This page gives summary reports of the projects worked on by the Emerging Leaders Teams from the Class of 2016.
Team A: Resource Guide for Underserved Populations
Hosting Unit: American Association of School Librarians (AASL)
Team Members:
Meg Finney
Peggy Griesinger
Raemona Little Taylor
Stefanie Metko
Nicole Thomas
Member Guide: Suzanna L. Panter, Previous Emerging Leader
Staff Liaison: Stephanie Book, Manager, Communications, AASL
Project Description:
The purpose of this project is to create a guide to direct school librarians toward resources that will help them create welcoming and useful libraries for underserved populations whose needs may not be fully met by current library practices. The following groups were determined by AASL to be potentially underserved in school libraries: children in non-traditional families, children of migrant workers, children of incarcerated parents, homeless children, and children in foster care.
Project Details:
This guide emerged as a response to a concern brought forward by the AASL Affiliate Assembly, which called attention to the need to provide additional resources for school librarians working with underserved students. It was created by the 2016 team of ALA Emerging Leaders (EL) sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). The team is comprised of five librarians currently working in school, academic, and public library settings.
The information contained in this e-book intends to fill the gap in existing resources for school librarians by collecting together tools, strategies, and information in one comprehensive and accessible format. The guide focuses on five student populations considered underserved by AASL. Each section focuses on an individual population: children in foster care, homeless children, children of incarcerated parents, children of migrant workers, and children in non-traditional families.
TEAM A POSTER
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Team B: ACRL-STS/Implementation of a Virtual Collaboratory and Pilot Project of the Research Agenda
Host Unit: Association of College and Research Libraries- Science and Technology Section (ACRL-STS)
Team Members:
James Adams
Xiaojie Duan
Lauren Goode
Jennifer Zhao
Member Guide: Andrew Stuart, ACRL-STS Vice Chair/Chair Elect Science and Technology Section
Staff Liaison: Megan Griffin; Program Officer for Member Services, ACRL
Project Details:
The team was charged with setting up the infrastructure to support collaboration among science librarians and other ACRL-STS members engaging with the developing ACRL-STS Research Agenda. Following the suggestions of a previous Emerging Leaders project, the team began investigations with Wiggio, a freely available online platform promoted to facilitate group work. A test was initiated for the Emerging Leaders project work, however, once the team began to use Wiggio for project development and research, the platform was found to be unsuitable when compared with alternative methods for engagement. The most difficult aspect of Wiggio was the lack of responsiveness in its virtual meeting platform, and real-time collaboration was challenging.
In order to meet the requirements of a collaborative platform to share information, resources, formulate research questions, and locate interested colleagues, the team established a Google Group for the ACRL-STS research agenda. The Google Group will serve a similar purpose as to Wiggio, acting as a platform to spawn collaborations around ACRL-STS research agenda projects. The Google Group does not offer a document storage platform, however, ACRL-STS could implement a shared Google Drive account or individual research groups could use the free Google Drive service to create such a group file.
To begin the exchange of ideas around the ACRL-STS research agenda, our group curated a set of resources supporting the three main areas of the agenda (Resources, Services, and Librarianship). These curated resource sets were established as a pinned post in their respective discussion areas of the Google Group. Additional resources can be shared by users as responses in the message thread.
The finished products of Team B: ACRL-STS/Implementation of a Virtual Collaboratory and Pilot Project of the Research Agenda for the Science and Technology Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries are a Google Group platform, a user guide for the ACRL-STS member assigned to moderate the group, and curated collections of resources to support explorations of topics within the research agenda.
TEAM B HANDOUT
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Team C: Wellness Website Update Project
Hosting Unit: ALA - Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA)
Team Members:
Amanda Avery
Dory Cochran
Jennifer McElroy
Guide: Beatrice Calvin, Manager, Professional Development, ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR)
Staff Liaison: Lorelle Swader, Director, ALA - Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA) and Director, ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR)
Project Description:
In, 2008, ALA President Loriene Roy had an initiative that focused on workplace wellness in libraries. Wellness included all aspects of a library worker’s life; physical, social, environmental, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational. There were several programs and activities that were held at the Annual Conference that year and in particular, a website was developed as a resource tool as part of the ALAAPA (a companion organization to the ALA that focuses on issues of importance to library workers) website.
On this site, workers read inspiring stories of their library colleagues’ journeys towards wellness and found out about workplace wellness in the news. They also were able to discover helpful tools and resources to aid on their own journey. The website was a valuable resource that has not been updated. With changes in the workplace today and the need for “work life integration,” the hope is that an Emerging Leaders team would help us develop resources for the future.
Project Details:
As advised by the team member guide and staff liaison, the team used the dimensions of wellness developed by Dr. Bill Hettler—co-founder of the National Wellness Institute—to guide their process of finding and evaluating tools and resources for the updated wellness website. The team searched for three types of materials: online tools (calculators, charts, how-to instructions, toolkits, etc.), online articles and other resources, and printed books. All materials were assessed for usefulness and credibility, and online resources were also evaluated for projected permanence. This resulted in a curated list of resources for the site, as well as a number of examples of interesting and/or useful items that are appropriate for the categorized newsfeed portion of the site.
In order to identify the most useful types of resources for library workers--and the best way to organize these resources for findability--the team created a survey related to the areas library workers most struggle with concerning wellness and work-life balance. Team members administered the survey through ALA’s Think Tank, personal connections and networks, as well as several other library-related organizations and associations. The qualitative results were analyzed and provided insights that guided final source-curation and provided organizational structure for the updated website.
The team also interviewed Dr. Loriene Roy, who initiated the original wellness campaign and website during her 2007-2008 ALA presidency. Her comments about the history of the project and the importance of wellness to all library workers were important guides to creating final documentation on the site and refining the final list of collected resources.
In offering a mock layout and design for the updated website, the team used WordPress to organize and house the content. This decision was mostly motivated by the request of the ALA-APA to have the new site on this platform, but WordPress is also user-friendly and easy to maintain. In addition to a demo site, the team members created a document with procedures and future steps for maintaining the updated website and suggestions for final website design.
Final Project Page: http://alaapa.org/wellness
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Team D: ALSC Environmental Scan: The Current and Future State of Youth Librarianship
Hosting Unit: Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
Team Members:
Megan Bright
Alpha DeLap
Joanna Schofield
Meredith Steiner
Brittany Tavernaro
Member Guide: Gretchen Caserotti, Member, ALSC Board of Directors
Staff Liaison: Dan Bostrom, Marketing Manager, ALSC
Project Description:
The 2016 Emerging Leader Team D conducted an Environmental Scan to determine the most substantial areas of growth for the future of children's librarianship. Following the conclusion of the scan, the group determined key recommendations that ALSC could use to prepare librarians for these growing trends and created a document to report these findings.
Project Details:
Our Emerging Leaders group was tasked by ALSC to conduct an Environmental Scan to determine current and upcoming trends in children’s librarianship. As a group, we brainstormed and researched areas of potential growth. Then, we created a survey that we distributed to librarians serving youth to seek feedback about the most significant trends. After determining four key areas of growth (community engagement, diversity, early literacy and technology), we researched and conducted interviews to provide suggestions on how ALSC can increase awareness and provide professional development for these trends. This information was compiled into an Environmental Scan report that can be used by a variety of stakeholders.
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Team E: Who Is APALA?: Strategically Communicating Our Organizational Identity & Value
Project Host: Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA)
Team Members:
Katherine Donaldson
Annah Hackett
Alyssa Jocson Porter
Meredith Wickham
Member Guide(s): Melissa Cardenas-Dow and Lessa Pelayo-Lozada
Staff Liaison: Jody Gray, Director, ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy & Outreach Services
Description:
Our Emerging Leaders team took on a project to assess the branding and marketing strategies of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) to help improve the organization’s ability to communicate its identity and value to members and non-members.
Details:
We created and distributed survey to current APALA members and non-members in March 2016, asking about identity, marketing, and communication preferences. We completed data analysis to identify key findings from survey, and using that data, we created a Marketing Plan that summarized key findings from survey, provided a SWOT analysis, and proposed goals and strategies to improve marketing and communication. We also drafted a style guide (partially revised from existing APALA documents) to propose best practices for social media and publication content.
Final Report Appendices A & B - Survey Questions, Locations
Final Report Appendix C - Style Guide
Final Report Team E APALA Marketing Plan
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Team F: Adding Disaster Planning to the IRRT Free Links Project: A Project Providing Access to Free Professional Development Opportunities for ALA Members around the World
Hosting Unit: International Relations Round Table (IRRT)
Team Members:
Jason Broughton
Sean Buckner
Mandi Goodsett
Myriam Martinez-Banuelos
Charissa Powell
Member Guide: Lucas Mak, Previous Emerging Leader
Staff Liaison: Delin Guerra, Program Officer, International Relations Office
Project Description:
In the wake of many worldwide disasters in recent years (Philippines, Japan, Haiti, Chile, to name a few), disaster planning for libraries is a timely need. IRRT has a large number of members from other countries. The IRRT Free Links Project was a previous Emerging Leader project which gathered and listed free professional development web resources to assist ALA members around the world. This project adds “Disaster Planning” as a new component to the Free Links site and is a way to assist international librarians with planning for the unexpected. Link: https://sites.google.com/site/irrtfreelinks/home.
Project Details:
The team first divided up various disasters to look into and compiled a literature review. Criteria for selecting resources was established, such as items published after 2000 and ones that were open source. From this literature review, the team decided which disasters to focus on and went forward compiling a resource list based on those disasters. Each member was assigned a disaster or two and was responsible for finding appropriate resources and annotating them in a bibliography. The resource list was organized by types of disasters: cataclysmic, serious damage, and ongoing damage. When the bibliography was complete, it was transferred to a mock site before being added to the Free Links website.
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Team G: Development of an Archiving Program for the Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT)
Hosting Unit: Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT)
Team Members:
Craig Boman
Chelcie Rowell
Melissa Stoner
Harriet Wintermute
Member Guide: Louise Ratliff, Vice Chair, MAGIRT
Staff Liaison: Danielle Alderson, Member Relations/Services Specialist, Member Programs & Services
Project Description:
Design and develop guidelines and procedures for the Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT) to archive their documents in the ALA Institutional Repository (ALAIR).
Project Details:
As a Round Table of ALA, MAGIRT produces many documents of enduring value to the organization and to the public. With turnover in leadership, there is a risk of losing important organizational memory. MAGIRT charged our team with developing recommendations for best practices in archiving Round Table documents in ALAIR.
We wrote a proposed archiving policy for MAGIRT Executive Board to review and adopt. The policy identifies types of content created by MAGIRT that have enduring value, such as meeting minutes, for deposit into ALAIR. In addition, the policy identifies types of content that are out of scope. The policy also recommends that the MAGIRT Executive Board assign one person responsibility for depositing the documents at the end of each fiscal year.
This policy is supplemented by several training and educational documents. A metadata best practices document describes the metadata elements that are possible in ALAIR and how to use them. A ‘Cliffs Notes’ document describing the submission process serves as a quick introduction and reference for future MAGIRT representatives charged with depositing MAGIRT documents into ALAIR. A short video demonstrates the deposit process and articulates the value of archiving materials in ALAIR.
ALAIR is new enough that many ALA members are not aware of the repository. In order to raise awareness and promote ALAIR, we submitted an article explaining its use and benefit for publication in American Libraries and created a poster to present the project at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando.
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Team H: Re-envisioning the MLIS: Assessing MLIS Preparation for Emerging Public Library Leaders
Hosting Unit: Public Library Association (PLA)
Team Members:
Anna Mattonen
Katrina Ortega
Carolyn Reagle
Pauline Stacchini
Member Guide: Kerry Weinstein, PLA Committee Member
Staff Liaison: Scott Allen, Deputy Director, PLA
Project Description:
The 2016 Team H Emerging Leaders took a closer look at the current MLIS curriculum and how well public librarians believe their MLIS education prepared them to work in public libraries. Some key questions were whether new graduates feel prepared to work in a public library, and what skills and competencies they wished they had learned as a MLIS student.
Project Details:
Team H worked with PLA to take a closer look at how prepared MLIS graduates believe they are to work as 21st century librarians in public libraries. The team surveyed current PLA members by way of a survey included in the April newsletter, receiving 500+ responses. Each team member then interviewed different stakeholders, such as library directors or hiring managers, public librarians with less than five years of experience, public librarians with more than five years of experience, and current MLIS program faculty members. These different groups gave insight into what preparedness for a position in a public library looks like, which led to the creation of a roadmap of the ideal education for aspiring public librarians. The team collaborated through Google Drive to create documents that illustrated their individual research and how it fit together to illustrate the opportunities in MLIS program development.
Team H Poster
Team H Handout
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Team I: PLA2/PLA Online “Professional Tools” Curation and Future Forecasting
Hosting Unit: Public Library Association (PLA)
Member Guide: Tara Lannen-Stanton
Staff Liaison: Steven Hoffman, Manager, Web Communications
Team Members:
Natalie Bazan
John Daquino
Christina Golm
Erin Hollingsworth
Jacqueline Mayse
Project Description:
PLA hosts a “Professional Tools” resource on its website (http://ala.org/pla/tools) that includes links to a variety of resources for librarians and their patrons related to administration and management, digital literacy, financial literacy, e-books, advocacy, and more. A team of Emerging Leaders took an in-depth look at emerging trends that impact libraries and the tools currently in this section of the PLA website. They evaluated the section's organization as well as the existing resources, and then produced recommendations for the revision and reorganization of the section and criteria for the ongoing review of existing resources as well as suggestions for potential new resources.
Project Goals and Outcomes:
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Outcome 1: Provide Emerging Leaders the opportunity to collaborate on research, review, and evaluation of a range of resources and to contribute to increased access of those resources to public libraries |
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Accomplishments Team I members:
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Outcome 2: Leverage scanning processes to ascertain the current and emerging needs for “Professional Tools” in the library profession |
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Accomplishments Team I members:
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Outcome 3: Evaluate the organization for the “Professional Tools” section |
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Accomplishments Team I members:
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Outcome 4: Produce recommendations for revision and reorganization of the “Professional Tools” section |
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Accomplishments Team I members:
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Outcome 5: Produce criteria for ongoing review of existing and potential new resources in the “Professional Tools” section |
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Final Project Page: http://www.ala.org/pla/tools
Team I Brochure
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TEAM J: The RUSA Library Publishing Toolkit
Hosting Unit: Reference and User Services Association (RUSA)
Team Members:
Catherine Damiani
kYmberly Keeton
Loren Klein
Madison Sullivan
Sabrina Wong
Member Guide: Amy Rustic, Chair, RUSA Publications and Communications Committee
Staff Liaison: Susan Hornung, Executive Director, RUSA
Project Description:
The RUSA Publications and Communications Committee wanted a 2016 Emerging Leaders team to create a toolkit of resources that librarians could use as they offer library publishing services.
This project was an extension of the work done by a 2015 EL team, which found that there is significant interest among RUSA members in providing library publishing services but a notable lack of support for these services outside of traditional academic publishing channels. RUSA wanted to support librarians that currently offer or plan to offer publishing services and is currently developing programming, a community of interested librarians, and a collection of online resources (this project). This project complements actions already being initiated to build community and resources through groups such as the Library Publishing Coalition (http://www.librarypublishing.org/ ),
The 2016 EL team were to build a collection of and a guide to resources and support services for library publishing. The specifics of this collection were determined within the team, although they were encouraged to consider building on the four areas of publishing services that were already identified by the 2015 EL project team (education and instruction; content development and editorial; product design and production; and marketing and dissemination).
They wanted the toolkit of resources to exist online, in a format that allow for ease of updating and continued access. They could consider: • Finding inspiring examples of library publishing services to feature • Interviewing librarians involved in these services to learn about the challenges and opportunities they face • Identifying necessary skill sets for librarians engaged in publishing services and linking to places where those skills can be learned • Developing a guide to publishing technologies and resources that detail how to learn and teach them • Creating a bibliography of books, online sources, and/or a contact list of mentors who might offer support to interested librarians • Considering non-traditional publication formats and incorporating information about them into the toolkit • Creating a wiki, a blog, a web page, or an online document to make the collection of resources accessible to interested librarians • Developing a community aspect for the toolkit so others could comment and contribute • Inventing other additions that will enhance the toolkit for users
Project Details:
See Final Report
Final Project Page: The final toolkit can be accessed via http://rusapubtools.wordpress.com
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Team K: Social Media Marketing Calendar
Hosting Unit: Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)
Team Members:
Derrick Burton
Tiffany Davis
Kayla Marie Figard
Hattie Garrow
Samantha Helmick
Dontaná McPherson-Joseph
Member Guide: Chris Shoemaker, YALSA Board Member
Staff Liaison: Beth Yoke, Executive Director, YALSA
Project Description:
This project included updating existing marketing messages and creating new ones as needed for YALSA. The team compiled those messages into a spreadsheet, organized by month, with suggestions for use on Facebook, Twitter and via the organization’s email newsletter.
Project Details:
Over the course of the last six months, six librarians from across the country came together to create a social media marketing calendar for YALSA. We were tasked with updating old messages, creating new messages, and seeking out the informational needs of the YALSA community. We began by conducting a survey of YALSA members, asking them about their personal and professional social media usage, their preferred social media sites, how they would like to receive information from YALSA, and what information they would like to receive from YALSA.
While the survey was taking place, the EL team began researching social media marketing best practices. We looked at numerous articles, books, and real libraries, taking as useful those tips that were repeatedly cited. We also looked at articles that would help us understand how to successfully leverage the wide array of information that YALSA puts out on a near daily basis. We created the “Social Media Marketing: Best Practices for Engaging, Informing, and Inspiring Stakeholders” document as a result of this research. We identified nine tips that anyone working on a social media team can use to craft a successful social media marketing plan.
At the conclusion of the survey, the team reviewed and analyzed results with our member guide and staff liaison. We learned that YALSA members want to be involved and in-the-know, but they don’t want to be inundated with information. We learned that YALSA members were unaware of the majority of tools and resources that YALSA provides. We learned that Facebook and Twitter are still the most popular social media platforms for most YALSA members, but that the email newsletter is important for those members who cannot access social media from work or who do not engage with social media at all. We discovered that members prefer brief text, but would like links where applicable, and a visual component, as often as possible. We were given direction by members’ interest in professional development opportunities, best practices for services to teens, and sharing triumphs and lessons learned in the course of performing duties. All of these responses informed our approach to the social media calendar.
During the initial phase of developing the social media marketing calendar, team members reviewed YALSA’s existing social media policies and messages to identify gaps in social media coverage and opportunities for improvement. We found that many of the information resources YALSA offers on its website needed more promotion on social media. We also found that YALSA had the potential, through social media, to engage its members at a greater level and create a true community of librarians who are willing to share experiences and best practices. Those findings helped guide us as we began creation of the calendar.
A six-person team is the perfect number for a calendar, as we were able to split the year evenly among us, with each team member taking responsibility for creating social media messages for two months of the year. By using a shared Google spreadsheet, we were able to cultivate a voice that was as close to the current YALSA social media voice as possible. We were also able to edit our teammates’ post, with permission, once the initial draft was complete.
Being a member of an Emerging Leader team is an exercise in collaboration. Over the course of six months, we worked with six diverse schedules, including supervisor schedules, final semester graduate student schedules, and academic/school librarian teaching schedules. It was hectic at times, but through scheduling tools such as Doodle polls, we were able to meet with a majority of the group most of the time. As we are scattered across the country, we made a concerted effort to always render meeting times in all applicable time zones to minimize the potential for confusion.
Communication among the team was key. Our first point of contact was always email, and we included both personal and work email addresses to ensure messages were received. Meetings were held by conference call and on Google Hangouts, allowing us to feel like we were a team, rather than a group of individuals who happened to be working on the same project. We created our spreadsheet using Google Sheets and kept all meeting notes and documents in a designated online folder in Google Drive. We wanted to make sure that everyone had access to all materials and decisions made by the group.
Team K Handout Side A
Team K Handout Side B
Team K Social Media Best Practices
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The ALA Emerging Leaders program is managed by the ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR).