Stephen Abram
Good afternoon Leaders.
Today, I decided to give you a better understanding of me, my background and my track record. I bring a great deal of experience with associations, volunteer organizations, teams, special library management as well as leadership positions with information suppliers.
What would I want to do in my time on the SLA Board?
- Focus: Number One - If we want our profession to achieve something great, then we have to do it with a laser-like focus and dream big. We are a rich, intelligent, diverse and multi-hued profession and have a valid and supportable interest in just about everything. However, my dream is that we discover the will within us to focus on a single major mega-project that will benefit us all during my term.
- Recognition: Libraries radiate throughout the knowledge ecology and make a difference. I’d like more decision makers to notice this! Let’s work on getting someone who values us to be a highly visible champion. We need to move beyond ourselves and develop and implement an advocacy program about the role, value and impact of special librarians and information professionals. If we fail at this one thing, we do risk losing everything altogether.
- Confidence: Let’s find the confidence to speak as a profession with authority, confidence and energy. Let’s do this now. Now! Let’s not study it loooonnnggg and haaarrrddd. Let’s not take it literally and study something to death. The death of our profession isn’t our goal!! We need to have the confidence of our convictions and take action - sustainable action. If every member positioned themselves to each tell just five positive springboard stories in 2006 to five people who matter, our world would change. 50,000 stories will move minds. Imagine if SLA focused on supporting its members even more strongly in our efforts!
- Balance: Let’s balance all of the needs of every type of specialized librarianship. Our differences are small and our common needs are great. Let’s find the middle ground that lets us work more strongly together. We’re all in this boat together and no one part of special librarianship can point to another and say their side of the boat is sinking. Let’s sacrifice our pedantic conversations about our titles, our profession’s name, how relevant we are. Talking amongst ourselves is just sound and fury.
- Trust and Respect: We need to respect each other more. We need to build better teams and more sustainable effort. We are a smart profession with strong critical thinking skills. We need to ensure that we don’t devolve that critical thinking strength into random criticism. We need to have faith in our cause. We need to be an incubator of success.
6. Risk: Let’s take this risk. Small risk, small reward. Our need is great, we won’t get to where we want and need to be without taking some calculated more sizeable risks. As Eugenie Prime hollered at our Seattle conference – NO PUNY VISIONS!
What experience do I have to accomplish this?
I am pretty action-oriented. I’d like to talk about some of the key projects that I have been involved to give you a sense of my style.
As President of the Canadian Library Association. I put together strong teams where we influenced national policy on a macro scale. I had the privilege to lead a large team of librarians in influencing the information agenda in the last two national elections in Canada through a campaign of education and conversation. This campaign was even complimented in the Senate of Canada.
We were successful in enhancing the library book postal rate and building a new partnership with Canada Post. We sought and institutionalized professional advice on our advocacy work and reinvigorated a national training program for library advocacy. Our team also heavily influenced the copyright process in Canada. I helped build a new collaborative initiative around school libraries that changed the national landscape. I am also currently co-chairing a huge team (over 50 librarians) on the 8R’s that seeks to deal with the next generation of library workers. And I’ll be talking more about that at the SLA conference in June.
In the past two years I have visited every Canadian library training program and met with every Dean. I also sit on the advisory of a U.S. Library school. Within the context of the 8R’s we are influencing curriculum and not just talking (dare I say not whining) about it. As an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, I meet and admire the next generation of library students. We need to build them up and engage them aggressively.
Also, at CLA we built a new style of conference planning team that focused on the strategic needs of Canadian librarians in the global context and built new delegate focused tracks on advocacy, leadership and technology that were a huge success.
As president of the Ontario Library Association, I made sure that we focused on and made progress on a limited number of strategic projects. We created a long term team to achieve our vision of a province-wide digital library, called Knowledge Ontario. Our weekly and monthly meetings with the ministries, cabinet and premier will pay off with a major multi-million dollar announcement in 2006 building on the over $700,000 in funding do far.
Big visions. Big effort – huge pay-off.
Our OLA team also planned and executed a conference on the crisis in school libraries that generated energy for success and resulted in many new jobs for school librarians during a period of extreme threat – just like some of our SLA members are facing.
Lastly we addressed one aspect of diversity in Ontario librarianship and we founded a new and fully financed $300,000 scholarship fund to ensure that a person of native ancestry was in U of T’s library program in perpetuity.
On the international front, I lead a team last year that worked cooperatively with IFLA to raise about $25,000 for tsunami relief and ensured that our membership in IFLA derived value for in managing and distributing the funds ethically. As well, I helped my employer do focus groups - BEFORE the Gulf hurricane tragedies hit - with clients who had dealt with these disasters before. As such we were prepared to act quickly and sent truckloads of computers and wireless networks to the region right away along with volunteers and staff. We even bought and equipped a bookmobile in partnership with others to send to the region. I am proud to work as part of these teams.
Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow and sometimes you cheer folks on. That’s the role of a leader.
Within SLA I have volunteered for about 25 years. I have lead committees for strategic planning, public relations, committee on committees and have been a member of many more including AOOC and Finance. I have led my chapter and a division. I have coordinated 5 major change-oriented task forces for SLA and chaired the branding task force and have chaired or been a member of three others.
In each case it was the teamwork that made the day and not the contribution of a single person. I have learned a lot and feel proud of our accomplishments.
I care deeply about sharing and networking. These values must be strong in a leader. As evidence of my commitment to share I point you towards the over 100 articles I wrote this year including my column for Information Outlook. I give over 100 keynote and other speeches a year to library and non-library groups. I have contributed to many books and will publish another in 2006 through ALA editions. I also blog through, Stephen’s Lighthouse, and promise to start an SLA President’s blog to keep everyone informed and start an interactive discussion with members – not just one way communication, but ongoing conversations. A leader must have strong communication skills and I think I can demonstrate that I bring this competency to SLA.
I believe in a leadership based in collaboration, teamwork, networking, and two-way communication. I can demonstrate that the teams I have lead and participated in have been successful. I can also communicate the value of special librarians and information professionals to audiences other than us as well as our vision for the knowledge-based economy. I have performance experience in the press, radio and TV.
Focus, Recognition, Confidence, Balance, Learning, Trust & Respect, and Calculated Risk
We can reach a new plateau. We can prove our value to those we work with, work for and get our funds from. We can achieve greatness. By the end of my term I want more employers to know that librarians rock. I don’t want anyone to say that they are having trouble finding a position as information professionals. I don’t want anyone denying that there is a librarian shortage. I want employers fighting over the best and recruiting. I want employers that closed their libraries to fail (or become quite ill and cure themselves by hiring a librarian – grin). I want employers with great libraries to succeed and blame their librarians. That’s how I want us to measure our success.
I hope that I haven’t appeared arrogant - just confident that I can lead SLA. I am asking you to buy into this vision by voting for me. What’s my great weakness – impatience – let’s get on with it. Thank you.
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