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2015 ANNUAL HIGHLIGHTS ISSUE COGNOTES • 13

Charlene Li Graces ASCLA President's Program Stage

By Talea Anderson Washington State University

At the ASCLA President’s Program on June 28, Charlene Li, bestselling author and founder of Altimeter Group, spoke about engaged leadership in the digital era. Li encouraged libraries to focus less on technologies and more on relationships as they build their strategic plans. “What kind of relationship do you want with your community?” she asked, explaining that the choice of technologies always comes second after settling on a mission, a strategy, and goals for community engagement.

Li explained that social media communication always emerges naturally from organizational strategy. Once the library has defined its goals, listened to users, identified metrics for measuring impact, and drawn up a road map for reaching those goals, the choice and use of digital technologies will follow. “Stop trying to be all things to all people,” Li said, referring to the library's tendency to adopt technologies for their own sake. Technologies are tools — to be chosen selectively as a means to an end rather than the end itself.

For Li, listening to users is key to achieving an organization’s mission. She suggested that libraries seek out their core audience and take the opportunity to listen to them online — by observing social media “likes” or asking their users questions about their needs and values. To engage this audience, Li advised telling stories about the library, creating a sense of community by sharing others’ content, or developing a voice that is both honest and authoritative. She suggested that libraries look to active social media communities such as the one surrounding Seattle Public Library to see how others have managed to engage with their users.

Li encouraged library leaders not to fear engagement via social media. She noted that active listening — for instance, perusing Twitter feeds — can happen if the leader invests only 15 minutes per day. She advised building a culture of trust, in which the library demonstrates its ability to remain present on the media that its community values most. This, she suggested, is the best thing that an effective, engaged organization can do — use digital technologies as a tool to build community.


Library School Accreditation Standards are Streamlined

By Michelle Kowalsky, Rowan University, NJ

ALA's Committee on Accreditation (COA) discussed updates on June 28 to the Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies (LIS) which were adopted at the 2015 Midwinter Meeting. Changes to the standards include required public disclosure of a program's accreditation status; more flexibility in determining the size of the panel for on-site visits, due to expense of travel and the number of university faculty participating; and a small increase in the fees in applying for accreditation to keep pace with expenses. The number of standards was reduced from six to five in order to collapse similar thematic components and to remove redundancy in language which had caused confusion for previous applicants.

Accreditation standards are meant as quality-control measures which are implemented via peer and self-assessments. An updated version of the standards will apply to library school master's degree programs seeking the “ALA-accredited” designation as of Spring 2017. LIS programs which are scheduled for review prior to this date may choose to provide their program review based on either the new or previous ALA standards.

Library school programs must show documentation regarding achievement of their identified graduate student learning outcomes, as well as describe how decision-making about educational programs for pre-service librarians is driven by ongoing data collection and analysis. Panels of experts including library school faculty and practicing librarians are formally trained to provide comprehensive reviews of the documentation and data provided by universities in their accreditation applications.

The standards continue to stress innovation, espouse diversity, and recognize individual programmatic differences between universities. They evaluate a LIS program's effectiveness on five areas including systematic planning, curriculum, faculty, students, administration, finances, and resources.

For librarians, a master's degree from a program accredited by ALA is still considered the first professional degree. For school librarian preparation programs in particular, these revisions affect master's programs with a specialty in school librarianship from a program in an educational unit recognized by AASL and accredited by Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP).

The ALA Council poses for a group photo in the Moscone Center.


ACRL/STS Scholarly Communications Committee Conducts Survey

By Talea Anderson, Washington State University

At the ACRL/STS Scholarly Communications Committee Forum on June 28, committee members presented findings from a survey recently distributed to scholarly communication practitioners about their needs and current practices. Conducted in April 2015, the survey brought in 217 responses from the ACRL Science and Technology Section (STS), the Education and Behavioral Sciences Section (EBSS), and the Engineering Libraries Division (ELD). Committee members from each of these sections commented on early findings from the survey, noting that more subject-specific training material may be required for those who provide scholarly communication services in subject areas such as the sciences.

As organizers of the scholarly communication survey, Mel DeSart (University of Washington), Brian Quinn (Texas Tech University), Lutishoor Salisbury (University of Arkansas), and Julie Speer (Virginia Tech) summarized preliminary findings at the forum session. They noted in particular that most survey respondents identified themselves as subject-area liaisons who dedicate relatively little time to scholarly communication issues. Still, survey respondents requested further training from STS and other divisions so as to better understand issues and practices like researcher IDs, subject-area depositories, and data management.

Reflecting on their findings, survey organizers remarked that responses may have been colored by individual perceptions of scholarly communication — what it constitutes and how it looks in practice. Relevant ACRL units will begin to analyze survey results and provide recommendations on training and support for scholarly communication practitioners in the sciences.

Sarah Pekkanen (from left), Adriana Trigiani, John Katzenbach, Paula McLain, Matthew Pearl, and Barbara Shapiro headline the Gala Author Tea.