1. Excellence:
Leading for Library Relevance
Jesús Lau
jlau@uv.mx
www.jesuslau.com / Twiter: jesuslau / FB: jesuslau
College Station, TX
November 9-10, 2011

2. Topics
1. Education first: University learning and learning
players
2. Research library opportunities
3. Strategies and services to advocate

3. Part ONE
Education First:
University Learning and Learning Players

4. University Challenges
President Bowen Loftin
• Public trust
• Limited resources
• Cost of education
• Value of education

5. University Shift
• A place to hack knowledge
• A place to practice knowledge
• A place to accelerate the advancement of knowledge

6. Student Behavior
• Need meaningful and relevant learning
• Social and web hyperactivity
• Used to instant gratification
• Need information competencies

7. Faculty Destinations
• Need support for knowledge facilitation
• Require quality information for research tasks
• Need reliable sources to meet high demand to
publish
• Demand data for academic management
• Need support to benefit from new technologies

8. Part TWO
Library Opportunities

9. Airport
Pilots

10. Librarians´ Opportunities
• Be where they teach and do research
• Become the antennas of the library
• Revisit options for balance between academic
work and operational activities
• Team with faculty in their knowledge processes
management
• Provide decision-making information to
University management

11. Librarians and staff:
Choices to Be Relevant
• Lots of players in the Information Ecosystem: Librarians and staff
are just two of them, but can play unique roles to:
– Be the erudite professional: Need to go back to medieval library
role
– Be active in the intangible and virtual worlds, where users are
– Be part of the classroom and the lab
– Become digital information curators
– Be iSkills facilitator – Information literacy

12. Collections/Services:
Everything Everywhere
• Be cost efficient and effective in collection
development/access
• Library used to be just what it had, now is what it
can share and what it has access to
• Cooperation and collaboration; Join/strengthen
consortia

13. Part THREE
Strategies and Services to Advocate

14. Advocate:
1. Management Principles
• Pursue library TAMU strategic plan: An excellent flight
plan, with following principles:
• A holistic user - centered shared library management
• Be relevant to users / University
• Cost efficient and effective
• Flexible for new roles and for new times
• Inclusive excellence
• Operate information services with quality principles

15. Advocate:
2. Digital Information Curation
• Creation and production of digital information
• Harvest and integrate information resources
• Digital assets preservation
• Build digital capacity to do these things

16. Advocate:
3. Embedded Librarian
• Team with University faculty in knowledge
creation and transmission
• Be where the learning process takes place
• Have an integrated library staff, all sections / all
parts of the library have to be mission touched

17. Advocate:
4. Information Fluency
• Understand and meet new information student seeking
behavior
• Anticipate users´ information needs
• Facilitate student information fluency
• Support faculty in their information literacy classroom
tasks
• Help university management to have information skills
and information resources for decision making tasks

18. Advocate:
5. Scholarly Communication
• Ensure broad and diverse digital access to institutional
research
• Strengthen the institutional repository and state-wide
collaboration (TDL)
• Actively support institutional scholarly publishing
• Promote and advocate barrier-free access to research and
educational information resources (ARL)

19. Advocate:
6. State, National and International Collaboration
• Identify what is relevant to share by Texas A&M University
• Find niches to collaborate at state, national and
international level: Collections, services, software
• Be active in library and information associations
• Take active part in information networks and consortia

20. Advocate:
7. Creativity
• Creativity is the process of having original ideas that
have value (Sir Ken Robinson)
• Goal to create value to the user:
– Promote cross-pollination of ideas across the library and
beyond
– Have a multidisciplinary team /Diversity of skills and
backgrounds
– Embrace change: Instead of facing the current, swim with it

21. Advocate:
8. Library Diversity
• Search for inclusive excellence, not only quotas or numbers
• Promote blend of human resources: Gender, religion, skills,
race, age, language, and experience
• Value differences and similarities among the library team to
have a diversity-rich climate
• Team respect for individuals as unique and valuable persons

22. Thanks!
The future of libraries is
an open journey…
Let´s be pilots
Enjoyed the opportunity to interact with you!