TIM CHERUBINI: Good afternoon. My name is Tim Cherubini. I'm executive director of the
Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, and I and my colleagues are here to do an
abbreviated session as folks finish up their lunch today on the topic of continuing education
for librarians. And this is something that we've touched upon that's come up in a couple
of the different conversations today. In fact, we were all just talking about how the notes
that we had put together to talk with you about now have many, many annotations on them
based upon the discussed today so this will be very fresh, I think.
So we have just three projects that we want to tell you about today, three areas that
we've worked in to both share information about our experiences, to raise awareness
of some of the issues that we encountered, and perhaps touch upon some trends and gaps
and we hope also some good information for IMLS on future directions for funding. So
I'm going to start just brief introduction to the speakers. As I mentioned, I'm Tim Cherubini.
We also have Chrystie Hill, who is community relations director for OCLC. We'll be hearing
from her third, and we're going to start with Anne Craig, who is director of the Illinois
State Library. So with that, Anne, I'll turn over the podium to you. Thank you.
>> ANNE CRAIG: Well, thank you, Tim. This year, we have ten state library agencies concurrently
conducting ILEAD in their home states thanks to a grant from IMLS. Ten state libraries.
Let's hear it, ooh! [Laughter]
>> ANNE CRAIG: There you go. So ILEAD was designed to be exportable in the first place.
We did this because state library agencies have very limited resources, and our administrative
structure has worked very well. The same in each state, well, the days of the sessions,
the keynoters are broadcast, different in each state. Well, we tailor the sessions to
the team needs. The biggest lesson learned, though, is that commitment from the top down
and the bottom up, essential. Without engaged support from our sister state libraries, this
ambitious program could not function. So the primary goal of ILEAD is to identify
a community need, like joblessness, or English as a second language, and then using technology
tools and leadership skills to address that need. Why do we do ILEAD U? Well, Illinois
has almost 2,000 multitype libraries, and we hear from librarians. They want to be more
connected with their constituencies. Sometimes they just don't know how. ILEAD gives them
the time and the sand box and the skills to do just that. How does ILEAD U work, you
say? Well, teams of five library staff come together to make a product. Each team has
a mentor, and each person on the team has a partner back home, a community representative
who gives feedback about the team product during the program.
We meet three times in person, and each session has its own deliverable so at the end of the
program, in October, each team has a great product that addresses the need they're trying
to meet. In March, the teams make a video oops. Sorry.
Okay. Yes. They make a video. Mostly to help them focus, but also to gel as a team.
[Music playing]. This is a group of Chicago law librarians
that built tools for law students. [Music playing].
Yeah, so we're in Springfield, guys, okay? Mr. Lincoln. Yeah.
In June, we have a poster session to help the teams work on their elevator speech, or,
in this case, their elevator music. This group is the robot test kitchen that helps library
staff understand robotics. [Music and singing].
In October, it's the big reveal! And here's the team of five different Chicago public
library branch librarians talking about their project to make transportable video story
kits for their 80 odd branches. >> I'm Josh. And I work in West Garfield Park.
Now, every day I go into that library and I see all around me personal, great, positive
things happening. I see, you know, a team planting lettuce in the community garden.
I see a guy sitting there quietly playing checkers with his grandson. Now, if you search
for "News articles" at West Garfield Park, you get man shot and killed. You get see drugs
and arrests and murders and theft. Practically everything going on record about the neighborhood
is these tragic human stories after tragic human stories.
Now, ILEAD U has given us tools to start putting on record the more personal and more
positive side of life in the neighborhood. >> ANNE CRAIG: Also in October, the teams
described, for the record, how, if another library wanted to replicate their project,
how they could do it. This is team Lebris, academic librarians who built an institutional
repository. >> Do you think any library could use this
product that we created? >> Yes, we do. It's one of the things we've
talked about as the product has progressed, and obviously, we first and foremost focused
on the libraries that are members of our consortium. I think one of the strengths of this is that
it really can be used for anyone anywhere, not just looking at other schools who want
to join our specific repository, but really any other school or group of schools that
wanted to get started, this concept of a box, model to follow, you're not starting from
scratch. >> ANNE CRAIG: We tell them from the beginning,
they cannot fail because the experience is about the journey, not the end product. We
emphasize learning to work in teams, leaving the library to go to where the constituents
are, and growing leadership skills. All with the goal of connecting in very concrete ways.
The state libraries involved have substantial skin in the ILEAD game. It may be difficult,
though, for other state libraries to continue in coming years without support. It takes
time to build momentum and recognition among the state's library community.
The big "So what." Our evaluator tells us that transformative learning is actually occurring,
and that the projects have produced substantial benefits.
Does ILEAD really matter? Many of our sister state libraries are using ILEAD to accomplish
focus projects. Here's team Spectra working on a technology product to help librarians
address the needs of patrons on the autism spectrum as part of our National Leadership
Forum Grant. We've had countless groups go on to do conference
presentations, workshops, and like the engaging ones, apply for and receive grants. This year
we had two finalists, the Library Space Camp, and a winner of the Knight News Challenge,
make it At Your Library, come out of ILEAD U. Last year's robot test kitchen that you saw
earlier is doing a techsoup program next week. To wrap it up, here's a "Does It Matter" video
from last year. >> ILEAD has given me the time, opportunity
and resources to learn about a variety of subjects I never would have learned about.
There have been fantastic speakers. I have developed great relationships with the people
in my group and I have been able to do a lot of networking here in Springfield and I feel
my team has contributed a good and useful product and I feel we're contributing to the
field of librarianship. >> I signed up for ILEAD, and I ended up learning
a lot more about myself than I thought I would and about leadership and how to become an
active agent in my own library and do good things.
>> ANNE CRAIG: You might recognize David in that picture. He's the head of our instructor
corps. And this is graduation. So that's ILEAD U in a nutshell, and now
I'll turn it over to my copresenters. Thank you.
[Applause] >> TIM CHERUBINI: Thanks, Anne. Wow. You know,
not only are we doing this after lunch, I'm speaking to you after Anne, and that's such
an energetic project and really love it. Not that this next project doesn't have energy
around it. It's just a little different. And I should note that Anne actually played a
key role in the project I'm going to tell you about now. The COSLA received a grant
from IMLS under the Laura Bush 21st century program. About 15 months ago. We're actually
wrapping the grant up as we speak. The bulk of the work concluded at the end of April,
and we're in some kind of final stages with some of the evaluation. This grant is called
we've called it the Connector Project, and I want to explain why we use that word connector.
And one of the ideas or concepts behind this project was to break down some silos and
then actively connect the remnants of those brokendown silos to create a new mode of production.
And what were these silos and how did we put things back together on them is what I'm going
to talk with you about today. So the problem, the silos, the silos that
we were looking at and the problem, really, that we were trying to solve is that across
state library agencies, it is very common to find, within that agency, a person or a
small group of people who are dedicated to providing continuing education for librarians
within that state. This group of people has actually been very
inventive over the years, and they themselves have been getting together informally for
well over 20 years. Yet, they were seeing, and we were all seeing, that there was a lot
of redundancy in what was being produced, how it was being produced, topics that were
not being addressed because there wasn't enough time for each agency to do it on their own.
So working in even though these folks were talking to each other, there were still some
pretty heavy silos in how the work of producing continuing education programs was being done.
So the connector project was developed, and it really had two aspects. One was to really
take a look at this problem and see what we could do about it and it really stressed a
very close look at codevelopment and codelivery of continuing education across state library
agencies. The second aspect of the connector project
was to also connect COSLA and this aspect of COSLA to other types of institutions and
projects to further leverage this idea of collective action. So on the first aspect
of the project, which is the codevelopment/codelivery, I mentioned that the continuing education
professionals did have a history of working with each other, and accomplished quite a
bit. But in much the same sense that Anne was talking about commitment, what COSLA really
wanted to test is that wouldn't this all be even better if not only the continuing education
coordinators at the agencies were working together, but if they involved the library
development directors, also a common role within state library agency staff that's very
outward facing, and the state librarians, or the chief officers of the state library
agencies. Bringing these three roles together this was
the hypothesis of the project would result it would give better result in the sense that
there would be great commitment, there would be greater variety across what people were
going to be able to able to bring to the table, greater chance of very solid community connections,
greater chance for sustainability in the long run because you would have more involvement
from a broader spectrum of folks within the agency.
So the project really focused on bringing together these three roles in to a coordinating
committee approach. We actually had four state librarians, four library development directors
and four continuing education coordinators serve together over a 12month period 12 or
13month period to actually look at this problem of codevelopment and codelivery of continuing
education. There was actually a step in this, too, which
was that we asked this group to formalize, take a look at the infrastructure, the environment
that we had around some of the inputs to developing continuing education. What were the resources
that we had? What was the infrastructure that was in place for this. Some of this was finetuning
because the continuing education group had been sharing information all along. But the
coordinating committee took this a little step further, and did things like kind of
upped the game a little bit on developing a resource directory. They took the state
reporting, the state profiles that were being developed, and developed them even further,
brought them to a different level. They took this idea of needs assessment one step further,
and produced products that actually helped create a base of knowledge from which decisions
could be made about where were the best opportunities for codevelopment and codelivery. All of this
was really the coordinating committee's work, established a consistent and a really supportive
environment for this collective action. Now, one of the things that occurred throughout
the project is that at first, the coordinating committee took the lead on all of the pieces
of work, but as time went on, it became apparent that even with that many people on the coordinating
committee and that range, there was benefit to bringing other folks in, depending on what
the topic was, from other aspects of state library agency work. So they moved in to more
of a working group model, the coordinating group kind of was the steering the activity,
completing some of the work itself, but then also, subdividing, and, in some cases, bringing
in other people from other state library agency roles to complete other aspects of the work.
All of this proved very, very beneficial because the amount of product, the amount of number
of deliverables that this group was able to produce in a 12 or 13month period actually
exceeded what we had originally planned, and through some surveying that we had done throughout,
it became apparent very early on that this was such a hit that COSLA should really, you
know, find a way to continue this, and I'm very happy to say that after looking at the
results, after talking with the folks who were involved in it, after looking at the
deliverables, the COSLA board did vote to continue this whole effort of the connector
project, and basically operationalize it, making it part of our daytoday activity. So
the grant was successful in that the approach was proven. We learned a lot from it. There
was a demonstration of commitment, which was greatly needed because there are so many things
going on that, you know, if you don't have the commitment to the organization behind
it and leaving it totally to volunteer effort, that's a lot of pressure on the volunteers.
And we are institutionalizing it. We are in the process right now of putting together
the followup committee and the followup effort to the connector project as the grant ends.
So as this work continues, there are still some open questions and some gaps and perhaps
some of these will turn in to funding opportunities as well. One area that I'll be asking the
committee to the successor committee, we haven't named it yet, to really take a look at is
the criteria for topic selection when it comes to where they'd like to go in terms of the
codevelopment, codelivery. The topics that were selected during the grant
cycle were training for folks who were stepping in to library director roles for the first
time. What did we call that, library director 101 training. And that was a good topic. We
think that's going to have a lot of traction. Second topic that was really given a lot of
attention was training for library trustees. Again, something that I think is universally
known to be a need, and is being addressed in various ways by various organizations.
But one thing that we're going to challenge the group moving forward is to really look
at their criteria for topic selection. And build out for the greatest impact. Make selections
for the greatest impact on state library agencies. And this may not be the top votegetter in
the survey. And as this morning, when we were talking about the different kinds of skills
that might be needed, this came to mind, because I think you do want to know what the top votegetters
are in a survey, but we also want to encourage this community to look at what are some of
the more challenging, newer types of things, some of which were in the room this morning,
that may not ever end up being a top votegetter on a survey because of the way the surveying
is done, and it's a disparate process, but we know deserves some attention and could
be giving good attention by this particular configuration of folks.
When it comes to those assessments, we do want to look at greater sharing of needs assessment
data. COSLA has developed some and will develop some more and we know there is other data
out there about what is it that librarians feel that they need in terms of their own
continuing education. We want to more fully consider the dissemination of the training
and the other information that emerges from the product. I think that to some extent,
we want to be turning outward more to explore new ways of teaching and learning and interacting
that we're hearing about that are social and active that we may not actually apply to ourselves.
That's important for us to do as well, especially as we see some shifts and we want to create
some shifts in how librarians are trained and really pursue training on their own.
We also want to identify the benefit of this shift of collective action within state library
agencies. We are pretty close, I think, to be able to describe some case studies of what
the impact of this new approach to public library training has been within a particular
agency, and specifically if this collective approach works, what can the agency do that
they wouldn't have been able to do because the collective action is producing the product.
Now, I mentioned that there was a second aspect to this connector project, and that was connecting
COSLA and its continuing education efforts to other projects, to other efforts nationally.
And rather than actually talk about that, we did that, but I'm actually going to turn
to Chrystie now, because the project that Chrystie is going to tell you about is actually
one of the prime examples of where COSLA turned in terms of leveraging this collective action
even beyond COSLA itself. >> CHRYSTIE HILL: Thank you so much. It's
a pleasure to be here. I strongly believe that staff in our institutions, libraries,
archives and museums, is our greatest asset, and so I love being on the stage with my esteemed
colleagues, but also in the room with all of you, who also hold that so dear. It also
makes me a little nervous because I'm like, these guys are my friends!
[Laughter] So I appreciate the chance to share about
this project with you. The Coalition to Advance Learning is a broad
coalition of archives, libraries, museums and their allied institutions. We're all committed
to working together, and in deliberate coordination and across all of these boundaries to both
devise and strengthen continuing education and professional development, programs that
will not only transform our workforce, but also lead to measurable impact on our nation's
communities. No big deal. Right? We can do that.
This group was founded by 22 members that include individuals, institutions and service
organizations from the archives, libraries and museums sectors. Five of those founding
members were from archives, five represent museums, ten represent libraries of all different
types, and two of those organizations work effectively across all three sectors. So where
did this project come from? In early 2013, OCLC actually had much smaller ambitions,
and that was to gather stakeholders from across public and state library spaces to discuss
a shared approach to continuing education for public libraries across the nation. We
really wanted to just very informally host a discussion with some of the key stakeholders
about how we might set a few shared priorities, and then work on a few things together, but
do so in a more deliberate way than we have been.
So I was on the phone with Bob Porten who is the director of library services at the
time, sharing with him what our plans are, asking him if he would like to be included,
and he said wait a minute, we are interested in exactly that same challenge, but we're
interested in it across library types, but we're not going to stop there. We're interested
in museums and archives as well. So immediately, this much smaller but still ambitious conversation
expanded very, very broadly to the full spectrum of audiences that IMLS is working with.
So we decided to join forces, and we cohosted a daylong meeting where we spent some time
really getting to know each other across sectors, identifying that there actually are shared
needs, that there are a number of assets that we all have to work with, that we had agreement
on what some of the key gaps were and how we might fill them. And then at the end of
the project, we did this really or the day, we did this really fun thing where we did
mock project pitches to each other that had been developed very rapidly in ten or 15 minutes
in a crosssector way so people in different sectors sitting at the table, and that gave
us that initial insight that we had made a step towards working together more effectively,
and in a very concrete way on some of these shared interests and needs. So one of the
major outcomes from this meeting was that several of us went back to our home institutions,
back to our desks with a new commitment to both develop and embed a crosssector approach
to our work. The CE connector project actually came out of that meeting day, and was with
us in the room. Some of the work that we advanced in the leadership area was based on her talking
about ILEAD in that room and we identified that there's a whole host of leadershiprelated
activities that across sector, we could be doing together. What OCLC did is we went back
to our desk and we wrote a grant with input from that original group that would more formally
launch and then provide some starting structure for additional joint work together. What we
imagined, very simply, was that if we got together, we could actually do CE and PD better
together, that the time was right to scale learning programs and infrastructure, not
just up, but also across all of our sectors. Not just for the benefit of the organizations
that would participate, but ultimately for the benefit of those that we serve.
So with funding from IMLS, the group first met in March of last year, so we've been working
together for 14 months now to consider the challenges and initiate efforts to develop
approaches for future collaborations. Subsequent supplementary funding from the Bill and Melinda
Gates foundation and then IMLS again, enabled us to go beyond that first meeting and meet
in person in October and then again in March of this last year. So what have we accomplished?
Well, the first thing is we formed and we stormed, and we're just now getting to the
norming part. People who have been in those rooms are laughing,
because they were there. Diane said earlier it's a little bit like dating. I think some
people in that first meeting would say bad date. Really bad date.
[Laughter] So, you know, we had to work through some
things in order to come back for that second date, and come back for the third date and
realize, okay, this is actually going somewhere. So we created a set of guiding principles.
We strengthened our representation from the archives and museum sectors. We created coalition
communication channels, and this is actually amazing that all three sectors have agreed
on a single Web site, single messaging, twitter stream, et cetera.
We started showing up at our own and each other's meetings to talk about the work and
our intentions. And this is really important. We firmly established that our work is not
about us. But about the work we might do together. So any of the talk about governance or, you
know, who we are as a coalition has been really lighthanded. It's been very intentional that
we want to be informal in a broad coalition. We need some structure, some support, some
work on that, but it's really more about the projects and the partnerships.
A little bit about what we've done in the projects and partnerships space. We identified
very early on that we needed to learn more about the landscape across all three sectors.
So in partnership with several organizations, from the coalition, one member, EduCopia,
led by Katherine Skinner, led us in an effort to design an assessment project that would
help us gain a better understanding of the full landscape, including a gathering and
analyzing of all the data to assess the needs across the field. Once we have that, we'll
see how we might look at the other side, how we're going to meet them.
The other thing we did is we developed a joint strategy. Again, no small feat. We collectively
developed the key strategies in support of the shared vision that I mentioned at the
very top, and we'll be publishing that next month. I won't tell you what's in it. This
can just be a little trailer for that. But the fact that these three sectors and all
library types got together and said here are the four main things that we need to do together
in the continuing education and professional development space is really, I think, quite
remarkable. The other thing that we did is we created
a prototype for cross sector learning program. You can see here we've got the research assessment
people taking one thing forward. These were the people in that initial group that said
I just want to do something. Let's see if we can get something done together, and so
they sat at a table, or in a room, worked together online over a number of weeks until
they actually made something happen. They identified the project management was a key
need across all the sectors. Everyone agreed it was high priority. So they worked together
to develop a project management 101 webinar series, and really test that hypothesis first
that we were actually capable of working together on a real concrete thing. But also, that audiences
could learn together and find value from that common curriculum.
We had over 1400 registrations for that first session, and the participants were just crazy
in love with the idea that they could actually be learning in the same room together and
talked about what an enriched process that was.
So what's next? A lot of stuff. Most of it is about projects, things that we want to
do together next. I've been told that my time is up, so you'll have to catch me at a break
if you want to hear about what some of those are. But I can guarantee you it's been very
exciting to see just with the little bit of support, a little bit of face time, a lot
of commitment from the people in the room, and we've actually turned thinking, planning,
strategizing into real concrete projects that we're committed to moving forward together.
And if I may, I'll just very briefly say that personally, this has been incredibly enriching
experience for me. We talked about putting bright people in a room and letting them bounce
off of one another. That is exactly what has happened in this space. We all talk about
time, capacity, resources, how to operationalize these things so that it becomes a part of
our work and our approach and we're not necessarily dependent on a funder to help support that
activity. All of that has been discussed, but ultimately, I think, the whole group is
really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in just this short time together.
I'd like to ask those who are in the coalition and represented by the coalition to please
raise your hands so we can recognize those that are in the room today. Thank you. If
your hand is not raised and you're interested, we invite you to join us. Thank you.
[Applause]