Applications are now being accepted for the New Director's Essentials Boot Camp to be held on May 20, at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston, MA. The boot camp is intended for Directors of all types of libraries from across the Commonwealth who have less than two years experience in their present position. It will be a full day of discussion, inspirational speakers, information and resources that will be useful for directors in doing their jobs.
The application deadline is May 9th so act now. Limited housing is available for those who travel farthest to the boot camp so they can arrive early and ready to participate with full enthusiasm. An online application is available at http://www.cmrls.org/forms/director_essentials.htm.
This is part of a two-year federally funded LSTA grant awarded by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to provide this training and a website for Massachusetts Directors in all library types.
David Lankes delivered a wonderful keynote address at the Joint Metrowest and SEMLS Annual Council of Members Meeting & Breakfast. If you could not make the meeting, or if you want to hear the keynote again, it is now available through the Participatory Librarianship Started Kit Web site.
There is still time to register for the SEMLS Annual Meeting on Friday, November 20th at 10:00 a.m. at Martin Institute Auditorium at Stonehill College in Easton. Register at: http:/www.tinyurl.com/yhjpmy3.
Please join us. The annual meeting is a great opportunity to connect with fellow colleagues across the region.
Planning for the new regional structure is starting, and we need the input of each and every member. What does the region provide that is important to the members of your communities, be they schools, municipalities or organizations? As Rob Maier noted in his recent e-mail, there will be a joint meeting of regional executive boards on December 14. The SEMLS Board will bring the ideas generated and priorities listed to this meeting and will use this information to advocate for you. National consultant, Maureen Sullivan, will lead us through this process.
Maureen is an organization development consultant whose practice focuses on the delivery of consulting and training services to libraries and other information organizations. She has more than 25 years of experience as a consultant on organization development, strategic planning, leadership development, introducing and managing organizational change, organization and work redesign, establishment of staff development and learning programs for today's workplace, creating a work environment that supports diversity, revision of position classification and compensation systems, and the identification and development of competencies. Her experience includes 12 years as the human resources administrator in the libraries at the University of Maryland (1977-1980) and at Yale University (1983-1991.)
Maureen is a past president (1998-1999) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). During her term as President, she helped establish the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute in partnership with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is now a member of the faculty for this annual program. She was president of the Library Administration and Management Association for the 1988-89 term. In 1999, she received the Elizabeth Futas Catalyst for Change Award from the American Library Association.
She received her B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Maryland in 1974 and her M.A. degree in Library Science from the University of Maryland in 1976.
Did you know that ALA 2010 Midwinter meeting is being held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center from January 15-19, 2010?
Even though much of ALA Midwinter is devoted to the association and division work, there is still much to do. Prior to the official start of Midwinter, many of ALA's divisions offer pre-conferences. Check them out.
Advanced conference registration is ongoing through December 4, 2009.
The advanced rate for ALA personal and/or division members is $165. ALA Student membership can advance register for $65. There is also an exhibit-only registration at the advanced rate of $25. I encourage you to attend.
More information can be found on the ALA Web site www.ala.org.
Regional Restructuring is moving forward. At our Annual Meeting, Rob Maier addressed members and spoke about the historic resetting of the State budget. Three factors are affecting state revenues
Declining revenues.
Fixed cost items are rising.
Federal Stimulus not available for next year to balance the budget.
The MBLC had to submit a FY 2011 budget that was capped at 17% lower than funding for this year.
The board make the following decisons in developing this budget:
1.No further reductions in State Aid to Public Libraries.
2.No further staff reductions in MBLC (have already lost 3 positions this year).
3.16% funding reduction for the blind and physcially handicapped
4.21% funding reduction for line 9506, network telecomm and resource sharing are included in this line
5.28% funding reduction for regions and library of last recourse.
The MBLC and regions are in a process to prioritize services of the regions to see how we develop regional services for Fiscal Year 2011. In this new restructuring, there will be at most 3 regional systems. The new structure will continue to be multi-type systems. This will be a merger of the current regions, not a dissolution of any region.
The time line for this restructuring is
January 1st – Service work done
April 1st – Structure recommendation to the MBLC
July 1st – How to implement the changes and how the system will work.
After Rob's update, Maureen Sulllivan led members in a prioritization of regional services. Members spent time identifying the core regional services. In all members identiifed 8 core services: delivery, databases, consulting, and continuing education, interlibrary loan, MassCat, Supplemental Reference and a strong youth services component. The Executive Board will bring this work to a statewide meeting on December 14th during which regional services will be prioritize and a potential scenario for regional restructuring may be adopted.
After this meeting, SEMLS will be reaching out for your input. The regions will develop a survey that will ask you if you agree with the outcomes of the December 14 meetting. Once again, we need your input as these results will be the foundation of the new regional structure(s).
SEMLS will use our website, email, Facebook page and Twitter to keep you up to date on this process. If you have any questions and/or ideas, please send them to me.
May you enjoy the beauty of this upcoming holiday season.
Last Monday, December 14, 81 regional executive board members, MBLC and regional staff met to discuss and prioritze second tier services. Linda Braun facilitate the meeting. At our annual meeting, Rob Maier listed regional services that he defined as "core". These are services that would continue even with budget reductions. There are 5 core services, Consulting, Continuing Education, Databases and online content, delivery and mediated Interlibrary Loan.
Prior to the meeting, the SEMLS Executive Board met and discussed the priorities identified at our annual meeting and brought you thoughts to this meeting. Participants at the December 14 meeting were asked to prioritize "second" tier services; those that should be considered after the core. some of the often named services were cooperative purchasing, MassCat, Advocacy and Services for Youth, including Summer Reading.
Another part of the day addressed the future model of the entity that would provide these services. Partcipants heard about 3 models:
3 seperate regions - similar to today, except there would be 3 regions not 6.
Hub and Spokes -- Services would eminate from a central office (Hub) but each of today's region would have a small presence (spokes).
One administrative office with 4 geographically located offices to provide all services for members, except statewide services.
Partcipants chose the Hub and Spoke model. This model offers flexibility, reduces overhead and does meet some of the need of the "local touch". The spokes could grow or contract as needs of members and residents dictated. The spokes provide the familiar face, but the spokes presence would be small to start a staff of 2 .
Later in the day, Ken Peterson of the Boston Public Library presented services that Boston in its role of Library of Last Recourse would like to consider providing. At the end of the day, a planning committee was formed. Each region will appoint 3 members of its executive board as planning committee members. The Regional Administrators and Rob Maier will serve ex officio. Mike Somers, Maxwell Library, Bridgewater State College; Pat Basler, Stoughton Public Library; and Patrick Marshall, Jonathan Bourne Public Library, are the SEMLS representative to the planning committee.
There will be a report of the December 14 planning meeting. Once we have received it, we will post on our website. In the meantime should you have any questions, please contact me (croach@semls.org) or any Executive Board member. We will continue to provide you with updates as they become available.
January 5 was the first meeting of the Regional Transition Planning Committee. The Committee will be meeting 4-6 times during the months of January and February. The Committee's charge is to develop a proposal for the new regional structure that will be presented to regional executive boards, regional members and to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The proposal will include a plan of service and budget for this new entity, governance documents including board representation, and a name and location for the new entity. Between now and the middle of February there will be a lot of decsions made. We will do our best to keep you informed of them as they are made. SEMLS respresentatives to the Planning Committee are Pat Basler, Stoughton Public Library; Patrick Marshall, Jonathan Bourne Public Library and Mike Somers, Bridgewater State College. I will be an ex-officio member of the committee. Please continue to ask questions, provide comments and ideas to any planning committee member.
One thing that will be happening as this transition moves forward is that some regional staff will fiind new opportunities. As Kathy Lussier announced recently, Kathy will be leaving SEMLS at the end of January to work with CW/MARS, MVLC and NOBLE in developing and implementing the Evergreen Open Source ILS for their libraries. This is an exciting opportunity for Kathy and all of us wish her the very best in this new endeavor. We know how lucky the three networks and their members are to have such a person leading this project. This opportunity uses so many of Kathy's strengths that it is a great move for her.
As I think many of you know, Kathy is an incredible librarian. She brings enthusiam and vision to every project she tackles. She is committed to making our libraries stronger and better. We will miss her wit and vision at SEMLS. Warmest wishes, Kathy.
SEMLS Open House, Wednesday January 27 from 1 - 5 pm
Kathy Lussier is leaving SEMLS at the end of January to begin a new opportunity. Kathy will be the working with CW/MARS, MVLC and NOBLE as their Project Manager for the development and implementation of Evergreen Open Source ILS.
Everyone at SEMLS wishes Kathy all the best in this new endeavor. Before she goes, we want you and us to have the opportunity to thank Kathy for sharing her love and excitement for technology; and for encouraging and inspiring us to use it to improve the services we provide.
SEMLS is hosting an Open House on Wednesday, January 27 from 1 pm to 5 to give you the opportunity to say good luck to Kathy. We hope that you can drop by and that you have a Kathy story to share.
As the Planning Committee works on a model for the new MA Library System, I know that many of you have questions about services.FY 2011 will be a year of transition for services that the region provides.All of us, the Planning Committee, SEMLS Executive Board and SEMLS staff, are looking at the core services and second-tier services to make sure that these continue through the transition year. To those of you receiving delivery service, FY 2011 is the last year of the delivery contract with Optima.Optima will continue to provide delivery service to you during FY 2011.At the next few board meetings, the SEMLS Board will look at databases to see if there are any that SEMLS should keep going for FY 2011 or if there is a better model to provide databases to you.As information about services becomes available, I will share them with you.As this transition moves along, I want everyone to know that first and foremost in our planning is how to maintain services for you during FY 2011.
