For the next 5 months, I’ll be working with five young library professionals on a project for ACRL’s Instruction Section to assess the professional development needs of librarians teaching online courses. While we haven’t finalized the format of our end product, it will most likely manifest as a set of recommendations for ACRL IS and, if possible, a game plan for development should we decide there is a need (and we generally agreed that there probably was).
Here is a summary of how my day with Emerging Leaders went. Kathryn Deiss spoke to us about leadership: how it arises and why it flourishes. Some of the wisdom she imparted included:
- The shape of yesterday does not prefigure the shape of tomorrow
- The direction of change in an organization is ultimately a result of competing desires
- Be an intentional leader, not a drifter
- Shape the future with others, not for them
- To determine how much people will give to an organization, you have to know how/what they feel about it
As a group, we then talked about the types of situations that create leaders. Kathryn also spoke about the basics of project management and ways to be an effective group member, including:
- Participate fully
- Own your decisions
- Know how to balance divergent and convergent thinking
- Determine ahead of time what success looks like
After a few hours of brainstorming, Jenny Levine came to show us how ALA Connect could provide a professional space for project development. We also heard from Laurie Borman, the new editor of American Libraries, Gina Perechini, ALA Councilor for Idaho, Larry Neal, director of the Clinton-McComb (Mich.) Public Library, Mary Ghikes, Senior Associate Executive Director, and Courtney Young of the Executive Board.
Before leaving for the day, we determined our team name. Earlier in the day, we had a discussion about using smileys in professional emails. Hence, we are The Emoticons. =)