of recent hires together for a specific task? If you could, not only would you get a specific task accomplished, but you’d start to build the next generation of collaborative colleagues. Do you have group and one-on-one communication channels open and functioning? A greater variety of channels will yield a greater variety of information flow, and that’s exactly what you want! 

And finally, if things go wrong, don’t get mad… get curious! That’s not just good personal relationship building advice; it’s good for the workplace too!

Holly Heller-Ross is the Dean of Library and Information Technology Services, and CIO, at SUNY Plattsburgh.

Self Care For New Administrators (And Everyone Else, Too)

Am I writing about self care again? Yes, I am. It's important and bears regular repeating. I copresented last week at the NY Library Association about how a new library administrator can get up to speed, and in between talking about building partnerships and sharing the mistakes I'd made in hopes that the audience would learn from them, I talked about self care. I brought up self care (and promised I would bring it up repeatedly) when talking to a mentee recently. I tell the people who work for me that they need to go home if they're here after the normal end of the college's business day. Self care is important. I could probably write about self care every single week and it still wouldn't be enough.

The thing about self care that you need to remember, above all else, is that if you don't take care of yourself, you will burn yourself out. You will.

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Besides, in the oh so important words of Audre Lorde: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." With everything that's happening in our world it's especially important to take care of yourself. So, here's some things that I know are important for me. Your mileage may, of course, vary. But if you have something else you think I should include in this list, please respond on Twitter or wherever you found this posted, or even in the comments below.

1. Find a good therapist. If you live in the Rochester, NY area, I can recommend someone (and against a couple of others). Your health insurance should be able to help, but if you don't have insurance, please still try. The National Alliance on Mental Illness will help you find someone who is less expensive or even pro bono.
2. Get out of the office and out of the building for lunch at least once a week. I know that the amount of work you have built up is probably enough to frighten even the most efficient efficiency expert. I know it because I can say the same thing. Administrators always have something they could be doing. I don't care. Get out and away from your library, your campus, etc.
3. Work no more than 45-50 hours per week. My contract obligates me to 35 hours, and I usually put in between 40 and 45. I adjust accordingly for when I'm at conferences or have personal appointments during the work day. See my comment about your to do list above. I know, really really, that you could probably work 80 hours a week and still not get everything done. You'll probably never be completely okay with it, but you'll at least get more comfortable with leaving things undone.
4. Make friends at work if possible. The shape this will take is going to be different depending on what kind of library. For me, I've reached out to and become friends with deans, associate deans, professors, people who work in HR, an instructional designer, tutoring coordinators, and so on. (Please note that there are no librarians on that list. I know some people are friends with their employees, but I don't think it works.) This will give you a place to go when you're about to lose your cool for whatever reason. This will also give you a place to get historical context if you were hired from the outside.
5. Make friends with other people who do the same job. Twice a year I go to a multiple day meeting and hang out with other SUNY library administrators. About once each quarter I go to lunch with the director of the public library in the town where my college is located. I get ideas from these people, but also I get validation.
6. Get sleep. This doesn't always work out for me, but I try to be in bed by 10p because I know my body will wake me by 6a. You may think you can run on minimal sleep, but you're fooling yourself. That's especially true if you are - like me - solidly middle aged. You cannot burn the candle at both ends indefinitely, because eventually you won't have any candle left.
7. Have something in your life that isn't about libraries and that's just for you. Go hiking. Play video games. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. Try crafting. Remember that you are more than your job.

You really are more than a library administrator, even with as much of your life as it might seem to take up. You're a gardener or a parent or a partner or a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Okay, you probably aren't that last one, but you get my meaning. Don't let go of the non-library parts of yourself. We need your voice in administration, so I need you to embrace self care.

The Office Decorations of a Director

A while back, before I became a library director, I had a very particular way of decorating my office. It was nerd central, but also it was occasionally vulgar. In fact, I wrote about it back in the (almost) beginning of this blog. Almost six years later, I have definitely changed the way my work space is decorated.

The thing about decorating your office is that it really does send a certain message to the people who visit you. Yes, you want it to reflect your personality, but that's not the only consideration. You want to make sure you are sending the message with your decor that you actually want to send, instead of something you're sending by accident. When I was an instruction coordinator (which was my job at the time I wrote that first post, if not my title), I wanted to be seen as irreverent and yet intelligent. Hard working and yet able to have fun. The truth was, though, that my office was likely a bit off-putting. I'm 99% sure it was Jim DelRosso who told me his office decorations are consciously not as nerdy as he is because he wants to make sure people feel welcome in his office. That comment really stuck with me. I still stand by the prevalence of vulgarities in that office - the word "fuck" is really just a word and I wish people would see it as such - but I haven't used that decorating style again in my current circumstances. As a director, I'm supposed to be setting a tone not just for myself but also for the rest of the department. So now, I have just as much nerdy vibe as before, but it's subtler and, in a way, prettier.

As you can see from the pictures I have below, I am not hiding my nerd in any way. I am still Nerd Supreme - a fact that is evidenced by being the advisor for the nerdy student group on campus. I'm just not as vulgar and my displayed tastes are slightly more diverse.

The love rat is still there. As is Fake Roy. But there's also a Benjamin Franklin quote and my tail from my Halloween costume.

My boy, Usagi Yojimbo. It wouldn't really be my office without Usagi, and this is the signed poster that Ranti Junus got for me years ago.

Yes, that's a stuffy elephant. If you squeeze it, out comes the most obnoxious imitation of an elephant trumpeting. Also, the poster from ACRL 2013 - Henry Rollins is a beautiful man and he had us all eating out of the palm of his hands at that keynote.

Guster is my favorite band, so of course I have a poster of theirs up in my office. Having this up in my office helped me bond with my union president - Guster is his favorite band, too!

Yes, that's my "Detective Comics" #643. And a Chewbacca Pez dispenser. But also the library's mission, vision, and values statements; the 2017-2018 academic calendar; specifics of the standing pizza order I place occasionally for the club I advise; my mini Sarah Donner shrine; and so much more.

Is it obvious that it's the same person? Even if you couldn't see so many of the same items, I think it's obvious. Just a more welcoming version.

How about you? Do you have any rules for how you decorate your office? Please share in the comments!

Interview Post: Spencer Brayton

Biographical

Name?

Spencer Brayton

Current job?

Library Manager at Waubonsee Community College. We have campuses in Sugar Grove, IL, Aurora, IL and Plano, IL (all about 50 miles west of Chicago, IL). As Library Manager, I am responsible for day-to-day library services and operations for the three campus libraries, in addition to strategic planning for the future of our campus libraries.

How long have you been in the field?

7 years

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

Fish bowl. Not a lot of privacy, but I have a nice view of the library. It's great to be able to see students studying and working together. I like having an open door policy, so it works well. Also, we just installed some new technology in the study space next to my office, so I am eager to see how it is used.

How do you organize your days?

Calendar and post-it notes (a lot!). I think it's also important to block some time out for reading, especially about our profession, technology, and leadership. We sometimes are so busy dealing with what comes up on a daily basis. It's helpful to take a step back and reflect on your work and opportunities/possibilities.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

Supporting staff and colleagues. Budgets and planning as well of late. I also spend a lot of time on professional develop work and writing. As I am still fairly new in my position (7 months!), I like to get around and visit each campus library location. This spring, we are embarking on a process to update our library mission and visions statements.

What is a typical day like for you?

Meetings, email. I'm focusing on building relationships internally and externally with other departments (academic and non-academic). Still learning about my institution as I settle into my new job!

What are you reading right now?

Re-reading Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

Slow-down! Patience is important. Each institution has its own culture and it takes time to learn that. I value this advice as it allows me the time it takes to build good working relationships.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

Supporting multiple campus library locations. I really enjoy visiting the different locations- all are great learning spaces with their own unique feel. 

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

Empathy

What is your least favorite word?

Supposedly

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

Being a chef. I always wanted to attend cooking school.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

K-12 teacher- I don't think I'd be very good at it. I have a lot of respect for these professionals and the time they put into their work.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Seeing the future (although I also recognize the importance of being present).

What are you most proud of in your career?

Being able to present and publish research with some great colleagues. This collaborative work has allowed me to travel and visit different countries and cities. I am also most proud to be a part of an awesome profession and great mentors and colleagues!

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.

I've moved too quickly with change in the past- which is why the professional advice above is so important for me! I value the importance of supporting colleagues I work with and working hard to be transparent and admitting when I make mistakes.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

Reading, watching my favorite sports teams, being with family.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Christian Lauersen, Shirley Lew, Lauren Pressley

Spencer tweets at @brayton_spencer.

On Still Not Knowing Everything

Since I just closed out my first six months of my not-so-new-anymore job, I figured it was time to revisit the idea of knowing that I don't know - something I wrote about almost exactly 5 years ago as I was about to start my first job as a library administrator. My mind was boggling at all that I had to learn, and the truth is that I hadn't even imagined half of all that there was to know.

This most recent job change was easier in some ways. I made a lot of mistakes as a new library director... mostly dealing with people issues. Learning that I couldn't think aloud anymore was hard. Learning to ask questions in a way that the staff understood it really was just curiosity with no subtext was even harder. Hardest of all was learning to look at the entire context of an issue before trying to come up with a response. So starting my second job as an administrator was smoother because of all my past missteps, but that prior learning hasn't actually made it easy.

Although I'd worked at a two year institution before, I've never worked at a public institution of higher education. Further, although we are relatively small at just under 6000 FTE, this is also the biggest school that has ever employed me. Another big change is the size of the staff - I have 17 people working for me. I have learned a lot a lot a lot, but I'm still adjusting to all of this. And there is still so much more to learn.

Here's a list of what I KNOW I need to do:

• Experience all the ins and outs of our budget cycle;
• Sit down with as many of the rest of the faculty as possible;
• Live through the rest of our strategic planning process and experience its ramifications;
• Understand all of my responsibilities as they play out through the school year;
• Get to know all the nuanced (or not so nuanced) differences between working at a small liberal arts college and a small-ish community college.

And that's just the stuff I know that I need to learn. At least once a week I learn something that I had no idea I needed to know, like how we handle email when someone leaves the institution or who to contact when I want to reserve a room in one of our new buildings. We all know, in theory at least, that we never stop learning, but it's so very different to be living it every day of my life. I love it.

Learning to Delegate

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Learning to delegate is probably one of the hardest things I've had to do since moving up into administration. Honestly, though, I wish I'd learned how to do this long before - back when I was chairing a campus committee at my first job in higher ed or when I was coordinating the info lit program at my second. I was so busy trying to be polite and keep people involved that I frequently did way more than my share of the work. Delegating isn't easy, regardless, but it's actually a bit harder when you're the boss. It's basically learning to ask for help, but with the twist of a differential power dynamic. And since I'm in a bigger library now than where I was before, it's even more important.

So, how do you learn to delegate? The first step is to acknowledge that you can't do everything. I know that might seem obvious, but it's hard to actually do. Everyone has so much to do, even at small and relatively quiet libraries, never mind at big and busy ones. But we're supposed to be a team, and we all have ways to make time for things that need to be done right now.

The second step is to learn to ask without sounding like you're commanding, unless you need to. "Do you have time to take care of this today? I won't have time until tomorrow and I think it needs to happen today," is a good way to ask without commanding. "I know this isn't what you were planning to do today, but there's a looming deadline and we're all working on it, so I need you to work on this today," is a good way to be a bit more forceful without sounding dictatorial.

Third thing is that you need to be willing to do some of the crap work. Someone once told me that every job you could ever have is a bit of a crap sandwich from time to time, so you need to find the crap sandwich you like the best. I've cleaned up huge messes. I've been the one to show up at 7:15 to make sure the library is open by 7:30. I've been the one to do a bunch of writing because others didn't enjoy writing.

Finally, something that's always important but is especially important when you're delegating, is to give people the kind of support they want and AVOID MICROMANAGING. "The end goal is X, but I'm not worried about how you accomplish it," or, "The end goal is X, and so long as you don't do Y, it's all good." Also, "If you want more feedback than that, let me know, but I trust you since you've been working here a while," or, "I know you're new, but I trust your instincts, so let me know if you want more help but I'm comfortable with what you think is best." There have been times when I've had to hold people's hands a bit more, or when someone was so new that I didn't yet trust them, but those have been rare.

I'm still working to get better at this. Just last month I was looking through my very long list of projects that I want to accomplish here and realized that one of them - that has been on my list since I started here - fits nicely with a staff member's strengths and interests. I'll get better, I know, because I don't take it for granted and I keep trying to improve.

How about you? How do you delegate? Did I miss any major techniques/skills?

Using Strengths

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This post is probably going to come off sounding a bit like an advertisement for Gallup's Strengths Quest program, so please understand that this is written purely from a place of loving the tools I've gotten from engaging with this tool multiple times and on multiple levels.

If you're unfamiliar, StrengthsQuest is kind of like a personality test, but it's a lot more involved than that. The general premise is that we can't be all things to all people, so working to our strengths is a good way to go. They've identified 34 strengths, and while everyone may display characteristics of each of the ones they've listed, you're going to have areas where you're strongest.

Here are mine (in order):

1. Ideation: "People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena." p. 179
2. Input: "People strong in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information." p. 191
3. Strategic: "People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues." p. 229
4. Learner: "People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them." p. 199
5. Communication: "People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters."

I've taken it more than once, and my strengths did change from the first to the second. The literature around the test would have you believe that your strengths are the core of you, but my experience of some change was also reported by the few other people I know who have taken it more than once. I think it's still a useful tool, even though it's more a reflection of your circumstance than anything else. Regardless, both times 

Here's what this test has helped me do:

• Reframes weaknesses as strengths. For instance, because I'm so good at noticing connections between seemingly unconnected thing, I used to think that I was going off topic. Now I know it can be a good thing that I notice those connections.
• Gives a common vocabulary to people who have very different perspectives and/or strengths. Picking on myself again, my ability to find alternate ways to move forward, and talking about them in the planning process, used to strike people as me throwing up roadblocks. After taking that test, and sharing my results, I was able to further communicate that I was trying to warn people of possible future problems so they could avoid them.
• Better support my staff and help them work to their strengths. This is why I realized I want to tell you all about StrengthsQuest - this month, as I sit down for the one-on-one meetings with everyone who works for me, I've been talking to them about their strengths and the advice from Gallup about how to manage someone with their particular strengths. 

I feel fortunate that where I am now, StrengthsQuest is part of the culture. When they asked about my management style, and I started talking about StrengthsQuest, their eyes lit up. Mine did in return once they explained why. Not only did we already have a shared perspective, we started off with a shared vocabulary. Starting a new job is fraught enough as it is, and StrengthsQuest helped me overcome one major hurdle before I even showed up on campus. I'm a big fan.

So, what about you? Have you taken this test? If so, what did you like about it?



(All quotes are taken from Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie.)

Getting Up To Speed: First Month in My New Job

My first month in the new job is over, and I feel really good about my progress. I've had a one-on-one meeting with every single person who works for me (16 people!) at least once, and most of them I've sat down with more than that. If you'll remember from the last post I wrote about my new gig, I'm working to learn the People, Process, and Projects. As a way to get to know my people, I asked everybody the exact same questions to start with. Thought I'd share them along with some of my reason for asking each question.


Personal & Professional Questions (these were mostly about breaking the ice and getting to know each other):

1. How long have you worked at this school?
2. How long in your current role? (Lots of promotion from within.)
3. Are you from the area? If not, where are you from originally?
4. What’s your favorite local restaurant? (Purely selfish on my part!)
5. How often do you want to hear from me as a group? (Gave me an opportunity to learn about my predecessor's style while also talking about my communication style. Also talked about meetings vs. emails.)
6. How often do you want to meet with me?

College & Library Questions (They've worked here a lot longer than I have and know the institution better. Also, this gave me an opportunity to figure out staff fears and hopes):

1. What are the biggest challenges the organization* is facing (or will face in the near future)
2. Why is the organization* facing (or going to face) these challenges?
3. What are the most promising opportunities**?
4. What would need to happen for us to follow up on these opportunities**?
5. If you were me, on what would you focus your attention?

*In this context, organization can mean everything from your particular part of the library all the way up to GCC in general, but I’m more interested in at the library level or below.

**Here, “opportunities” means anything that could enhance student, faculty, or staff experiences in and with the library. This could include things that would make your job easier or smoother.


I've also had follow up meetings with a good chunk of the staff about their specific job duties, college policies and procedures, and the my questions from walking around and reading as much as I've been able to read so far.

I still have more questions than answers. I still have so much more to learn. Truth is, though, that my learning will be a never-ending story. I was still learning things about my last job up until the very end. But getting past the steepest part of the learning curve is, and will be for the foreseeable future, my top priority.

Letter From a New Job

This is the beginning of my third week at my new job and wow I'm overwhelmed. But that's as it should be - if I weren't overwhelmed it would be a sign that I wasn't paying attention. I joked about it on Twitter at the end of my first week:

pic.twitter.com/Wwg3OrOX0U

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

pic.twitter.com/nclqgQfboe

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

pic.twitter.com/RsRsCiRwEq

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

pic.twitter.com/xU3GRMgn5K

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) July 7, 2017

I still feel that way, for the most part - just a little less brain fried. One of the benefits of feeling overwhelmed is that it's making me go slow. There are lots of tired clichés attached to new jobs, but one of my favorites is that it's a marathon not a spring. I have a lot to do and I need to give myself the time to do it. Another benefit is that going slow gives me time to absorb and really think about things like the ramifications of our collection development practices and how we staff the circulation desk. Going slow also gives the staff time to get to know me and (I hope) trust me, so that if and when I do make changes, they'll realize the change is coming from a place of understanding the way the library has run up until now.

Another way the "marathon and not a spring"cliché plays out is that things take time. As long as you think it's going to take - even if you're really pessimistic and/or circumspect - it will probably take longer. In my first director position, it took me three years to finally realize one of my earliest ideas: getting a link to the library in the top navigation on the school's website. Sure, somethings came quickly, but it's my feeling that you should count on things taking forever long and making promises accordingly. Going slow allows me to have the energy to keep working on projects.

Despite my expectations that things will take forever, I'm trying to get myself up and running as quickly as possible - and a lot of my expectations have been crammed into my first three months because of the book I'm using to guide myself through onboarding: The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter, Updated and Expanded. This book was my pathfinder the first time I was a director and it did not steer me wrong at all. In fact, the biggest mistakes I made at my last job were when I ignored the books' advice. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's especially helpful if you are taking on a leadership position for the first time, but I know it helps anyone in a new job.

And that's me - a new job. Still has that new job smell! My biggest goal right now is what I'm calling the Three Ps: People, Processes, and Projects. I've started by trying to learn the 3 Ps of the library. I'm sitting down with every single person who works for my department and am discussing things like how often they want to meet with me and where they see opportunities for the department. Also on the agenda is learning about how we handle purchases and birthdays and information sharing and... and... and... Intermingled with those is learning about ongoing and upcoming projects - we're migrating to a new version of our OPAC/LMS soon; and we have to do something called a Functional Area Review; and we're hiring a part time reference librarian; and so on. I'm hoping for a few easy and early wins, so I can build momentum and start to give more back to the institution than they are giving me.

I know this post is somewhat disjointed, but that's what being new in an administrative position is like - so many things to learn and think and do all at once. This means self-care is even more important. The impulse to Get. Stuff. Done., and at any cost, is strong. But I'm making myself take lunch pretty much every day (although my lunch hour today got eaten up with a visit to the DMV). I'm trying to make local friends - had lunch with the director of the public library in town, using MeetUp.com, and socializing with people I knew before moving up here. I asked about and got a mentor who has worked at my new college for a while. I've also reached out to people I know who are directors at SUNY schools and other community colleges - including one person who's recently made the same transition from liberal arts to community college! - to make sure I have people who can help with the professional self care.

More than anything else, I know I need to be patient with myself. And I know I got this.

Leadership Transition

I'm winding down my time at my current institution - I've basically got 3 weeks left here, but I'm taking a week off in the middle to take care of all those details that need attention when you're moving states away. And in anticipation of my move, I've been co-writing a document with the person who will be interim director. This document is partially to help the interim director between when I leave and when the new director is hired, but also to help my boss (the provost) as well as the next director. We've spent hours so far on this document and will be spending more time between now and my last day. Thought I'd share with you all the kinds of things we're including.

1. Who to talk to, and how, about what. Sure, people have job titles that are easy to find, but job titles and knowledge don't always correspond. There are always people in any library/college/government/etc., who are great but you really need to talk to their administrative assistant if you want action on something. Some people respond better to email whereas others you need to call. And then there are the people who will promise you the moon but won't deliver unless you can prove they made a promise. This transition document we're writing has things like who to contact when you need new keys or have questions about student workers, who to call about accounts payable and how to get changes made to the website. These are all little things I had to learn for myself, so I might as well pass on the knowledge.
2. What ongoing projects will need attention soon. Because of the way things worked out with my job transition, I'm going to be able to handle pretty much all of the big projects that are in motion, but not all. Some things are sort of on hold because we're in summer session, for instance.
3. Overview of what I do in an average month. Everything from "pay bills" to "biweekly staff update email" to "work with local and statewide library oriented organizations" is listed. I've also included a rough estimate of how much time I spend on each of these, but that is more for the higher ups so they know what the interim director will be trying to fit into their 35 hour work week.
4. A list of projects I never got to. Of course, each person new to a job will want to come up with their own projects, however I did some preliminary work for some of these and wanted to share in case the interim, the powers that be, or the next director have the same ideas.
5. My contact information. As exhaustive as we are trying to make this document, I know we're going to forget something. Some event I said the library would host or some DVD I said the library would buy or even the idea I had to handle a specific set of circumstances if they ever came up. I won't work here anymore, but I also want to make sure the transition is smooth.

So, what about you? Is there anything else you wish your predecessor (actual or future) would let you know?

Why I Became a Director

I've talked a lot here about what it's like for me to be a library director, how I go about my daily work, and even about the path I followed to this stage of my career, but I didn't realize until recently that I've never talked about why.

Truth be told, I never expected to be talking about this at all. Back when I was a baby librarian, my director went on maternity leave and a couple of us split her duties between us... I took on her committee responsibilities. Let me tell you: I did *not* enjoy that. I was talked over and ignored, even in small meetings, and when my director came back I firmly told her that I thought she was a crazy person for taking that job and that I'd never follow in her footsteps.

And yet, over the intervening years, I set about gathering all sorts of knowledge and skills that equipped me to follow exactly that path. For instance, I became increasingly interested in how a library fits into the overall landscape of parent institutions, in assessment beyond information literacy and programming, and in building relationships beyond the library and even beyond the campus walls. I was preparing myself to become a library director, despite my repeated avowals that I didn't want that job.

Flash forward a bit to me attending a small, CLIR-sponsored symposium about the future of libraries at library arts colleges. If I remember correctly, it was geared more towards library directors but I was already going to be in Milwaukee for another conference earlier that week and my boss asked me if I wanted to go to two instead of just one. How do you say no to something like that? At that symposium, I was my usual loud self. I remember saying something along the lines of, "perhaps at your institution you can get away with doing things like that, but the culture is very different where I work." The person I said that to was this very self-important kind of guy, and a few other people in the room appreciated me confronting him. Afterward, I ended up chatting with someone I admired a lot at the time, and the fact that I wasn't a library director came up. The person I admired told me, point blank, that I should be one.

I have to admit that got me thinking. I, like so many people, had moments of "I could do a better job than that" when watching my directors. I'd also learned about the gender disparity in academic library leadership (women make up an estimated 80% of academic librarians, but only 50% of administration roles). But still I resisted. I love instruction and I don't love meetings. Then one day I mentioned the conversation with the Much Admired Librarian™ to a couple of friends, both of whom were and still are library directors. Both of them said "yes, you definitely should be a library director." I talked about it with my director at that time, who also agreed, and I started applying.

So, why did I become a library director? 30% natural progression; 30% feminist agenda; 30% thinking I could do a better job; and 10% peer pressure.