ILLINOIS ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting the the Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries website.

Election Results: Congratulations to Susan Swords Steffen of Elmhurst College (2010-2011 VP/President-Elect) and Ellen Corrigan of Eastern Illinois University (2010-2011 Secretary/Treasurer), who were recently elected to the IACRL Executive Committee. Thanks to everyone who participated in the June 2010 elections.

The 2009-2010 IACRL Officers and Committee Chairs are listed on the Committees link. Feel free to contact the officers with any concerns or suggestions.

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Message from the President
Jane Treadwell, University of Illinois Springfield

Greetings! I am honored to serve as the IACRL president/forum leader for 2009/2010. In today's message, I'd like to share my themes for the year and send out the first call for the IACRL conference next spring. But first, I'd like to thank my predecessor, Hunt Dunlap, for his work last year as IACRL president, and especially for his leadership of a review and revision of the IACRL Bylaws. It is fun to plan a conference, but an organization needs relevant and sensible bylaws to flourish, so Hunt and an intrepid band of volunteers spent last year carefully considering the way the bylaws should be written to help our organization be most effective. In addition to Hunt, members of the Bylaws Revision Committee included Ellen Corrigan, IACRL secretary, Scott Drone-Silvers, Nestor Osorio, ILA Board liaison, Tracy Ruppman, Tammy Schnell, Ted Schwitzer and Jane Treadwell.

The bylaws are presented for your review in this issue of the newsletter and will be on the agenda for approval at the IACRL luncheon on October 8 at the ILA conference in Peoria. I hope that many of you will be able to attend that meeting.

It has been a rough year in academic libraries. The ripple effect of the "Great Recession" of 2009 made its way through academia and resulted in budget cuts and hiring freezes in our libraries, as well as reductions in travel budgets and other discretionary spending. The forecast for 2009/2010 is generally worse. As I write this, my library is facing another year of budget cuts, no salary increases, and the possibility of furloughs during the year. We are not alone-I'm sure the situation for many of you is just as serious, if not more so.

Yet I head into the fall of 2009 in an extremely hopeful mood. Why? I trace it back to a two-day stint at the Placement Center during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in July. A few weeks before ALA, my library had been given permission to search for two entry-level instructional services librarian positions that had been frozen all year. In order to try to fill the positions by fall, we decided to recruit at ALA. We were inundated with job seekers-over 100 librarians stopped by our booth and we conducted half-hour interviews with 25 of those people.

What I took away from those two days, in addition to laryngitis, is a deep faith in the future of academic librarianship. The young people (and the people pursuing librarianship as a second career) with whom we spoke are an impressive bunch. They are smart, have good ideas, and are totally committed to the values of librarianship, especially to patron-centered service. They also have skills that don't come naturally to those of us who are digital immigrants rather than digital natives. As we baby boomers ponder retirement during the next decade we can do so knowing that we leave our libraries in excellent hands.

So, I am hopeful. Librarianship has strong values and talented people that can carry us through temporary hardships. I believe that our colleagues in academia continue to recognize and value the unique contributions that librarians make to teaching and learning.

For my year as IACRL president, I have two themes. First, that we don't have to merely survive in these tough economic times-we can thrive. Let's share the stories of how we're working smarter, examining legacy practices along with legacy systems, realizing the importance of each member of the library staff, and more. We're almost a decade into the 21st century. How are we beginning to define it?

Second: I would like to emphasize the importance of mentoring as we contemplate a generational shift in our libraries over the next ten years. Let's provide the support that will help our newer colleagues grow professionally and lead our libraries as they face the challenges of the 21st century. I would like to think that IACRL can help with this, and I will be exploring what the organization can offer to facilitate mentoring relationships in academic libraries throughout the state.

The spring conference, to be held in Springfield March 25-26, will focus on these two themes as we look at "Thriving while Surviving: The Complete 21st Century Librarian."

I look forward to working with all of you this year! I'm contemplating starting a blog, but until then please e-mail me at jtrea1@uis.edu with your questions or ideas.

The IACRL Web site is produced and maintained by the IACRL Publications Committee. This page was last updated on June 17, 2010