Purpose & Format

The Living the Future 3 format is purposefully designed to encourage meaningful conversations and collaborative learning. It is an experiment in dialogue that recognizes that all participants can contribute to the learning of the community. Featured theme speakers will frame the challenges and issues we all face in the future. In structured, well-facilitated dialogue sessions we will learn from each other, question our assumptions, share our varied experiences, and develop new ideas. Previous conference speakers and others will offer updates on organizational restructuring through panel and poster sessions, including a session devoted to reporting progress at The University of Arizona Library. Breaks are designed to provide participants with additional opportunities to network with colleagues, or simply to reflect.

Conference dates are April 26-29, 2000, with Wednesday April 26 being reserved for Pre-conferences & Workshops.
 
All conference events will be at the Sheraton Tucson Hotel and Suites in Tucson, Arizona.

See the conference Schedule for a day-by-day outline of pre-conference and conference activities and speakers.

Registration Information: The online registration form is NOW AVAILABLE!

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Themes for Living the Future 3

> Creative Transformation: Leadership Issues in the Chaotic
    Environment

Leadership will be characterized by new and different roles in the future global environment. What challenges do we face in diversifying our leadership groups? What does leadership look like in less hierarchically-structured learning organizations? How can we continue to transform creatively and with integrity?

Keynote Speaker: Eileen de los Reyes, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

> Creating Collaborative Relationships

Working together with colleagues, customers and vendors allows us to use our collective wisdom to delight, educate, and engage our constituents. What challenges and issues face us as we act in deep collaborations and formalized partnerships? What can we learn from the Open Source community and other collaborative models?

Speakers: Sally Jackson, The University of Arizona; Barbara O'Keefe, University of Michigan; Jeremy Frumkin, The University of Arizona Library

> Transference of Culture in the Electronic Environment

Explore the Library's role in unveiling and protecting the products of human endeavor. Bringing culture online necessitates the examination of the legal, ethical and educational context surrounding access to information. Is intellectual freedom at risk? What new roles must libraries adopt to protect our users' freedom to inquire?

Speaker: Carrie Russell, American Library Association

> Personal & Culture Change in the World of Work:
    Supporting the Human Spirit

As the world of work changes we must structure for high performance and learning. What new human resource systems can we create to support radical and continuing change? How can we develop commitment and passion for creating the future? What can we do to help each other keep our work lives and personal lives in balance?

Speaker: Maureen Sullivan, Consultant

Pre-Conferences & Workshops

1>Building a Culture of Assessment in Libraries: Challenges and
      Opportunities

Libraries have to demonstrate accountability, efficiency and effectiveness, and a meaningful response to growing demands for outcome and impact measures. The objective of this session is to clarify the organizational changes needed for libraries to respond to the assessment and measurement demands they are facing. The session will enhance the goal of integrating assessment work into the structure and into the everyday work processes and activities. The goal is to bring about an attitudinal change to support a working environment that will foster a client/user centered culture and the corresponding ongoing delivery of quality library services through the building of an assessment culture.

Session leaders: Amos Lakos, University of Waterloo; and
Shelley E. Phipps, The University of Arizona

2>What Your Customers Want: Service Improvement for Libraries

A workshop on process improvement for the people who make libraries work. Learn to analyze workflow by gathering and analyzing critical data, assessing customers' needs, and piloting new and creative solutions.  Participants will be provided with opportunities for hands-on practice with process improvement tools such as process mapping, data analysis through the use of pareto charts and control charts, and the use of focus groups and other means of gathering customer input.

Workshop leader: Catherine A. Larson, The University of Arizona

3>The Path of Personal Mastery and Leadership

A large part of personal mastery is the quest to establish and understand one's convictions through enhancing personal characteristics and drawing upon proven leadership styles, models, traditions, and cultures. Self reflection and deep learning are keys to synthesizing knowledge and creating strong personal leadership concepts. This pre-conference session will introduce various leadership paradigms and tools for creating your unique, and jargon-free, leadership portfolio. You will leave this pre-conference with a strong and renewed sense of what leadership means to you personally and how you plan to practice and exemplify your model of leadership.

Facilitators: Kathryn Deiss, Association of Research Libraries, Office of Leadership and Management Services

4>Leading Change

Participants in this workshop will explore models for understanding and leading change in today's organizations; learn more about resistance to change and how to deal with it; consider organizational change from a systems thinking perspective; identify ways to gain staff commitment and empower broad-based action; and assess their own leadership effectiveness for guiding change in their library.  The concepts and practices for leading change will be discussed in the context of the challenges and opportunities we face in libraries today.

Workshop leader: Maureen Sullivan

People

>Eileen de los Reyes, Assistant Professor of Education, received her Ph.D. in political science. Her fields of concentration are Latin American politics and international relations. She holds an M.S. from MIT in political science and a B.A. from Wellesley College in political science and Spanish (Latin American literature). Before joining the Harvard Graduate School of Education, de los Reyes was a faculty member at Salem State College where she directed a content-based ESL program for recent immigrants and international students. She was also a member of the Women's Studies program. De los Reyes worked in the Boston Public School System in the definition and implementation of a peer-tutoring program for Latino students in middle school and high school. Her current research focuses on the creation of democratic classrooms where students are educated in the practice of social and political change. 

>Kathryn Deiss is the Program Manager for the Association of Research Libraries Office of Leadership and Management Services. Kathryn leads the office in the design and delivery of organizational and leadership development services. Her broad perspective and expertise on issues facing libraries and information professionals stem from her more than twenty-two years of experience in public, special and academic libraries. Kathryn's commitment to the development of strong organizations and individuals capable of innovation, leadership and learning is the primary focus of her work. Kathryn received her MLS from the University of Albany and her B.A. in Sociology from Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. She was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico, and is a sometime poet and sculptor.

>Jeremy Frumkin is currently the Meta-data Librarian for The University of Arizona Library. Prior to his tenure in Arizona, Jeremy worked for the Online Computer and Library Center (OCLC) where, as their Educational Technology Specialist, he helped design and implement a meta-data creation and retrieval system for the Institute's Meta-data Seminars. At Arizona,he is involved in a number of digital library projects, including the implementation of a database-driven, open-source electronic reserves system and the conversion of the Arizona State Museum's Documentary Relations of the Southwest Indexes into Sitesearch databases. As a strong advocate of open source software, he is working on a grant proposal to convert the Tree of Life to an open standards, open source, database-driven system to make the data and information available through the tree reusable in different contexts and for different uses. He has a B.A. in Art History and an M.L.S. from Florida State University.

>Amos Lakos is Coordinator of Management Information Services at the University of Waterloo Library. He is responsible for developing and maintaining a management information environment to enable better decision making in the library. He coordinates internal and external reporting and performance measurement activities. Amos worked on harmonizing the CARL and the ARL yearly surveys. He is focusing on developing quality service initiatives, library network services measures and developing ways to integrate assessment into library work. During his former work as reference and collections librarian for Political Science he published major bibliographies on Terrorism and Negotiations between States. He has a B.A. in International Relations from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an M.L.S. from the University of British Columbia. Amos likes to travel and read. He was born in Transylvania but does not suck blood anymore.

>Catherine Larson is currently a member of the Social Sciences Team and the Data Services Librarian for The University of Arizona Library, where prior to that she served as the Team Leader for the Fine Arts/Humanities Team. She has been involved in UA library projects and teams relating to process improvement, data collection and management, and strategic long-range planning. Prior to moving to Arizona, she was Media Bibliographer then Head of the Preservation Department for the University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City. Catherine majored in Spanish and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a B.A. and later an M.S. in Library and Information Science. The time spent in central Illinois and Iowa led her to develop a great appreciation for wide open spaces, country and western music, line-dancing, quilting, and the rural life.

>Shelley Phipps is the Assistant Dean for Team and Organization Development at The University of Arizona Library. Her position supports organizational development, systems analysis, and team building. Her work in recent years has been focused on process improvement, learning theory, and the development of learning organizations. She has been an OLMS adjunct faculty member since 1982 and has assisted the OLMS in redesigning the Library Management Skills Institute II. She also consults with libraries undergoing restructuring. Outside of the library, she is known for her competitive spirit in volleyball, cards, and tennis. Shelley's undergraduate work in literature culminated in a B.A. from Regis College, and began her life-long interest in language, literature, and learning.

>Carrie Russell is Copyright Specialist for the Office for Information Technology Policy of the American Library Association. Carrie serves as a liaison between the library community and ALA on intellectual property issues. She also develops educational programs and publications to help librarians understand how changes in copyright law affect libraries and library users. Prior to her employment at ALA, Carrie held a variety of positions at The University of Arizona Library including Copyright Librarian. In that position she developed copyright and fair use awareness programs for the academic community. Carrie's background also includes process improvement, strategic planning, and performance measurement. Carrie is excited about returning to Tucson to share ideas about information policy, copyright and intellectual freedom.

>Maureen Sullivan has served as a consultant and trainer whose practice focuses on services to libraries and other information organizations. She has worked with many organizations to help them plan and manage significant change. This work includes strategic planning, work redesign, becoming a learning organization, and organizational restructuring. She also has designed and conducted many workshops on topics including: leadership; job analysis and work redesign; leading organizational change; performance planning and assessment; team building; creative problem solving; career and personal planning. Before establishing her own consulting practice, she served as the Human Resources Administrator for the libraries at the University of Maryland and Yale University. Maureen has worked with the Association of Research Libraries/Office of Leadership and Management Services in a variety of capacities since 1980 and is the principal designer of several ARL/OLMS Institutes. She is the immediate past president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and is the 1999 recipient of the  Elizabeth M. Futas "Catalyst for Change" Award from the American Library Association.

 

>Barbara J. O'Keefe is currently Professor in the School of Information and Director of the Media Union at the University of Michigan.  The Media Union is the center for learning and collaboration technology research and development at UM.   Beginning July 1, 2000, she will be Professor in Communication Studies and Dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Her research interests include:  analysis and assessment of communication competence; effects of communication media on individual and organizational performance; design of support for collaboration and team work; adoption and effects of new technologies within groups and organizations; and design and evaluation of computer-based support for learning, especially cooperative learning.  Examples of projects include development of a web-based curriculum to provide training  in team work and group communication skills, and the Electronic Quad project, which is developing a technical and organizational infrastructure to support distributed teaching and  learning at six leading US universities. 

 
>Sally Jackson Sally Jackson is Professor of Communication and Faculty Associate for Distributed Learning at the University of Arizona.  She received her Ph.D. in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois in 1980 and joined the University of Arizona faculty in 1991.  Working on instructional design issues connected with General  Education, she became broadly involved in instructional technology and associated faculty development needs. This involvement resulted in development of POLIS, a web instruction support tool designed to promote more reflective teaching practice without requiring explicit training in new learning theories. Since 1997 Sally Jackson has had oversight of the Faculty Development Team, and since 1998 she has provided administrative leadership for a variety of initiatives connected with learning technologies.

History of Living the Future

After the first conference, The University of Arizona Library was asked by colleagues around the country to sponsor a continuation of Living the Future. Living the Future 2: Organizational Changes for Success was held in April 1999. One of the significant changes between the Library's first and second conference is the inclusion of speakers outside our institution.

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Perspective Views of Living the Future 3 Conference

Living the Future 3: A Student Perspective, by Lisa K. McCamey

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