Washington, D.C.
October 18-20, 1995
Convened by William Crowe, Dean of Libraries
University of Kansas
Welcome to Program Session V, “The Changing Face of the Academic Librarian.” We are fortunate to lead off with Stanley Wilder, Assistant Dean for Technical and Financial Services at Louisiana State University. He has been at LSU since 1989. He has a B.A. in English from Wisconsin, earned his M.L.S. at Columbia. He then went to work at the University of Illinois at Chicago, during which time he went to night school to get his M.B.A.
Stanley’s background interest coincided with the Committee’s interest in looking at ourselves, our professional staff. A year ago he became a Visiting Program Officer, thanks to his willingness to work extra hard and Jennifer Cargill’s willingness to provide him release time. We have been fortunate that he has been able not only to do quite a bit of work with ARL data but to move beyond it to look at our professional staffs from many dimensions.
Stanley’s findings, which will be published by ARL in December, will enable us to look at where we are going, where we might be going, and where opportunities lie in many areas. Stanley has done very good work for us.
In looking beyond the libraries of our institutions, we looked for someone who is nationally recognized as an authority in the communities with which we work, the professoriat. Martha Kyrillidou and I attended a National Center for Educational Statistics meeting in Washington, DC this July, where we encountered Professor Jay Chronister, chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia. We persuaded him to come work with us and explain some of his findings in studying the professoriat, which should be very interesting in the context of library professional development and direction.
Jay has been at the University of Virginia since 1969 and has done considerable research on his own and within his institution, but also for and on behalf of many organizations, especially for the National Center for Educational Statistics. I am sure he will widen our perspectives.
Rounding out the panel is Patricia Reichler, the Project Manager for Diversity and Local Governance at the National League of Cities. Patricia has a B.A. in English from George Washington and an M.A. in Education from Catholic University. She has worked in the Washington area since the mid-1970’s in a variety of positions in municipal and county governments and societies, most recently at the National League of Cities.
She is currently responsible for managing the project on Diversity and Local Governance, which is designed to increase the understanding of municipal officials about the implications of race and ethnic diversity in local governance and how to address these implications. She gathers information, analyzes current practices, works with the workforce, prepares and disseminates information, provides training and technical assistance, and publishes a guide book on model programs for municipalities across the United States.
The value that Patricia brings to us in looking at our wider society is, I think, obvious, but is particularly so in talking about how partnerships are developing, have been developing, and will develop in many of the cities with which our institutions are associated, what we can learn from them within our universities, and how we might be able to participate and model for our own institutions.
With that, I will turn the podium over to Stanley, who will challenge us, especially those of us who are baby boomers like myself, to understand who we are and where we may be going demographically.