The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) hosted its 12th Annual Leadership Symposium January 7–10, 2016, in Boston, Massachusetts, during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting. This year, 34 ARL diversity program recruits participated in the three-day event that offers leadership development training, as well as introductions to the major strategic concerns of research libraries and archives.
The program curriculum included sessions on emerging roles and services in research libraries, intentional leadership, open access and open educational resources, and many other topics. Two half-day workshops were included in the program: one focused on the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment, the other on job-search skills and strategies. The symposium participants—all master of library and information science (MLIS) students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups—attended numerous networking functions, including a social sponsored by the MIT Libraries.
The participating students represented four ARL diversity recruitment programs: the ARL Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW), the Career Enhancement Program (CEP), the ARL/Music Library Association (MLA) Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (DII), and the ARL/Society of American Archivists (SAA) Mosaic Program. Funding for the latter three programs and this symposium is provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The symposium was also underwritten by OCLC, the Iowa State University Library, the MIT Libraries, and ARL member institutions.
The symposium agenda and photos from the event are available on the ARL Annual Leadership Symposium webpage.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
