Collaboration and Libraries and Technology

This session will use the InfoCommons at Northwestern Library as a case study to examine a very successful partnership in technology application and space planning between two high-profile campus entities.

All dozen institutions comprising the CIC recently decided to join the InCommon Federation. This session will describe the motivation for and experience of joining InCommon. We'll also describe some of the use cases, including interactions with the federal government, interinstitutional access, and community source development projects.

Over 100 librarians, administrators, faculty, and other members of the academic community concerned about issues relating to graduate education convened in Washington DC on October 12, 2007, to participate in the forum "Enhancing Graduate Education: A Fresh Look at Library Engagement."2 Sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the event promoted engagement in conceptualizing the library's evolving role in graduate education, and it encouraged academic libraries to begin considering new ways to partner with the broader graduate studies community. The forum was inspired by the Council of Graduate Schools 2007 report, Graduate Education: The Backbone of American Competitiveness and Innovation,3 which examines the current state of graduate education and how it influences the positioning of the United States in the global economy. Asserting the need for cooperation across education, business, and policy sectors, the report emphasizes the need to strengthen and promote an educational model that will "enhance US innovation and national security in the 21st century."4 The report's authors emphasized essential cooperation across sectors, enhanced flexibility within institutions of higher education, and focus on interdisciplinarity and globalization, themes that were equally dominant throughout the daylong
forum.

This research bulletin discusses how leaders at the University of Kansas merged the Libraries and Information Technology into an Information Services department using well-documented strategies for enabling collaboration, group decision making, and mentoring of new leaders. It describes the challenges—and successes—related to making rapid changes in organizational structure, staffing, and services while remaining engaged with users and delivering technology services that were not necessarily tied to organizational boundaries.