Attending:  Lee Cartmill, Joanne Davenport, Elaine Engst, Anne Kenney, Susan Markowitz, Janet McCue, Jean Poland, Oya Rieger, John Saylor, Ed Weissman, Scott Wicks.
Guest:  Linda Bryan

1) Sustainable Leadership and Competency Modeling
        Pointing to the expected surge of retirements among baby-boomer faculty and staff expected over the next ten year, increased competition for top talent to replace the retirees, and an increasingly pluralistic work force, Linda Bryan, Staff Development Specialist in Library Human Resources, reported on initiatives underway within the university and the library to prepare for this transformation.  At the university level, the Sustainable Leadership Steering Committee, a group of human resources directors and organizational development specialists, are working to articulate standards and initiate university-wide professional development opportunities and training programs.  In the library, some managers, for example, Gordon Law and Pat Schafer are working on career development planning initiatives.

        One aspect of developing a sustainable leadership program for the library is to identify the competencies (knowledge, skills, strengths and attributes) that will be needed by managerial staff to be successful in the next 5-10 years and then to identify the gaps in the organization between current and future leadership competencies.  Doing so will allow the library to 

• Target development and training programs and hiring practices to close the gaps in mission-critical competencies.
• Establish criteria to identify high potential employees for general management positions
• Articulate promotion criteria related to being a manager
• Provide performance feedback with greater impact
• Cultivate an environment for continuous learning                         

Linda asked each member of the Library Management Team (LMT) to rank and comment on a list of  leadership competencies/attributes.  She will follow this up with interviews and share the results with the Sustainable Leadership Steering Committee, which is developing a university-wide leadership attributes model.  More information will be available in the fall.

2) System wide web support.
        Oya reported on the state of web support arrangements in the library.  There are varying arrangements among library units for web site hosting, design, production, and content management resulting in mixed satisfaction levels for support and diverse web page templates and interface elements.  Oya presented some preliminary  recommendations for developing a CUL web support model. These include:

• Build awareness of the importance of lifecycle management--some sites are temporary; others will require long-term management.
• Foster communication and exchange among web development staff
• Consider developing CUL policies and guidelines
• Avoid technology-centric decision making--focus first on goals and architecture and then identify development tools (Dreamweaver, Confluence, WordPress)
• Assess and strengthen training to help staff gain contemporary skills
• Consider creating with a web advisory group and a CUL web list serve.
• Identify a strategy to understand staffing needs for maintenance of existing sites and new site development         

Anne asked Oya to gather more information about the effort going into web development and support across the library and to look at models used at other libraries and other units within the university.  Oya will solicit input from appropriate staff around the library, and bring back more specific recommendations.
 
3) Announcements
        Anne announced that Cliff Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) will be visiting on July 16-17 to serve as a consultant about information technology in the library.  He will make a  public presentation on July 16 from 10-11 am in 700 Clark Hall entitled Five years hence: where are universities heading and what will users be doing?  Information technology implications for libraries.
        Janet announced the reciept of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation award of $963,000 for 21st Century Agricultural Education and Information Systems.  The grant will support a landscape analysis of agricultural education and information systems in South Asia and Africa and also two international invitational workshops.  Mary Ochs is serving as the principal investigator.


Edward Weissman