Do you feel prepared to deal with personality conflicts at your library? Are you ready to advocate for your library’s interest the next time an administrator wants library space and funds. Sharpen your skills by watching the streaming video program Challenging Conversations, produced by the ALL-SIS Continuing Education Task Force with generous support from an AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grant and Southwestern University School of Law. The program is available now from the collection of continuing professional education resources on AALLNET (AALLNET login required).
In Challenging Conversations, Bill Lindberg, a long serving West employee who is currently a professional coach and consultant, and his colleague Pamela McLean leading a cast of academic librarian “actors” including Brian L. Baker of San Joaquin College of Law, J. Denny Haythorn of Whittier Law School Library, and Victoria Williamson of University of La Verne Law Library. The program features two brief vignettes exploring challenging conversations in the context of problems confronting academic law librarians every day. Each scene is followed by comments from Mr. Lindberg and his colleague. Mr. Lindberg also compiled a reading list to supplement the strategies and techniques covered in the program.
The first vignette is titled Having a Challenging Conversation with Someone You Supervise (That’s My Web Site!). It illustrates a challenging conversation involving an electronic services and public services librarian (equivalent in terms of the hierarchical structure of the library) and their supervisor the associate director. The two librarians share responsibility for the law library’s Web site and have previously agreed on who is responsible for what portions of the Web site. The electronic services librarian created and is responsible for the faculty publications database and is the only librarian authorized to make changes to the database.
The electronic services librarian is out of town when one of the law school’s professors is to be interviewed on a major network news special about her area of expertise. The dean is anxious to promote this appearance and orders the public services librarian to immediately change the law school and law library’s homepages to play up the professor’s appearance on the national news show. The public services librarian reluctantly goes into the “code” version of the database to copy citations to recent publications by the professor.
When the electronic services librarian returns from vacation he learns what the public services librarian has done and is outraged. The public services librarian thinks the electronic services librarian is overreacting and doesn’t see what the big deal is. The new associate director schedules a meeting with both librarians to work out the problem.
The second vignette is titled Having a Challenging Conversation with Your Superior (When is the Library Getting Rid of All Those Books?). The scene is set as the law school dean, library director, and Center director meet early in the planning process for the arrival of the new Terrorism and Religion Center at the law school. The only option for accommodating the new Center is to “repurpose” a significant amount of library space to the Center’s exclusive use. The library has been criticized by the ABA for its lack of study rooms and seating spaces and has begun space programming for new study rooms. An architect has been hired and has already presented a program description for the construction of multiple new study rooms within the library.
The Task Force is also proud to announce its contribution of three additional programs to the page of continuing professional education resources available on AALLNET. The programs feature nationally known speakers and focus on topics relevant to all academic law librarians. The audio programs and links to PowerPoint slides and handouts are available on AALLNET (AALLNET login required). The programs include: