Washington, D.C.
October 14-16, 1998

Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era

Program Session 3

Staffing for the Digital Era
Convened by Paul Kobulnicky, Chair
ARL Research Library Leadership and Management Committee

Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Paul Kobulnicky. I am the chair of the Leadership and Management Committee and very pleased to introduce this session on staffing for the digital era.

I want to start out by relating a scenario that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. You have a large important development occurring in your library. It is technology related. The person who is leading your technology area has just been recruited by PeopleSoft. But that’s okay. You have another really sharp person who has just left for another job in industry. You have a fall back. You have bright students—

(Laughter.)

—who are graduating, and they’ve already taken jobs earning much more money than you could ever have afforded to pay them. Where are you? We’re going to try and address those issues today, issues of staffing for the digital era both in terms of attracting good candidates, retaining good people and dealing with the very, very vexing problem of diversity in non-existent pools. And by that we mean both cultural and gender diversity.

We’ve assembled a very exciting panel that I’m pleased to introduce. On my left is Jerry Baker. Mr. Baker has been an Executive Search Consultant since 1976 and is currently a partner in the firm of Baker, Parker and Associates. He has conducted over 400 searches for diverse corporate and not-for-profit clientele. He has also conducted 175 searches in the academic sector, including the positions of president, provost, dean and vice president, and chief information officer.

Mr. Baker served on many academic sector boards and councils, including the Board of Trustees at Wake Forest University and the Wake Forest University Divinity School. He also served as president of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni Association and the Council of University Resources at the Harvard Divinity School.

To Mr. Baker's left is Mary George Opperman. She is the Vice President for Human Resources at Cornell University. Ms. Opperman shapes and administers Cornell’s endowed benefits programs, employment and compensation, training, employee relations, human organization development and work and family issues. She is also a key organizational strategist and policymaker among Cornell’s colleges and departments to help ensure that the university excels in effective and progressive human resource management for Cornell’s Ithaca campus, faculty and staff.

And finally, to Ms. Opperman's left is Dr. Jorge Schement, Professor of Telecommunications in the College of Communications at Penn State University. His research focuses on the social consequences of the production and consumption of information and policy issues identified with the National Information Infrastructure, especially as they relate to Latinos. Dr. Schement’s policy research contributed to a Supreme Court decision in Metro Broadcasting, Incorporated versus Federal Communications Commission.

In 1994, Dr. Schement accepted an invitation from the Chairman of the FCC to serve as the Director of the FCC Information Policy Project. Additionally, Dr. Schement has served on many boards and councils, including the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Office of Technology Assessment and the U.S. Commission on Civil Right. I want to point out that Dr. Schement’s interests also include both the history of printing and the origins of information technology.

I’m pleased to start off by asking Jerry Baker to come and talk to us. Jerry.