Stepping Up: Library Leaders for the 21st Century
As the leaders and managers of today's libraries move towards retirement, the gap continues to widen between the number of management openings and the number of recent graduates who are interested in taking on managerial responsibilities. Funded by IMLS, the "Stepping Up" program provides a replicable model of community-wide cooperation designed to recruit, retain, and foster the professional growth of current library support staff who have an interest in earning their Masters in an ALA accredited program. With a particular focus on nurturing the development of librarians from under-represented populations and those with linguistic skills, Stepping Up will also enhance the diversity of our profession. This program is currently taking place at the University of Texas School of Information and will end in August 2010.
What's New
More on the last Stepping Up workshop
The final SU Management Workshop is scheduled for Friday, April 9, 2010 roughly from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The location will most likely be on the UT campus with validated parking available.
Many of you have asked for education on management of social technology such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as communication management between libraries and their funding sources and stakeholders (e.g. grants, fundraising, friends of the library, city, state and federal monies allocation). We're working on finding the right people to address this topic for this workshop.
If you know of anyone who you think would make a great speaker on communication, please let us know! E-mail Jac Peery your suggestions.
(Posted Monday, Jan. 25, 2010)
What are your end-of-program suggestions?
We're in our last two semesters of Stepping Up and we'd like to see the program replicated at other schools. Students, mentors and librarians, you can help us by sending us your thoughts: What worked about the program, and what would you have done differently? How could we make it better? What advice would you have for future Stepping Up participants at other LIS schools?
Your feedback will help us put together documentation for other LIS schools to use to get their own Stepping Up programs off the ground. Please e-mail your thoughts to Lynn Westbrook.
Mark your calendars: last Stepping Up workshop
Our final workshop for the year is set for April 9, 2010. We'll be focusing on communication techniques and how to sell your library. This event is open to Stepping Up program participants, UT School of Information students and Austin-area library staff. It will feature a brown-bag lecture followed by small discussion groups led by local experts. Stay tuned; more details to follow!
Check out our new "For Employers" section
Interested in finding out more about our Stepping Up graduates? Visit our "For Employers" section to get to know them better.
(Posted Monday, Jan. 18, 2010)
Congratulations to Alice Bae for Earning her MSIS!
Through the wonderful assistance of the Stepping-Up grant program and supportive iSchool fellows, Alice Bae has accomplished her higher goal to become a professional librarian by completing the MSIS program at the University of Texas at Austin in December, 2009. She served UT Engineering Library as a GRA, East Asian Collection Division as a library technician, and The Dolph Brisco Center for American History as a page while in the library program.
While endeavoring to find a professional employment, she has been honing her teaching skills and gaining interpersonal, cultural understanding by tutoring Korean and English to people from diverse backgrounds in need of her service.
Check out Alice's resume--she's done great work.