The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Category: University Librarian Report

This the collection of monthly newsletter articles from Krisellen Maloney, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian.

  • Themes from the March Cabinet Retreat

    Themes from the March Cabinet Retreat

    For the last two months, I have used the Agenda to provide updates about a framework we are developing to provide us with a common vocabulary and a shared understanding of the relationships and dependencies between local and central services. Last month I focused on the local aspects of the framework, with the intent of talking about the central aspects this month.

    However, two weeks ago Cabinet had a retreat to discuss local priorities and to begin developing realistic expectations of what would be possible for the Libraries to accomplish with our shared infrastructure. Before continuing the framework discussion, I think it will be useful to review the outcomes of the retreat, including the overarching themes that emerged from our discussions.

    Now that we have filled the Library Director positions, our planning processes are in full swing. The Library Directors came to the retreat prepared to discuss their most pressing needs and how best to use the shared infrastructure. The conversations were good because they were based on the needs of the campuses and communicated with a strong sense of collaboration and common purpose.

    By the end of the day, several themes emerged that describe opportunities and constraints that are common to all units.

    • Access to Collections: It is clear that the Alma/Primo implementation will be a catalyst for organizational change. The new systems will provide a platform to strengthen foundation services and will help us to better assess our effectiveness. They will also drive changes in workflows in every unit of the Libraries. It is easy to see how this implementation will result in changes for people working directly with the system (e.g., cataloging, acquisition, circulation), but what may be less obvious are the effects for those with less direct daily interaction with the system. Discovery will change, driving changes in the broader website. Links to our resources will change, meaning that every research guide and instructional object that directs users to a specific resource will need to be updated. Needless to say, the Alma/Primo implementation will be a big part of all of our lives in the coming year.
    • Library Instruction: There is a need for us to build course-related infrastructure to support student success and to improve access to open and affordable resources within courses. We have begun this process with the implementation of PressBooks, but it appears that changes on the horizon may also include Leganto, an advanced Alma module related to course reserves, and Credo Education, customizable information literacy modules. We will have to determine the balance between central coordination and local autonomy in the coming year. Student success is such an important part of the library mission that we have to take the time to invest in shared infrastructure.
    • Discovery and Website modifications: There were many requests for new features related to discovery and the website. In the coming year, most of the attention of the Discovery Working Group and Web Improvement Team will be focused on integrating new features related to the Alma/Primo implementation and to integrating the emerging course-related infrastructure. It will be necessary to focus our attention on foundation services this year; however, the strong platform that we are establishing will allow us to continue to develop boutique services in the coming years.

    I started this article with a mention of the effective discussions we had at this year’s retreat which is in and of itself a strong indicator of the final theme that emerged. The Libraries have succeeded for many years in an environment of grassroots endeavors that eventually coalesced into larger themes. The environment in which we find ourselves is moving far too quickly for this approach. In the coming year, it will be necessary to acknowledge and support the roles of managers in prioritizing and effectively advancing the missions of the Libraries. Over the past few years, we have focused on the importance of Library Directors in setting priorities for their libraries that meet the needs of and support the unique priorities of the campus environments in which they operate. For an example of how that is happening, take a look at the Framework for Change established for Dana Library and the Institute of Jazz Studies in response to Rutgers-Newark priorities. In order to support robust local plans and Librarieswide priorities, we need to focus on infrastructure and strengthen the role of the manager in understanding the priorities of the Libraries and prioritizing work accordingly. The Alma/Primo implementation is the perfect catalyst for this change.

    This is an exciting time for the Libraries. We are recognized as a unit that provides leadership at Rutgers and is focused on the mission(s) of the University. I can see the progress we are making. Although we have a lot to do, this will be a productive year and will result in a stronger and more flexible organizational structure. Next month, we are back to frameworks!

  • Local Components of the Rutgers University Libraries Framework Matrix

    Local Components of the Rutgers University Libraries Framework Matrix

    Last month I introduced the idea of using Frameworks to describe our increasingly complex environment. As a reminder, Frameworks provide a way to divide complex processes into manageable chunks while retaining information about relationships and dependencies between the components. Developing a Service and Project Framework will give us a common vocabulary and a better understanding of the relationships and dependencies between local and central services.

    Over the past two Cabinet meetings, we have worked to establish a Framework by using a matrix to describe components of a range of our services, including items like instruction, reference, or access to collections, and projects like ExLibris and OAT implementation. With each pass, we identified areas for improving the Framework and developed better ways to describe the work we do within our unique environment.

    This matrix expands on the service categories outlined in the OCLC Research Library Partnership Reports on the Realities of Research Data Management—education, expertise, curation—to accommodate the full range of work done at Rutgers University Libraries. The matrix continues to evolve, but the important thing to note is that it breaks down our work into components related to Service Category or Project and Type of Support.

    The best way to read this draft of the matrix is to start with a Service category and read down the column. Each of the cells describes one component of a service or project, with the lower cells describing the infrastructure required to deliver the service or complete the project.

    Click this image to download and view a PDF version of the matrix.

    About Service Categories

    There are many different ways that we could describe the categories of service that we provide, but based on our discussions, we found it most useful to group our services based roughly on the breadth of the audience; whether it serves mostly Rutgers faculty and students or external scholars and the public; and the number of stakeholders we work with to design of the service or resource. The Service Categories include:

    • Foundation: Services directly related to finding, evaluating, and using information in all forms. Typically, we design these services for a wide range of faculty and students. These are sometimes referred to as “core” library services.
    • Boutique: Focused services and resources that are designed by a small number of stakeholders (often outside of the Libraries) and that primarily serve a targeted audience within Rutgers, the needs of scholars outside of Rutgers, or the community.
    • Education: Providing information about aspects of scholarly communication (beyond Foundation instruction like information literacy) designed for a wide range of faculty and students.
    • Consulting: Providing specialized recommendations and information to an individual or group based on their specific scholarly communication need.

    About Projects:

    These projects are planned, intentional activities that span local and central units and expertise to change our infrastructure, create new services, or generate new information resources. Our central infrastructure has to support four unique missions, so we need to ensure that changes to our services and resources work to advance all of these goals.

    • Innovating: Projects that lead to the design and development of new Foundation services, including improvements to existing Foundation services. Upon completion, the long-term operation and maintenance of these projects shifts to the Foundation service category.
    • Creating: Projects that require extensive expertise and central and local infrastructure to develop Boutigue services and knowledge products. These are usually collaborative projects with non-library units and involve a small number of stakeholders. Upon completion, the long-term operation and maintenance of these projects shifts to the Boutique service category.

    About the Types of Support:

    The Type of Support element of the matrix, involves both local and central activities. This month, I would like to focus on the local elements because they will help guide how we think about the central planning process. (Reread this post from last year for a refresher on the central planning process).

    • Local: Direct support to faculty and students. Examples include library instruction, material selection, and reference support.
    • Local Infrastructure: Services that support the work of others in the library and that are provided by local faculty and staff. Examples include gathering local statistics, scheduling classes, and the repair and preservation of materials.

    So how does this impact the Planning Process?

    The Framework will need refinement, but even the process of creating this matrix has resulted in important conversations and clarification of the work we do, the locus of responsibility for processes, and how we identify and distinguish between local-level and Libraries-wide priorities. Although I am asking library directors to provide a comprehensive list of priorities for the coming years, the central planning process will only focus on priorities that need central coordination or changes in the central infrastructure.

    Foundation services represent the bulk of what we do. Ongoing work and even some improvements in these services can be completed at the local level, but changes that need support from central infrastructure—for example coding, non-routine digital projects, changes to a website, or programming—require coordination to ensure that they do not cause unexpected problems. Modifications that may seem small on the surface can have a big impact on the workflows in the central units. During the planning process we will distinguish between priorities that can be completed on the local level and those that require new Innovating projects to ensure that services are coordinated and effectively use the shared infrastructure.

    Boutique services also come with their own quirks. Because these projects are expensive—they use a lot of expertise and library infrastructure to complete and to maintain—the bar is particularly high for new priorities. The consideration here will be how significant is the impact of this proposal? What audiences or needs does it address? During the planning process we will prioritize projects and assign resources to Creating projects to develop new services and resources.

    There is a circular movement between Foundation services and Innovating projects—significant changes to Foundation services are accomplished via Innovating projects; and once complete, Innovating projects shift to Foundation services. This flow is also present in the movement between Boutique services and Creating projects.

    By definition, Education and Consulting services are local and should only use existing shared infrastructure. There are many ideas for improvement—workshops for graduate students or consultations on data management—that are worthy initiatives and can be coordinated within the local units.

    Next month, I will include the portions of the matrix that describe how central infrastructure, coordination, and expertise interacts with the other parts of the matrix. In the meantime, please explore the matrix (the best way, as I mentioned earlier is to read down the columns). Think about how your work would fit into these columns–which of our services would fit into each category? How are services delivered to our users at the local level? How are they supported by local infrastructure? Are there services that don’t fit into this matrix?

    This is an evolving document and I encourage you to talk to your library director or AUL and to send in feedback and suggestions.

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  • Thinking about Frameworks

    It seems that in every aspect of the work of academic libraries, there is an increased interest in frameworks. For example, in response to the ”rapidly changing higher education environment,” the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education transitioned to the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.  I am involved in a Big Ten initiative to develop a Framework for Discovery-to-Fulfillment Systems. Rutgers is also not immune to the charms of developing frameworks. Internally, there is a Libraries group developing a framework to describe the technical infrastructure and architecture of special collections (charge | minutes).

    The framework presented in OCLC’s Realities of Research Data Management report may be useful as we think about the categories and framework we could use to describe our services.
    The framework presented in OCLC’s Realities of Research Data Management report may be useful as we think about the categories and framework we could use to describe our services.

    Frameworks provide a way to divide complex goals and processes into manageable chunks while retaining information about relationships and dependencies between the components. Frameworks allow organizations to map multiple approaches to a goal and to tailor these pathways based on context. We have discussed the need to develop a better understanding of central and local services and responsibilities. We also need to develop infrastructure and services that advance the missions of our three campuses and a statewide health system. It seems that we would benefit from a framework that describes our services and illustrates the relationships and interdependencies between central and local units.

    I have been following the OCLC Research Library Partnership Reports on the Realities of Research Data Management. This is a “four-part series that explores how research universities are addressing the challenge of managing research data throughout the research lifecycle.” The first three parts are now available and are quite good, digging a little below the surface to discover underlying drivers that influence practices. This topic alone is worthy of quite a bit of conversation that is beyond the scope of this post; however, I mention it here because, in Part One of the series, OCLC develops a framework for describing categories of services related to Research Data Management that may be useful as we think about the categories and framework we could use to describe our services. These are not going to map directly onto the needs of Rutgers University Libraries as a whole, but they demonstrate a way of thinking about these issues that will be valuable.

    The categories of services included in Part One: A Tour of the Research Data Management (RDM) Service Space are:

    • Education—educating researchers and other stakeholders on the importance, and in some cases, the necessity, of responsibly managing their data and making arrangements for its long-term curation
    • Expertise—providing decision support and customized solutions for researchers working through specific research data management problems
    • Curation—supplying technical infrastructure and related services that support data management throughout the research cycle

    It seems to me that by generalizing and extending these concepts, we could develop service categories that would help us plan and implement new services. In recent years, we have been reacting to extensive changes occurring in the university, but with the larger environment stabilizing, we can start thinking more about the structure that will best support campus missions and begin to develop a common vocabulary to discuss planning and priorities. There will be more on this in the coming months, but I encourage you to visit the links in this post and start thinking about how these ideas can be applied to our work.

  • State of the Libraries Recap

    State of the Libraries Recap

    This month, I just want to express my gratitude once again to everyone who helped make State of the Libraries so special. From the major events committee to the poster presenters to those of you in the audience–our colleagues are what make this a great event. For 2017, we experimented with the format of the event in several ways, introducing new elements while also retaining what makes this such a special event. In a significant departure, we invited an external speaker to visit us and discuss unconscious bias works and what we can do to mitigate its influence in the Libraries. Calvin Lai’s presentation was as entertaining as it was informative, and it is my sincerest hope that it helps us to better appreciate and accommodate diversity and inclusion in what we do.

    I hope everyone who attended had a chance to tour the always-popular poster session. It is fitting that at the close of the year, we get to survey the many great activities and initiatives underway at the Libraries. From Libraries-wide initiatives like ORCID and the Open and Affordable Textbook Program to the exhibits program at Robeson and the enhanced coin scanning project from the Digital Humanities Lab–these posters are a reminder of the positive impact we have on the university and the work of the Libraries. For those who were unable to attend or did not make it around to see all the posters, the communications team has recorded short videos with the presenters that can be viewed on YouTube (see below). Also, a special note of thanks to Dee Magnoni and James Hartstein who provided professional quality printing for the posters. They looked great!

    There will be much more to say in the coming months, but for now, I want to wish you all a happy New Year! We have so much to look forward to in 2018.

     

  • We Are Not Alone – Thoughts on the BTAA Meeting

    We Are Not Alone – Thoughts on the BTAA Meeting

    I know that we spend a lot of time focused on building infrastructure. Our top priorities involve undergraduate success and strengthening information control to ensure that our users have efficient, reliable access to information resources.

    I just got back from a Big10 meeting at Purdue. At the meeting, we reviewed the results of a survey of the BTAA library directors’ top priorities for future collaborative activities. Each director picked three areas of interest. The results:

    • Collection Management 54%
    • Student Success Measures 46%
    • OER 46%
    • Data Management/Curation 38%
    • Analytics/Assessment 38%
    • Open Access 15%

    The remaining four items: Special Collections, Professional Development, Digital Humanities, and Library Publishing all were 8%.

    In another part of the survey, the directors listed the most important BTAA initiatives as Discovery to Delivery, Collections Infrastructure and Management, and Student Success.

    Although these priorities and initiatives do not represent the most important work of the libraries, the selections do say something about initiatives that are most effective when done ‘at scale’ with the broader community. As I listened to my colleagues share their experiences and challenges, it struck me that we are not the only research library that is focusing on basics.

    In a meeting back here at Rutgers, Judy Cohn brought up the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition. This report from the New Media Consortium looks at trends in libraries, technology, and education to imagine what is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries. It is produced in collaboration with University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). It identifies trends, challenges, and developments in technology that will impact how libraries plan to meet the needs of their users, how we function day to day and year to year, and the services that will be in highest demand. The first of the top 10 highlights listed was:

    Libraries remain the gatekeepers to rich tapestries of information and knowledge. As the volume of we resources increases, libraries are charged with finding new ways to organize and disseminate research to make it easier to discover, digest, and track.

    It was surprised to see that improving ‘information control’ was featured so prominently in the report. It seems that academic and research libraries have a renewed focus on the fundamentals and are redesigning infrastructure so that it better meets the changes in the environment. I know there are times when we feel like we are behind; however, it appears that we are actually in sync with many of our peers.

    Over the next week, we will have meetings with Office of Information Technology and the Office of Research and Economic Development to discuss potential collaboration on research and digital humanities infrastructure. This will move us closer to another one of our priorities: identifying and communicating our role in the broader research environment of Rutgers. We are making progress!

    While we are moving fast, our activities continue to be guided by the expertise and research of our colleagues. There are several examples of this that come to mind, all with librarywide participation. The Discovery Working Group has offered a model of how to harness data and best practices to make impactful changes in how our users discover and access collections via our website. Their work continues to propel us forward, even as the Ex Libris Implementation Team works to create nimble and knowledgeable teams to accommodate the anticipated workload over the next 7 months. And the Website Improvement Team is rolling out an impressive, incremental website refresh derived from extensive user research and analytics. The work that we are doing now will pay off in the coming years with flexible and easy to manage systems. It is my hope that these changes will make it easier for you to do the important work that you do.

    As we move into the holiday season, I would like to thank you for your dedication and patience. It has been a difficult few years of change in response to the new environment, but, thanks to your efforts, these challenges continue to be met with creativity, hard work, and shared purpose. Your dedication to Rutgers, our students, and our faculty is impressive and collectively, we are creating libraries—digital and physical—that encourage learning and exploration and support to the success of our users. I am very grateful to count you all as my colleagues and I wish you and your families the happiest of holidays and all the best for the New Year!

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  • How Do We Handle New Requests in the Planning Process?

    How Do We Handle New Requests in the Planning Process?

    As busy as we all are, sometimes it can be difficult to see the tremendous progress we’ve made in the last couple of years—particularly with something as diffuse as the priorities planning process. Our most recent cabinet meeting provides a snapshot of how far we’ve come.

    As indicated in cabinet minutes, earlier this year cabinet produced a set of priorities to guide our activities over the next 18 months or so. These priorities have specific projects in mind and reflect the capacity of our central units. This planning document is intended to be the scaffolding for our collective work and, by definition, we must work within its bounds. While this may sound limiting—“We only do what’s on the list!”—when it is working well, the opposite is true. A good plan enables us to take advantage of unexpected opportunities as they arise. And in recent weeks, four such opportunities have been brought to the Libraries.

    These requests are for activities that are not currently part of our plan and must be weighed against our existing commitments. Our recent discussion at Cabinet illustrates the give and take negotiations that must take place when we consider new projects or services.

    Our shared list of priorities forms the foundation of purposeful discussions about tradeoffs and how best to shift priorities to new opportunities. For example, we have been asked to create space for a new OIT Lab in Alexander Library and to provide dedicated health sciences library services at LSM. Both of these requests stem from strategic initiatives within the university. We have also been approached about integrating ORCID into our journal platform and providing ETD support for honors undergraduate theses. Each of these is a reasonable request, but they require time and effort from the same central units that support our existing weeding projects, the implementation of ExLibris, and the development of digital projects templates, among other items identified through the planning process.

    Cabinet considered the source of the requests; the anticipated benefit to local users; staffing and capacity in the central Libraries units; the amount of development vs. coordination required; and more, before deciding which opportunities to pursue. The outcomes, communicated in the minutes, are to move forward with adding ORCID iDs to the Open Journal System workflow and to shift weeding priorities to accommodate the deadlines for the Alexander OIT Lab and the LSM renovations. We also decided to hold off on the development of honors ETDs process.

    This is not because including honors theses in RUCore is a bad idea—we simply don’t have capacity this year and we have other priorities to complete. But this is where the planning process kicks in. A local need has been identified, and while we don’t have capacity to follow through this year, the proposal will be moved forward to next year’s planning process for consideration.

    No doubt, there will be additional requests from the university and additional local needs identified throughout the year. In fact, I would argue that the level of attention we are receiving from the university is an indicator of the important role of the Libraries on campus. We are viewed as strong partners and collaborators, our spaces are appreciated student resources, and our services are recognized as key to student success.

    Thankfully, we now have a planning model that allows us to assess these opportunities in objective, realistic, and equitable ways that balance the needs of Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, and RBHS. We must continue to take on high priority projects for the university, but we must also make sure we have the capacity, technology, and resources to succeed. The only thing worse than saying “not now,” is saying “yes,” and not completing the task. These types of discussions are much easier to have when we have a shared understanding of priorities and capacity.

  • The Budget Process and Library Impact on Student Outcomes

    With the last of the Welcome Days events now completed and the start of the fall semester fully complete, it is time to turn our attention to another annual tradition: the preparation of our annual budget request.

    Each year, we are asked to put together a budget request for the following fiscal year, so this October we are in the process of requesting budgets for 2018–2019. The budget process has changed quite a bit in the last few years. Historically, budgets were distributed through the ‘all funds’ budget process in which the ‘administration’ made decisions about how best to allocate resources. The process was not transparent, and in the last few years of the all funds process, the Libraries did not fare well.

    The shift to the RCM model may have been turbulent, but the result is a much more transparent budget process and a way for us to request needed funds. In fact, anyone can view a lot of detail related to the sources of allocations to cost centers (including the Libraries) at budget.rutgers.edu. In addition to being more transparent, RCM has moved decision-making from ‘administration’ to the chancellors and the chancellors are now in the process of engaging the deans.  This means that more of the budget decisions are being made by people who use our resources and services.

    I have now participated in two budget requests through the RCM process with some success (see reports on FY2017 and FY2018 requests). It is clear that the chancellors face difficult decisions in allocating funds because of competing factors, including other cost centers such as Student Affairs and Facilities and internal needs such as new faculty and startup packages.

    During this process, the Libraries are asked to provide a description of our services. We routinely include figures that demonstrate our impact on students or the use of our resources (such as the estimated savings of the OAT Program, the use of resources, or the cost per use for journal articles), so we know it is helpful to have strong evidence that Libraries make a difference. However, because of the complexity of the educational environment, it has been difficult to measure the impact that libraries have on student success.

    That is what makes this news out of the University of Minnesota so exciting.

    The Impact of Academic Library Resources on Undergraduates’ Degree Completion: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.6.812

    A large, rigorous study by the University of Minnesota—“The Impact of Academic Library Resources on Undergraduates’ Degree Completion”—assessed whether first-year students who used the library at least once during their first year were more likely to graduate or continue to be enrolled in four years (indicating progress towards degree completion).

    The survey followed the 2011 entering class of 5,368 students, controlling for factors related to differences in students, including first-generation, socioeconomic status, participation in support programs for underrepresented students, on-campus vs. off-campus housing, SAT scores, AP courses taken, and enrolled college.

    They analyzed the students’ records to determine if they had used at least one of five major library services—borrowing books (including interlibrary loan and ebooks), using electronic resources, using a computer workstation, enrolling in library instruction, or asking a reference question—in their first academic year

    The results indicate that, overall, first-year students who used any of the library services at least once during their first year of enrollment were nearly 40% more likely to be enrolled in four years or 44% more likely to have graduated in four years than peers who did not use any library resources.

    Further analysis of the individual services showed that first-year students who used:

    • electronic resources at least once in their first year, were 45% more likely to continue to be enrolled and nearly twice as likely to graduate;
    • books at least once in their first year, were 34% more likely to graduate in four years; or,
    • instruction, either by enrolling for a class or having library instruction embedded in classes, were 40% more likely to continue to be enrolled after four years.

    There was no significant relationship with the use of workstations, reinforcing the fact that workstations are simply a tool. There was also no significant relationship with the use of reference services (including chat), perhaps because a very low number of students—only 5%—used this service.

    This survey is a tremendous accomplishment and is directly relevant to our work, in part because of the parallels between Rutgers and the University of Minnesota.  Like us, UMN is a large public land-grant institution and member of the Big10. I hope you will take time to read the report and think about how its findings might be useful to what we do and how we do it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

    These findings couldn’t arrive at a better time! Although I have never been asked to prove the value of the Libraries during the budget request process, evidence of library impact on student outcomes will be very useful in our budget request and I hope to have good news for the Libraries later this year when we receive our budget allocation.

  • 2017 Faculty and Staff Appreciation Picnic

    This video of the picnic includes photos by Janet Brennan-Croft, Janie Fultz, Tara Kelley, Jessica Pellien, Tonie Perkins, and Joanne Polgar.

    I know everyone has been busy over the summer preparing for the fall semester (or recovering from not one, but two major floods in a week!) and it is almost here. Before we get caught up in the work of the Libraries, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who made the Faculty and Staff Appreciation Picnic an event so memorable—the planners, the volunteers, and the attendees—and to celebrate some of the accomplishments and milestones of the last year.

    Most people think of faculty and staff appreciation events as a bookend to a fantastic year—a chance for the administration to acknowledge and thank people for work they have completed. While this is true, it doesn’t capture the full story. When these events are done well (as our picnic was), they also serve to create connections with our colleagues, reaffirm our joint purpose, and nurture future projects and collaborations. In other words, the “appreciation” part of the event should flow in all directions. So, with this in mind, it was wonderful to see people from Camden, Newark, and RBHS at the picnic. I also appreciate that special care was made to shuffle schedules and allow people who missed last year’s picnic to attend this year. Events like this provide opportunities for serendipity and reflection, and my big takeaway is that we work with a great group of people.

    We lucked out on the weather. It was sunny and dry, but with an occasional breeze to cool us off. We enjoyed terrific food from Food Architects, played lawn games, and made buttons. A fun ice-breaker game helped us to mingle and meet our colleagues. It was a stellar event by any measure and I hope everyone had a good time. I am particularly grateful to the members of the Major Events Committee who worked hard to make this event a success: Matt Badessa, Janie Fultz, Pam Hargwood, Tad Hershorn, Tara Kelley, Rhonda Marker, Erica Parin, Jessica Pellien, Daphne Roberts, Rich Sandler, and Monique Whittle.

    I mentioned these milestones in my speech at the picnic, but I think it is worth mentioning them here for those who were not in attendance. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but even in its sheer volume and variety, it hints at the depth of our accomplishments over the last year.

    • We won grants for initiatives ranging from the New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project to the Virtual Data Collaboratory to the Digital Scholarship as 21st-Century Pedagogy courses at Rutgers University-Newark.
    • Launched the Open and Affordable Textbooks Project, saving Rutgers students nearly $1.6 million
    • Participated in the From Practice to Preceptor Program to help train the next generation of dental school faculty
    • Far exceeded our fundraising goals on the second annual Rutgers Giving Day, thanks in no small part to the contributions of our faculty and staff
    • Celebrated 50 years of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers–Newark and 50 years of Dana Library as a Federal Depository
    • Welcomed Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American Librarian of Congress, to Rutgers–Camden
    • Successfully made the transition from Kilmer Library to Carr Library
    • Participated in the implementation of a new financial system and transitioned to a new email system
    • Added countless new resources including thousands of ebooks, new databases, and collections of rare books and art
    • Successfully completed a search for a new AVP/Director of New Brunswick Libraries
    • And of course there are so many more achievements both large and small.

    These accomplishments are only possible through your efforts. We all have a lot to be proud of and I look forward to seeing what the new school-year brings.

  • Toward a Hybrid Model of Organizational Structure

    The summer has been flying by! I can’t believe it is already August!

    In reviewing the past few issues of The Agenda, I realize that most of my posts have related to the structural changes within the university and changes that we are making within our organization to adapt. This month I would like to take a step back and look more broadly at organizational structures—especially those that are most effective in rapidly changing environments—and how these might apply to Rutgers University Libraries.

    Essentially every large organization today (including the Libraries) is structured according to principles developed by Max Weber’s industrial revolution-era organizational theory and management practices for running large organizations. Weber proposed a top-down structure in which each element of the structure (he called them offices, but today they more likely represent departments or divisions) has a specific role within the organization. These hierarchical structures are stable and predictable, but hierarchical organizations need robust communication—horizontal, vertical, and within units—to be effective.

    During periods of rapid change, hierarchical organizations often face communication challenges. Communication from the top, related to mission and strategies—vertical communication—can be slow to reach all parts of the organization. Also, the connections between the well-defined units within the hierarchy—horizontal communication—can be weak. The hierarchical organization places impossible demands on a unit head who must manage both horizontal and vertical communication while keeping abreast of the functional requirements and activities. With insufficient information about mission and strategy and in the absence of strong connections to other units, units can become internally focused and inadvertently act at cross-purposes with other parts of the organization.

    In recent years, organizations, including many academic libraries, have experimented with replacing hierarchies with more adaptive structures that circumvent these communication challenges. I spent five years working in the University of Arizona Libraries, an organization that pioneered a team-based approach for academic libraries. The goal of these experiments is to create organizations where all decisions were data-driven and could be made at any level. We hoped that the availability of good data could replace some of the communication necessary to be effective. The experiment at the UA Libraries—and, I believe in other academic libraries—eventually failed and they reorganized into a traditional hierarchical model. It seems that establishing reliable data sources is at least as complicated as improving communication.

    People are beginning to look at networked structures for organizations. Networked structures lack formal hierarchical relationships and units can freely communicate with other units. This is quite effective in small organizations; however, as organizations grow, the lack of structure can become a problem. I do not know of any large organization that relies solely on a network structure; however, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a useful case study of the pitfalls associated with a large organization that has strong vertical coordination but lacks structure. Although the movement might have had some impact on society, it essentially dissolved, possibly due to its lack of structure.

    Among these three organizational structures, it seems that hierarchical models are the best structure for large organizations. However, in order for organizations to adapt during periods of rapid change and to react accordingly, communication must be strengthened. While newsletters like this are important—as are agendas and minutes—in communicating activities and decisions, organizations need deeper communication to truly adapt in times of change. It is important for every individual to understand three interdependent things: the mission and strategies of the organization at large; their unit’s vertical and horizontal impact on the organization; and the effect of their workplace decisions on the organization.

    The structure of the Libraries is hierarchical, but we are drawing on lessons from these experiments and taking big strides to improve communication. In Cabinet, we spent the last few weeks developing charges for new groups to help manage our shared infrastructure. You can see a list of the issues that we are addressing in my post from last month. While these groups are being charged to address specific short-term priorities, most of them will eventually become cross-unit workgroups. It is through these workgroups that communication will be improved and the charges for these groups pave the way by including specific communication requirements.

    These workgroups have important work to do and the work includes rich bidirectional communication between the work groups and the functional units. We have spent some time at Cabinet discussing the communication responsibilities of Cabinet representatives, group members, and group chairs. The expectation is that Cabinet representatives act as conduits of information—providing two-way communication that includes direction from Cabinet-level discussions and boots-on-the-ground experiences from members of the workgroup to help guide the work of the group.

    Members of the group, including the group chair, are responsible for considering organizational goals and developing a deeper understanding of broader issues, but they also must act as representatives of their functional groups (most often, this is their department and/or university). In this representative role, they must clearly communicate issues, findings, and actions back to their functional units; develop mechanisms for gathering feedback from their constituents; and then report to the workgroup on how their functional unit will be impacted by the proposals of the workgroups. Group chairs bear an additional responsibility of making good communication a priority for the group by encouraging and using this multidirectional communication to improve outcomes.

    As we shift the loci of work to these shared workgroups, we know we need to be proactive to avoid communication and work silos. It is also important to acknowledge the impact on our workloads and our organization. Our new task force charges include a section on Timeline/Communications and an Appendix that explains members’ participation is a significant part of their primary job responsibilities and will be evaluated as such. What this means in practice is that meetings are not extra work, but an essential part of our organization. And good communication is not optional, it’s a priority.

    I know that activity never stops in the Libraries, but I hope that the slightly slower pace of summer is giving you some time to catch up, reflect, and rest. I look forward to working together to continue our progress in the academic year to come.

  • Update on the Priorities Process

    An archive of Krisellen Maloney’s articles is available here.

    In March, just ahead of the first Cabinet retreat, I described the three-step process by which we are drafting priorities and related budget requests for the Libraries. Things have been moving along quickly, but I wanted to circle back and talk about the outcomes of the second retreat that we had in early June.

    As a recap, prior to the first retreat, the directors worked with their faculty and staff to develop lists of local priorities. At the same time, the infrastructure units conducted environmental scans to identify projects that are already in the works and ongoing work. In preparation for the second retreat in June, the infrastructure units were tasked with assigning “costs”—including staff time—to various activities. The idea here was to develop a deep understanding of local needs and the capacity available in the central infrastructure units to support those needs.

    When all was said and done, we had a daunting list of almost 200 priorities (or more accurately activities) that the local units want to undertake over the next 12 to 18 months. These activities ranged from renovating bathrooms and piloting 24/5 hours at the RBHS Libraries to implementing new information literacy tutorials and purchasing new ebook and journal packages. It was important to see the lists. In addition to conveying real needs, the sheer volume of items also conveyed the frustration people are feeling throughout the Libraries. Although I believe we have made some progress towards clarifying communication and decision-making, there is more to do.

    As the infrastructure units began the process of assigning costs to the priorities, some patterns began to emerge. Through a series of iterations between subsets of the infrastructure units (Tibor, Mary Beth, Jessica, Abbey, Rhonda, and Tao) and Cabinet, we identified clusters of priorities where improved infrastructure—both decision-making processes and systems—are needed. For example, the library directors identified numerous weeding projects (20 priorities worth) that require support from the holdings management unit. Members of Cabinet are not necessarily the people best positioned to make these operational decisions. In addition to overarching issues that Cabinet should be addressing, there are several rapidly changing operational factors that come into play. We decided that what we really need is a mechanism to prioritize weeding projects throughout the Libraries. As a result, we are charging a group to “recommend” a transparent process to prioritize collection management projects (weeding, moves, etc.) that takes into account the available staff.

    All together, we plan to charge 8 new groups that will, collectively, address 70 of the priorities:

    Priorities Category Group’s Charge # of Priorities Charges Due: Who Is Following Up
    Cataloging Develop a process to prioritize cataloging projects (ongoing) 11 July 11, 2017 Agnew, Askew
    Weeding Develop a process to prioritize collection management projects (ongoing) 20 July 18, 2017 Yang, Cohn
    Digital Projects Develop a template for routine digital projects (ongoing) 9 July 18, 2017 Marker, Anderson
    Digital Projects Develop a process to prioritize digital projects  included above October 2017 TBD
    Web Recommend improvements to the Web environment 4 July 11, 2017 Marker, Pellien
    Tutorials for Instruction Investigate new information literacy modules 21 July 11, 2017 Directors
    Special Collections Recommend system architecture for special collections 5 July 18, 2017 Agnew, Yang
    Special Collections Recommend standards, policies and procedures for special collections  included above October 2017 TBD

    We anticipate that another 9 priorities will be addressed by the implementation of a new ILS or will need to be rearticulated once the new ILS is in place. Now that the contract has been signed, we will be moving forward with new groups to guide the implementation.  We are working on scheduling a kick-off meeting where ExLibris will provide us with best practices related to the number of teams that should be formed for a successful implementation.

    Four priorities are already underway or even complete. We anticipate one priority will be passed to the Discovery Working Group to handle and one will be put to the reference team when they are in place.

    We also identified 81 priorities that rely primarily on local expertise and resources and do not require significant support from the central infrastructure units. The directors will prioritize these with their local units. The library directors will also meet with the director of communications to discuss 12 activities related to communications and marketing.

    After all of this whittling, what remained were 19 activities that required clarifications about the scope or the amount of support expected from infrastructure units. We discussed these at the June 20 Cabinet meeting and you can review the outcomes in the Cabinet meeting minutes.

    The overarching theme that emerged through this process is a need to continue to focus on building infrastructure, particularly in developing transparent processes for decision-making. This may seem to be highly bureaucratic, but in reality, it will push decisions closer to the work and enable people with the most relevant information to be part of the process.