| What is the name of your interest group? | Dialogue with Directors Interest Group |
| Your Name | Denise Shorey |
| Your Email | dshorey@albright.edu |
| Please select the name of the section your group belongs to (if applicable) | Leadership & Management |
| Which report are you submitting? | May |
| How many times did your group meet or hold an activity during this reporting period? | 1 |
| First Activity | The Dialogue with Directors Interest Group offered a program during Interest Group Week on succession and continuity planning. |
| Second Activity | |
| Third Activity | |
| Fourth Activity | |
| Fifth Activity | |
| What will your group be working on for the next 6 months? | We will discuss how to identify potential leaders within the organization and ways to help them be successful. |
| How did your work contribute to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, or belonging within Core or the library profession? What areas of improvement do you see for your IG or Core in these areas? | Our program helped participants see that leaders can exist anywhere within the organization and that staff members should be encouraged to participate as fully as librarians. Regarding areas of improvement, we could do a better job of discussing potential barriers within libraries. |
| Is there anything Core could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its activities? | No. |
| Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s discussions or work. | It would be nice to have a panel discussion on leadership development. |
| Please describe anything you need to bring to the Core Board for discussion or action at their next meeting. | |
| Please share any additional comments, concerns, or suggestions you have. | |
| Today’s Date | 06/10/2024 |
Category: Dialogue with Directors Interest Group
Dialogue with Directors Interest Group – May 2023 Report
Part of the Leadership & Management Section
The group met 2-3 times this quarter.
Recent Activities
First Activity
Posting questions to the listserv to try to engage with our membership online.
Meets Core’s strategic goals for Career Building and Recognition, Membership and Value to Members
Second Activity
Participated in Core Interest Group week with a discussion on external factors and stakeholders for the Library, namely your community. We had 41 sign up and 23 attend, and we planted a few speakers that we knew could talk about the topic.
Meets Core’s strategic goals for Career Building and Recognition, Membership and Value to Members
What will your group be working on for the next 6 months?
I need to get together with my co-chair to see if she would like to continue her work with me. We were waiting until after the end of spring to talk to the Library Leaders and Managers interest group chairs to see how each of their monthly discussions went and see if it is worth partnering or again discussing if it was worthwhile for us to keep a separate group. We need to do that now to discuss the future for this group.
Is there anything Core could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
I really enjoyed our engagement with the moderator for our interest group week program and feel that even one meeting with a Core board member would help us stay motivated in our work. He had good feedback for us on the session.
Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
Our interest group week discussion veered towards a new topic (which was fine) in which there was one attendee who was trying to be a director. I think having programming specific for those trying to be a director would be great (if is sometimes hard to put yourself out there like that). Also, keeping that “academic” in academic library positions is of interest for those whose jobs have veered more towards operational while specific divisions or departments are made for teaching and scholarly resources.
Submitted by Shelly McCoy on 06/30/2023
Dialogue with Directors Interest Group – December 2022 Report
Part of the Leadership & Management Section
The group met 1 time this quarter.
Recent Activities
First Activity
We posed a discussion topic to the listserv for discussion, but got very little response.
Meets Core’s strategic goals for Career Building and Recognition
Second Activity
The co-chairs noticed that there are two other discussion groups that seem closely aligned with our discussion group: middle managers discussion group and leadership and management discussion group. We reached out to Jenny Levine to receive information on the amount of people in those groups and how much overlap there was with our group. We noticed that the topics we were proposing to discuss were the same as their topics and they were also not having much participation in their discussions. One of the co-chairs will be reaching out to the chairs of the other two discussion groups to see if we want to work together for Interest Group week, either by merging our sessions or by making sure we don't have the same topics. We think that CORE Leadership and Management leaders should consider if we need all three groups going forward. Part of it is that there is so many discussion groups to choose from and interest is spread wide, resulting in then focus on any one group. Focusing efforts on one or two groups would help this work.
Meets Core’s strategic goals for Evaluate and Adjust Core’s Structure
What will your group be working on for the next 6 months?
Our group will be participating in Interest Group week and will also concentrate on working with the chairs of the similarly-named discussion groups. We'd like to have more organic conversations take place, but have found that finding a good time is difficult unless the discussions turn into planned programs (where we arrange speakers for a panel, etc.).
Is there anything Core could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
no
Submitted by Shelly McCoy on 12/14/2022
Dialogue with Directors Interest Group – May 2022 Report
Part of the Leadership & Management Section
The group met 2-3 times this quarter.
Recent Activities
First Activity
Denise Shorey and I are new co-chairs of the group, so we've worked to introduce ourselves, encourage others to introduce themselves and held two discussions over Zoom. In order to make sure we had enough people for the discussion, we worked to get commitments from several colleagues to attend and to speak up. We sent the topics and questions out to the entire interest group in advance of the discussions and held discussions at different times of the day, to meet members in different time zones. We had 9 people in the first discussion and 7 people in the second, the majority of which were confirmed beforehand. The discussions were fruitful, evolved organically, and provided a means of support for all in attendance. Denise and I do not know how often to do these discussions if we end up having to plant most of the audience, but we have to start somewhere. We hoping to participate in the next Core Discussion Group meeting week, and will plan to hold a couple other discussions outside of that meeting.
Meets Core’s strategic goals for Continuing Education, Membership and Engagement
What will your group be working on for the next 6 months?
We will work to plan out the fall with at least one additional discussion over zoom and some questions to engage our group via Connect. Some topics came out of our first Zoom discussions that can garner further engagement from our membership and provide support for continued education/professional development for directors and wannabe directors alike.
Is there anything Core could have provided during this time that would have helped your group with its work?
Difficult to say since Core is really just getting off the ground more. I do hear from many that they receive their Core digests all at once and stop reading them after the first couple, so a way for membership to prioritize what they receive or to dump all of their digests into one email in a newsletter/digest format with headings and teasers so members can click to read more? (not sure if the content management system does that). One Core calendar for all of their memberships? (I get the sense that members join many groups, but engage with few)
Please provide suggestions for future education topics, initiatives, publications, resources, or other activities that could be developed based on your group’s work.
Engaging with new University strategic plans and responding with Library updates –staying involved with campus discussions on this and educating the Provost (whomever the Library reports to)
Efforts to rename buildings, etc. due to structural racism and how to respond.
Starting a Director job during COVID and now playing catch up.
Post COVID – putting repairative attention on the campus and within the Library.
Hiring and retaining staff in a post-COVID world
Submitted by Shelly McCoy on 05/31/2022