What are the strategic benefits of using an external consultant? How can use of a consultant boost your ability to move your organization forward? What happens after the consultant goes?! Join an international team of administrative librarians in learning when to use an external consultant, factors for funding and how to leverage recommendations from work with a consultant to successfully move your organization forward. The presenters will provide examples drawn from their experience working with R2 Consulting LLC and the implementation of recommendations from their report “Workflow Analysis: From Selection-to-Access” presented to the University of Lethbridge Library in April 2009. Participants will be exposed to the cycle of preparation, participation, and implementation of working alongside a consultant. Presenters will share their experience with immediate tangible benefits as well as the future benefits that can accrue from the practical and cultural changes that happen along the way. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions, share their experiences and apply lessons learned to their specific workplace challenges. Sessions outcomes will include: 1. Participants will gain exposure to leadership strategies for driving and managing change. 2. Participants will learn how to make the case for, and gain valuable expertise from, external consultants. 3. Participants will learn to move beyond the recommendations to leverage additional operational and cultural changes that can happen as implementation becomes reality.

1. Presented by Alison Nussbaumer; Wendy Merkley and Brenda Mathenia
University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
2010 Charleston Conference
Charleston, SC, November 4, 2010

2. Introduction
The Consultancy Cycle
 Preparation
 Participation
 Implementation
 Leveraging Change
Questions/Comments

3. System-wide change
Strategic value
R2
Charleston
Three guiding questions

4.  How do you?
 Purpose
 Timing
 Risks

5.  Prior to the onsite visit
 Onsite visit
 After the consultant leaves
 Report and recommendations

6. Focus: Analysis of workflows – from selection to
access
Goal: To increase workflow efficiencies
Deconstruction Reconstruction

7. Consultants’ Report became a blue-print for change:
◦ Provided leadership team with evidence to support
critical change initiatives
◦ Deconstructed the present processes and
suggested ways to reconstructed those processes
◦ Acknowledged cultural implications of proceeding,
referred to the “deep philosophical divide”

8. Goal: to increase workflow efficiencies
Focus: analysis of workflows – from
selection to access
Streamline Acquisitions & Cataloguing Processes
Recommendations:
Integrate & Prioritize Processes for Electronic Resources
Reconsider the Resource Discovery Experience

9. Accomplishments: Year 1
Streamline Acquisitions & Cataloguing Processes
• Implement electronic selection
• Implement electronic ordering, receiving, invoicing
• Consolidate monograph ordering with single vendor
• Implement batch copy cataloguing
• Outsource processing

10. • Electronic Resources Committee
• Centralized funding of e-resource purchases
• Implement ERM module
• Mainstream digitization initiatives
• Reduce resources related to print subscriptions
Integrate & Prioritize Processes for Electronic Resources

11. • Defined 2 new functions:
Data Integrity – set & monitor standards for
all types metadata
Discovery Systems – integration of multiple
applications and pathways into single
discovery tool
Reconsider the Resource Discovery Experience

12. Bridging the “Philosophical Divide”
Consultants’ report spoke directly to an issue that
was, is, and will continue to be, the most critical and
inevitably the most difficult part of this process –
effecting cultural change.

14. Constructing New Realities
 Recharge effect
 Opened minds
 Encourage “risk”, ensure
“success”
 Success was achieved

15.  Shift to Service
Emphasis
 Empowering staff
 Disrupting staff
 Future Change

18. We would be happy to answer any
questions?