2007-07-24
Interview with Brian Schottlaender, University Librarian
Dirk Heinze, editor-in-chief of Arts Management Network, led an interview with Brian Schottlaender, who is University Librarian at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). This library is famous not only for an impressive architecture of the main building, but also for its digital library, the general strategic management or for its extensive staff training. In the interview, Brian Schottlaender makes obvious, how a strategic plan can be implemented in an organization and how it can be proceeded by the entire management staff.
AMN: Your library in San Diego is especially famous for the impressive architecture of the main building, the Geisel Library. Which benefits provides a library with such a spectacular outfit? Is it helpful at all?
BS: It is extremely helpful, because the library building is situated in the middle of the campus, and because it is such a famous architectural structure, there are guidelines on campus that the view to this building cannot be obstructed by other buildings. We are a growing campus, and new buildings are going in all the time, but the library remains visible all over campus. In addition, the logo of the entire campus is an abstract version of that building, so every magazine and every piece of correspondence that goes out has basically an abstract version of our building on it. If there is one thing the people of San Diego know about our campus, is that building.
AMN: So we could say, the building is an important brand and belongs to the corporate identity of the entire university.
BS: That is true.
AMN: We took notice about your ambitious strategic plan. Which importance and influence this plan has in fact for your daily work?
BS: Actually it has a big importance. After this plan was crafted last year, we created three steering committees to manage each of the strategic directions described in the plan. We allocated 100.000 $ for each of the steering committees, so they could go about implementing their parts of the plan. For each of the strategic directions I have one of my associate directors in charge of a steering committee. We are using the plan to guidance the development of three things: the first is the digital infrastructure that we need to manage the digital library. The second is our public website as the first service point that our users encounter in the digital environment - a website which will be actually completely redesigned. In September a new version will be available. And the third is a re-design - may be in particular interesting for your readers - of a part in the main building which houses the art and architecture library, the film and video library as well as the music library. And these three libraries were all merged administratively in the last 8-10 years, but their space reconfiguration has not yet be carried out and will be in the coming year. This project to rationalize the arts libraries will effect about 25% of the total space of the building, which has 400.000 square feed.
So the three directions in the strategic plan means thinking about space and thinking about how in a increasingly digital environment librarys physical space should be configured for the best use by our patrons. The one thing we have heard rapidly in the last several years is people are very confused when they enter that space because they cant figure out which the three library are theyre in or which one theyre looking for. So this is going to be an attempt on the one hand to expand and rationalize the professional architectural space for us and make finding your way around it much easier, and in the same time to build more facilities that take advantage of digital technology, for example viewing facilities for digital movies or computing equipment for digital music.
AMN: How many people and which budget you have to develop all these things?
BS: We have a 30.000.000 $ annual budget. 300 people are working altogether in the library. I have 25 department managers, and those department managers comprise the group called the Library Management Group. Those managers have to submit a report at the end of every year telling library administration, what they accomplished during the year. In addition, they are asked to submit their report in a form that makes clear to what extent theyve done to support the libraries overall strategic plan. Those 25 people went through a strategic planning retreat with my executive team, which are 6 people. The result of this day long retreat, led by a professional facilitator, was the strategic plan. It makes the reporting for the Library Management Group a lot easier, because they were involved in the strategic plan from the beginning.
AMN: So weve learned, that the strategic plan is nothing to work with simply once a year. But how you can proof whether your plan is on the right track?
BS: That is something weve spend a good deal with time talking about. We decided to request that library department heads correlate their accomplishments with the objectives of the strategic plan. For example, the department head might say, during the last year I did this or my department did this, and this in terms supported that part of the strategic plan. In the practice, every three month the library management group gets a report from the steering committees on how their particular activities are proceeding and whether they meet their calendar for deliverables. We can check whether their deliverables are expected outcomes or not, and if they are not, why not. There are of course a variety of reasons: it is possible that something simply got slow down, or it possible, that what in the intervening 3 months seemed a good idea is not such a good idea anymore, because the technologies has been changed, or whatever. That is now an opportunity for the entire management group to ask the steering committees how well the strategic plan is progressing. And at the end of the year I report out to my own management, my boss, on how well we are accomplishing the objectives.
AMN: One of our most important issues is the aspect of training. What are your experiences with the need to train your staff? How often let you train them, and which management skills are important at all for your environment?
BS: A very good question, particularly since I am a strong proponent of staff training. We take 2 per cent of our salary budget off of the top and put it into a fund for staff training. A year ago we created a new position with the coordinator of staff training. This young woman, who we hired 8 months ago was charged by assembling a training program. When I came to UCSD in 1999, I was very impressed how much training was going on here, but I felt like it wasnt quite systematic as it could be. It was a little bit too scattered. Thats why I asked the training coordinator to truly set up a program for training. Currently there is a very systematic initiative on the way to train every single staff member in the new enterprise email system that were switching to. There is a coordinated program to train about 25 of our curators on how to use the digital asset management system. So we are very much committed to give the staff not only the tools they need to succeed in a modern library, but also the training to use those tools.
AMN: Do you think, this way is somehow a standard in US libraries, or do other libraries tend to use more external training?
BS: I think its a mix, and we also use some external training. Some of the money that we allocate we use to bring in external trainers.
AMN: How early the library professionals learn their management skills? Is it an issue already during the study, or only later as further education in the job?
BS: Only later. I dont know how the situation in other countries is, but American Library schools put very little emphasis on management training. So most of that education takes place on the job.
AMN: Which national or international networks you use? Which organizations you are a member of?
BS: Several. We are members of the Association of Research Libraries, which represents the top 123 research libraries in North America. Im a past president of that association. We helped to create the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance, which is a network of 30 institutions around the Pacific including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mainland China. All these members are involved in building digital libraries related to the Pacific area, providing access to significant collections for the interchange of scholarly information. And then we participate in certain international organizations like IFLA. We use all these associations for everything from training material to conference managements. It has a big value for us.
AMN: You already mentioned your digital library activities. Experts speak nowadays about the digital age. But unfortunately public libraries are often classified as representatives of the traditional culture. Which challenges your library have executed to become a moving part of the digital age?
BS: Well, it is a couple of challenges, at least here at UCSD. About three years ago the line, that tracked how many journals weve got in electronic form versus how many journals weve got in print form, crossed each other. We basically began acquiring more electronic journals than in print. We have about 35.000 journals subscriptions, and about 20.000 of those are electronic now. ecause we are a very science based campus, and scientists are such big users of the journal literature as opposed to the book literature, we have moved very aggressively into electronic journals. On the other hand we continue to have 3 million print volumes, so one of the big challenges is to manage this kind of hybrid environment. If we had the luxury of having only print or only digital, management would be much easier - think on the space necessary for 3 million books, but also on the ambitious technical infrastructure necessary to deliver electronic journals. Another challenge we have is shifting our acquisitions budget from a primarily print based budget to an increasingly digital budget.
AMN: So you didnt saved money with the digital revolution
BS: Not really. We find ourselves that we have to spend an enormous amount of money to do pretty conventional things like there is enough electricity in the building! Everybody has got a laptop now, everybody wants to have access on the internet of course we have wireless LAN throughout the building. But just to ensure finding a place to plug in your laptop in order to keep it running, were investing an extraordinary amount of money. We bought tables that have already the power in or made investments pulling just more electricity in the building. As you can see with these examples: the myth that the digital library is the cheaper library is just that: a myth.
AMN: Thank you, Brian, for your time and the exciting answers on our questions. All the best for you personally and for your library!
Website of the Library: http://libraries.ucsd.edu
Strategic plan: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/services/strategic_plan.html
Personal page: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/ucsdlibraries/brian.html
BS: It is extremely helpful, because the library building is situated in the middle of the campus, and because it is such a famous architectural structure, there are guidelines on campus that the view to this building cannot be obstructed by other buildings. We are a growing campus, and new buildings are going in all the time, but the library remains visible all over campus. In addition, the logo of the entire campus is an abstract version of that building, so every magazine and every piece of correspondence that goes out has basically an abstract version of our building on it. If there is one thing the people of San Diego know about our campus, is that building.
AMN: So we could say, the building is an important brand and belongs to the corporate identity of the entire university.
BS: That is true.
AMN: We took notice about your ambitious strategic plan. Which importance and influence this plan has in fact for your daily work?
BS: Actually it has a big importance. After this plan was crafted last year, we created three steering committees to manage each of the strategic directions described in the plan. We allocated 100.000 $ for each of the steering committees, so they could go about implementing their parts of the plan. For each of the strategic directions I have one of my associate directors in charge of a steering committee. We are using the plan to guidance the development of three things: the first is the digital infrastructure that we need to manage the digital library. The second is our public website as the first service point that our users encounter in the digital environment - a website which will be actually completely redesigned. In September a new version will be available. And the third is a re-design - may be in particular interesting for your readers - of a part in the main building which houses the art and architecture library, the film and video library as well as the music library. And these three libraries were all merged administratively in the last 8-10 years, but their space reconfiguration has not yet be carried out and will be in the coming year. This project to rationalize the arts libraries will effect about 25% of the total space of the building, which has 400.000 square feed.
So the three directions in the strategic plan means thinking about space and thinking about how in a increasingly digital environment librarys physical space should be configured for the best use by our patrons. The one thing we have heard rapidly in the last several years is people are very confused when they enter that space because they cant figure out which the three library are theyre in or which one theyre looking for. So this is going to be an attempt on the one hand to expand and rationalize the professional architectural space for us and make finding your way around it much easier, and in the same time to build more facilities that take advantage of digital technology, for example viewing facilities for digital movies or computing equipment for digital music.
AMN: How many people and which budget you have to develop all these things?
BS: We have a 30.000.000 $ annual budget. 300 people are working altogether in the library. I have 25 department managers, and those department managers comprise the group called the Library Management Group. Those managers have to submit a report at the end of every year telling library administration, what they accomplished during the year. In addition, they are asked to submit their report in a form that makes clear to what extent theyve done to support the libraries overall strategic plan. Those 25 people went through a strategic planning retreat with my executive team, which are 6 people. The result of this day long retreat, led by a professional facilitator, was the strategic plan. It makes the reporting for the Library Management Group a lot easier, because they were involved in the strategic plan from the beginning.
AMN: So weve learned, that the strategic plan is nothing to work with simply once a year. But how you can proof whether your plan is on the right track?
BS: That is something weve spend a good deal with time talking about. We decided to request that library department heads correlate their accomplishments with the objectives of the strategic plan. For example, the department head might say, during the last year I did this or my department did this, and this in terms supported that part of the strategic plan. In the practice, every three month the library management group gets a report from the steering committees on how their particular activities are proceeding and whether they meet their calendar for deliverables. We can check whether their deliverables are expected outcomes or not, and if they are not, why not. There are of course a variety of reasons: it is possible that something simply got slow down, or it possible, that what in the intervening 3 months seemed a good idea is not such a good idea anymore, because the technologies has been changed, or whatever. That is now an opportunity for the entire management group to ask the steering committees how well the strategic plan is progressing. And at the end of the year I report out to my own management, my boss, on how well we are accomplishing the objectives.
AMN: One of our most important issues is the aspect of training. What are your experiences with the need to train your staff? How often let you train them, and which management skills are important at all for your environment?
BS: A very good question, particularly since I am a strong proponent of staff training. We take 2 per cent of our salary budget off of the top and put it into a fund for staff training. A year ago we created a new position with the coordinator of staff training. This young woman, who we hired 8 months ago was charged by assembling a training program. When I came to UCSD in 1999, I was very impressed how much training was going on here, but I felt like it wasnt quite systematic as it could be. It was a little bit too scattered. Thats why I asked the training coordinator to truly set up a program for training. Currently there is a very systematic initiative on the way to train every single staff member in the new enterprise email system that were switching to. There is a coordinated program to train about 25 of our curators on how to use the digital asset management system. So we are very much committed to give the staff not only the tools they need to succeed in a modern library, but also the training to use those tools.
AMN: Do you think, this way is somehow a standard in US libraries, or do other libraries tend to use more external training?
BS: I think its a mix, and we also use some external training. Some of the money that we allocate we use to bring in external trainers.
AMN: How early the library professionals learn their management skills? Is it an issue already during the study, or only later as further education in the job?
BS: Only later. I dont know how the situation in other countries is, but American Library schools put very little emphasis on management training. So most of that education takes place on the job.
AMN: Which national or international networks you use? Which organizations you are a member of?
BS: Several. We are members of the Association of Research Libraries, which represents the top 123 research libraries in North America. Im a past president of that association. We helped to create the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance, which is a network of 30 institutions around the Pacific including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mainland China. All these members are involved in building digital libraries related to the Pacific area, providing access to significant collections for the interchange of scholarly information. And then we participate in certain international organizations like IFLA. We use all these associations for everything from training material to conference managements. It has a big value for us.
AMN: You already mentioned your digital library activities. Experts speak nowadays about the digital age. But unfortunately public libraries are often classified as representatives of the traditional culture. Which challenges your library have executed to become a moving part of the digital age?
BS: Well, it is a couple of challenges, at least here at UCSD. About three years ago the line, that tracked how many journals weve got in electronic form versus how many journals weve got in print form, crossed each other. We basically began acquiring more electronic journals than in print. We have about 35.000 journals subscriptions, and about 20.000 of those are electronic now. ecause we are a very science based campus, and scientists are such big users of the journal literature as opposed to the book literature, we have moved very aggressively into electronic journals. On the other hand we continue to have 3 million print volumes, so one of the big challenges is to manage this kind of hybrid environment. If we had the luxury of having only print or only digital, management would be much easier - think on the space necessary for 3 million books, but also on the ambitious technical infrastructure necessary to deliver electronic journals. Another challenge we have is shifting our acquisitions budget from a primarily print based budget to an increasingly digital budget.
AMN: So you didnt saved money with the digital revolution
BS: Not really. We find ourselves that we have to spend an enormous amount of money to do pretty conventional things like there is enough electricity in the building! Everybody has got a laptop now, everybody wants to have access on the internet of course we have wireless LAN throughout the building. But just to ensure finding a place to plug in your laptop in order to keep it running, were investing an extraordinary amount of money. We bought tables that have already the power in or made investments pulling just more electricity in the building. As you can see with these examples: the myth that the digital library is the cheaper library is just that: a myth.
AMN: Thank you, Brian, for your time and the exciting answers on our questions. All the best for you personally and for your library!
Website of the Library: http://libraries.ucsd.edu
Strategic plan: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/services/strategic_plan.html
Personal page: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/ucsdlibraries/brian.html
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