ALA 2010: Advice from a Former County Manager
By Norman Oder, LJ July 1st 2010While librarians talked a lot to one another this past weekend at the American Library Association's (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, they also had an opportunity to talk with and hear from a former county manager, one of the group with whom library managers must work well to see their budgets thrive.
Ron Carlee, Domestic Strategic Initiatives, Executive in Resident, International City/County Management Association (ICMA), visited the ALA Membership Pavilion on the show floor to offer some quick tips and answer questions.
"Whatever the hand is that feeds you, get to know the rest of the body that's connected to the hand," he advised. "Building relationships with your chief funding decider is really important."
He further cited one of management guru Stephen Covey's Seven Habits®: "Seek first to understand, and then to be understood... Understand what your funding sources really care about, so you can relate that to the relevance of what you're doing... [and to] understand the competition."
Library leaders, he said, must be proactive, getting to know funders informally so a relationship can be built before budget time.
Going to the field
Essentially, he advised attendees to show, not tell: "Nothing is more powerful than actually seeing programs and services at work, and having discussions with the leadership and line people in the field."
He recalled visiting Dallas to observe the Dallas Public Library's program Every Child Ready to Read @ Dallas. "They're taking that program into City Hall, where the Vital Statistics office is," he noted, and where a good number of people in line have newborns. There, library staffers can give out English-language, Spanish-language, and bilingual books as well as sign people up for library cards.
(The program is part of a national joint project of the Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children.)
Fighting for a fair share
Carlee was asked how libraries fare when competing in their jurisdictions for a shrinking share of budget outlays. He acknowledged that communities tend to stress core services like public safety and utilities over libraries.
"What I tell people is...you cannot have a great community unless you have excellent core service in public safety and utilities," he said, "but you will not have a great community if the only thing you have is public safety and utilities."
So the challenge for libraries, parks and recreation, and cultural service departments is to identify what they do that's core to their community.
Suggestions from the audience included educational support and programming, and library leaders at the conference at large stressed the importance of library computer access for those job searching and e-government services.
Visit ALA Annual Conference News for ongoing coverage of the conference by the editors of Library Journal and School Library Journal. Find shots of various ALA 2010 conference happenings on LJ's Flickr page.
