2019 Pacific Northwest Library Association Conference

You don’t have to be the boss to impact your organization. The truth is our actions as followers can have a significant effect on our careers, colleagues, organizations, and definitely our leaders. This is often a surprise to many since our culture celebrates and promotes leadership as the primary component for positive change. When we do consider those who are following our leaders, our focus is usually on teams and group dynamics, not on the experience of the individual. This workshop will explore the concept of followership and how it can benefit our libraries. We’ll discuss why we should care about the individual follower, how a single person with limited authority can have a truly positive and organization-wide impact, whether or not it is possible to develop specific traits and skills to maximize our contributions as followers, and how can we support our leaders while remaining true to our personal values. Finally, we’ll evaluate our own performance as followers and strategize ways to improve our abilities in this area. 

Participants in this workshop will:
- Become familiar with the concept of followership and the connection it has to organizational health.
- Recognize the ethical challenges followers face
- Identify followership skills and strategies for developing these abilities
 

Sweeping innovations in publishing models, shifts from print to electronic, and the expanding impact of consortia alliances have transformed technical services operations in academic libraries.  Work of technical services units is transitioning from daily assignment of routine work by supervisors, to a dynamic and shifting project-based operation where both staff and management input is crucial to the success of the unit.  The new environment requires all staff to actively engage in decision-making as part of a team of colleagues and managers, using evaluation, synthesis, and prioritization to meet project and operational goals.  This presentation highlights activities Eastern Washington University Libraries’ Collection Services unit implemented to involve and empower its classified staff in decision-making and priority-setting in order to drive innovation and change within the unit and library-wide.  Activities included redesigning physical space, instituting summer retreats, establishing unit ground rules, and ensuring classified staff involvement in hiring.  These activities laid the groundwork for a more collaborative and empowered team of paraprofessional and professional staff able to successfully anticipate and adapt to the rapidly evolving academic library environment.  Following the panel presentation, the panelists will facilitate small group discussions with attendees in order to brainstorm engagement opportunities at attendees’ institutions. 

Session goals:
Build awareness of changes in library technical services and their impact on organizational management
Learn about activities one academic library’s technical services unit implemented in order to increase collaboration and empowerment

Investigate potential engagement activities that could be implemented at attendees’ libraries

As individuals grow to become leaders, we are often not taught how to think about leadership, what aspects should be focused on first once we become leaders, or how to plan for our new leadership role. This presentation addresses these things and more. As everyone is a leader in some capacity, all are invited to attend.   

1. Participants will learn how to work with Boards, internal and external partners, and community organizations in their new leadership role.
2. Participants will garner a basic understanding of different leadership styles.
3. Participants will explore how the tenets of financial literacy play a role within leadership.  

At the Gary Strong Curriculum Center (a library dedicated to Education majors that houses State if Idaho adopted curriculum as well as a wide variety of books one might encounter in a school library), we strive to provide the most relevant and diverse materials for students, staff, faculty, and community members.  Managing and organizing a small curriculum library takes a lot of flexibility, creativity, ingenuity, and muscle (textbooks are heavy!).  Learn what it takes to plan, organize, and implement the yearly accessioning and purging of 1,000’s of curriculum items while maintaining an exceptional collection of fiction and nonfiction materials and staying sane doing it (just kidding!).

Attendees will leave with tips and techniques for managing the flow of new and old materials while working with limited staff, space, and time, as well as strategies for enhancing permanent collections with a limited budget.
 
Provide information on collection development with a continually rotating section, managing a relevant fiction and nonfiction section, and making the most out of a limited budget. 

Come learn about how the Reed College Library paired with Academic Support Services and a current Reed art senior student to help others navigate the thesis process. With the opening of a new Zine collection during Fall 2018, we were presented with an opportunity to update our outreach to seniors. This session will walk through the process we went through and present resources for creating your own outreach zines at your institution! 

1. Talk about how the zine project worked at the Reed College Library
2. Empower others to use this unique outreach method
3. Give others resources and practical knowledge on creating zines, for outreach or otherwise!