Letting Go of Legacy Services, edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong

I just reviewed Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies, edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong. My review's going to be published in the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship v.27, no. 3, so I won't repeat the review here. I will say that the book raises some interesting questions about "planned abandonment." Some of the case studies address the abandonment of services that are considered core by most libraries. For example, the University of Arizona has abandoned both print and electronic reserves. After more than a decade of evaluating both services, they found that print was used very little, but took up a lot of staff time. Electronic reserves were incorporated into the university's course management system.

I think this book has a lot to offer library managers who are trying to offer new services while maintaining traditional services. It's clear from these case studies that it's valuable to periodically review and evaluate services offered. Whether services are abandoned or simply modified, a thoughtful approach to what we do and why is always useful.

Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies. Edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 159 pages. ISBN 9780838912201.

ELUNA 2015

The 2015 Ex Libris Users Group of North America (ELUNA) conference was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 5-8. It included four full days of programming about all of the Ex Libris (EL) products presented by a variety of practitioners as well as Ex Libris staff. The first morning was devoted primarily to a keynote and presentations by ELUNA leadership and Ex Libris staff. One of the things that I noted during the morning presentations was that Ex Libris considers libraries that migrate to Alma between 2015 and 2020 to be "early adopters." Meaning that we could migrate five years from now and still be considered to be in the forefront!

The program tracks were devoted to specific product lines: Aleph, Alma, Voyager, SFX, Primo, Verde, Metalib, Digitool, Rosetta. Ex Libris presentations generally demonstrated the latest developments in each of their products. Practitioner presentations address a wide variety of issues. Three of us attended from UAlbany, and we informally split up the sessions. I tended to go to sessions about migrating to Alma. The breakout sessions that I attended were:

• Keep calm and Alma on: implementing Alma in six months (at the University of Tennessee)
• Choice and diversity in acquisitions methods (Alma) (this was an Ex Libris session)
• Alma product update (also an EL session)
• Alma product working group meeting (led by Betsy Friesen, University of Minnesota)
• Planning and completing a full catalog RDA enrichment project in Alma (at the University of Minnesota)
• Alma Demo: Acquisitions (an EL session)
• What to expect when things are unexpected: how we went live in Alma and quickly practiced thinking on our feet, accepting change and letting things go (at the University of Minnesota)
• A collaborative review of Ex Libris Support (an EL session)
• 57 to 1: What are the odds? (presented by SUNY Office of Library and Information Services staff: about the One Bib merged bibliographic records project)
• Building a province-wide private research cloud for Ontario's academic libraries (this was unrelated to EL products, but of interest to academic libraries)

Presentations by the practitioners were very interesting. The keynote presentation on the first day of the conference was by Nancy Sims (University of Minnesota) and was called "User Stalking for Fun and Profit." While tongue in cheek, Ms. Sims demonstrated that it's almost impossible to make data anonymous. Even when you try to anonymize data, it can be de-anonymized easily with just one or two other data points, such as gender and zip code. It was very sobering, especially as libraries are looking at using student data to demonstrate the impact libraries have on the success of their students.

Presentations from the 2015 ELUNA Conference are posted here.

Minneapolis was a good venue for this conference, although it would be nice if everyone could fit into one hotel. Next year the conference will be in Oklahoma City.

ARL Membership Meeting, Spring 2015

I recently attended the spring 2015 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) membership meeting, held at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA, April 28-30, 2015. It's been a while since I attended an ARL meeting as a member of the ARL Research Libraries Leadership Fellows Program in 2007-2008. While I was in that program I attended ARL meetings in St. Louis, Coral Gables, and Washington, D.C. The Coral Gables meeting included a memorable dinner at the home of Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami. This time I was looking forward to participating as an official delegate (filling in for my boss, Mary Casserly), and also to meeting the current group of leadership fellows, some of whom I know from ALA or past positions.

The first day of the membership meeting was mostly dedicated to the work of the Association. ARL had in recent years undertaken a strategic planning initiative, which resulted in a report that charted their new direction: Report of the Association of Research Libraries Strategic Thinking and Design Initiative. Discussion revolved around future directions including a focus on leadership development, collections, innovation, libraries that learn, and libraries as scholarly communication engines. Committees will be smaller and include Advocacy and Public Policy, Assessment; Diversity; and Membership Engagement and Outreach.

Highlights of the meeting for me were the invited speakers and panelists. William C. Kirby (Harvard University) gave a presentation on "A Chinese Century? The World of Universities and Information in the 21st Century." Brian Nosek (University of Virginia, and Executive Director, Center for Open Science) presented on his efforts to support open scholarship as well as common practices regarding transparency, accuracy, sharing, reproducibility, and more. Panels addressed both copyright and shared print repositories. Finally, ARL and SPARC staff provided a series of updates on their advocacy and policy efforts. I had to catch my flight home so I unfortunately missed the last panel, which was on data science and supporting new research methods.

Aside from these substantive programs and panels, ARL membership meetings include introductions of new member delegates and tributes to retiring delegates. UCs Berkeley and Davis hosted a reception at the Morrison Library the first evening, and there was another reception held at the Claremont on the second evening. Overall, I found the meeting to be very stimulating and I have pages of notes that I want to follow up on later.

NOTSL 2015 Spring Meeting

I recently gave the keynote presentation at the Northern Ohio Technical Services Librarians (NOTSL) Spring 2015 Meeting. NOTSL meets twice a year and this meeting was held on April 24 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library Parma-Snow Branch Auditorium. I was asked to speak about using assessment to advocate for technical services. I appreciated the opportunity to talk about this aspect of assessment because I usually talk about technical services assessment in the context of improving services or processes. There was a lot of interest in using assessment to advocate for funding, positions, or changes to procedures or policies. You can access my presentation here, published in the University at Albany's institutional repository, Scholars Archive.

Other speakers were Anthony McMullen (Systems Librarian, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania) and Robin Buser (Supervisor of Technical Services, Columbus State Community College). Robin has recently co-authored the book Project Management for Libraries: A Practical Approach (along with Bruce E. Massis and Miriam Pollack). She spoke briefly about "Assessing Projects: Before, During and After."

The Spring 2015 NOTSL meeting was very well organized and attended by more than 60 people, including a mix of public and academic librarians. The venue was very nice, close to restaurants, and easy to get to. NOTSL is not a fee-based organization; everyone who attends a NOTSL meeting is considered a member. You can learn about their past programs here.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

With Linchpin: Are You Indispensable, author Seth Godin makes the case that we need to stand out from the crowd and be indispensable to be successful. While I appreciate this concept and believe that it's true to a certain point, Mr. Godin did not make a very strong case for it in this book, which is repetitive and unorganized.

The book begins by stating that we are all cogs in a giant machine, too timid to stand out from the crowd and be noticed. In fact, one of the early headings in an early chapter reads "We are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, Literalists, Manual Readers, TGIF Laborers, Map Followers, and Fearful Employees." While I agree that some people are 9-to-5ers, just doing what it takes to get by, I have a hard time believing that the majority of people are like that, although I admit that my perspective might be skewed by having worked in higher education for 30 years, as opposed to the corporate world that Mr. Godin is clearly referring to.

Another concept that I had trouble with is Mr. Godin's idea of art. He constantly refers to the goal of becoming artists, no matter what our job. A Starbucks barista is an artist when he goes above and beyond his responsibilities by making customers feel welcome, etc. I don't think this analogy was necessary, and strained his argument somewhat. Mr. Godin's main point is that people need to stand out, put more effort in, challenge the rules, offer edgy solutions, etc. to make others (i.e., management) notice them. If their solutions or creativity aren't rewarded, they should leave and find a company that recognizes what they can offer.

Mr. Godin devotes a chapter to what he calls The Resistance. This refers to our basic animal nature, the lizard part of the brain that is full of fear and afraid to do anything worthwhile. I also found this completely unconvincing. Admittedly, we all have some anxiety about taking risks in the workplace, but his indictment of people's reasoning and rationalization for inaction was overblown and overstated.

Finally, I found the book to be poorly organized. I read it over the course of three days, including a plane ride from Minneapolis to Albany, and over a weekend. It felt like I was reading a brain dump of overgeneralizations that were grouped together somewhat by chapters. It was repetitive and filled with anecdotes that weren't very convincing. It could have used the skills of an editor, although Mr. Godin does provide a long list of people in his acknowledgments, all of whom presumably read it and gave feedback. I really wanted to like this book, but in the end, it's not a strong contribution to the business self-improvement or management literature.

Seth Godin. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011. 244 pages. ISBN 9781591844099.

27 Powers of Persuasion, by Chris St. Hilaire

Whether in work or in one's personal life, most people have to persuade others at some point. 27 Powers of Persuasion: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies will help you develop the skills to make persuasive arguments. Although "seduce" might be overstating the case, this book does provide a lot of tips on how to get others to think about things in a different way and open them up to your viewpoints.

Author Chris St. Hilaire starts out by advising readers to focus on the goal. It's too easy to be distracted by details and positions when discussing options, and it's important to remind everyone involved to think about the end goal. That ensures that everyone's on the same page; it's less about how we get there and more about finding the best solution to achieve our goals. Each chapter in this book is numbered Power #1, Power #2, etc. They include helpful discussions about evaluating the egos in the room; using the first five minutes to make people feel safe; framing the discussion in terms of choice, fairness, and accountability; and using (just a few) statistics to bolster your case.

I found this book helpful in making me think about how I frame new ideas or approaches to work situations. Some of Mr. St. Hilaire's examples, especially those from the political sphere, seemed a little manipulative to me, but most examples were useful and could be applied to many situations. This book would be a good (and very quick) read for any manager. I read it in just a few hours on a flight from Albany to Minneapolis.

Chris St. Hilaire with Lynette Padwa. 27 Powers of Persuasion: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 2010. 204 pages. ISBN 9780735204591.

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, by Adam Grant

According to author Adam Grant, everyone is either a giver, taker, or matcher, both at work and in their personal lives. The meanings of these labels are obvious. Givers like to give more than they get from others. They give feedback, mentor others, review others' work for accuracy, and provide help any time they're asked. Takers, on the other hand, like to get more than they receive from others. They will ask for help, but they aren't there when others need help in return. They will take what they can get and then dump you. Most common are the matchers, and we see them often in the workplace. Matchers often help others, expecting help in return when they need it. They keep a subconscious tally to keep track of the relationship, expecting to keep the effort on both sides even.

Mr. Grant's research addresses which of these three personalities is the most successful at work. As an example he uses Abraham Lincoln's early political career in which he sacrifices an early race for senate to help a colleague; what might have seemed like a mistake at the time came around to help him far more in the end. In chapter 2 the author discusses the differences between how takers and givers build networks. Subsequent chapters address the ripple effect of giving, identifying givers and their potential, and how communication styles differ between givers and takers.

Whereas early chapters of Give and Take discuss how giving personalities tend to be more successful in the long run, the second half of the book addresses some of the pitfalls of giving and how to avoid them. Chapter 6 discusses the potential for burnout and how to avoid it (hint: the trick is to become more engaged but in different ways). Chapter 7 addresses how giving personalities can avoid becoming a doormat for others who ask for too much and take you for granted. In chapter 8 the author discusses how a culture of giving can be encouraged and uses as one of his examples the online service Freecycle. Finally, Mr. Grant provides 10 action items that will help readers develop their giving tendencies and create stronger networks.

Give and Take is an excellent exploration of how the tendency to help (or not) can make a huge impact on your life and career. Backed by a lot of research, cited in a fairly lengthy references section, Grant provides a lot of fodder for thought and discussion. Filled with anecdotes to support his research, Give and Take is well-written and fun to read. This would be an excellent book to use for a reading group or a workplace discussion.

Adam Grant. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. New York: Viking, 2013. 305 pages. ISBN 9780670026555.