Building Trustee & Library Director Relations

Last year’s Annual Meeting and Conference received 115 participants. This included 29 library directors (67% of STLS directors), 46 trustees (17% of STLS trustees) and 38 library staff. Overall, I think this marks a significant commitment to system-wide professional development and public library betterment.

One of my responsibilities as a system director is to guarantee our member libraries have the means to think critically about the effective delivery of public library services. STLS the organization will fail its members if it does not make a substantial investment towards the professional development of librarians and trustees. For this reason, we view the STLS Annual Meeting and Conference as the platform for setting the visionary-tone over the next twelve months.

Attached you will find this year’s Annual Meeting and Conference Invitation along with a link for online registration. The afternoon continuing education sessions are absolutely free of charge. The only commitment to attend is time and travel. The annual meeting and dinner is $15, which subsidizes the cost for meals. I use the word subsidize because STLS pays for 29% of appetizers and dinner along with the costs of bringing in well-known speakers from within our field. We provide this subsidy through a grant from the Corning Incorporated, Foundation, and because we want you to come.

As a side note, it is legal to spend library funds in order for directors, staff and trustees to attend the annual meeting. The meeting is official business for libraries as members of STLS, and it contains a training component for all attendees. A marginal fee for training should never deter a library from participating in something that could pay significant returns for its local community. Education is an investment.

With that being said, I would like to highlight some of our speakers. Lisa Wemett has spent 30 years working in public libraries and currently serves as President of the Friends of the Libraries Section of the New York Library Association. Sara Kelly Johns is a school librarian and consultant who served as the President of the New York Library Association in 2013, and currently serves on the Executive Board of the American Library Association. Erica Freudenberger is a practicing library director at Red Hook Public Library, which wasdesignated as a Best Small Library in America finalist in 2015 by Library Journal and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And, Sarah Weisman who is the Associate Dean of Learning Resources at Corning Community College who also serves on our region’s South Central Regional Library Council board.

To add to this professional mix of innovators, Jamie LaRue will be our keynote speaker. And, I must preface this introduction with a small note. The afternoon workshop featuring Jamie will not be the same as the keynote presentation following dinner. We understand this was the case last year regarding our keynote, so we learned from our mistakes.

From 1990 to 2014, Jamie was director of the Douglas County (Colorado) Libraries, widely known as one of the most successful and innovative public libraries in the nation. For his efforts, he was recognized as the Colorado Librarian of the Year in 1998, the Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce’s 2003 Business Person of the Year and received the 2013 Colorado Association of Libraries’ Career Achievement Award.

I am very much looking forward to Jamie’s keynote presentation, “Making Each Other Look Good: Building a Healthy Partnership between Board and Director.” For the last two years I have worked to develop the relationships between library directors and their trustees. It is a crucial, necessary and sometimes fragile relationship. The only way for a library to move forward is to ensure the relationship between the director and her trustees is healthy.

I have reported directly to library boards for the last 13-years. Through my experiences, along with networking with other libraries across New York, I have developed five “how” questions that need answering. (1) How do we strike that balance to put our libraries and communities first? (2) How do we start the relationship on a positive note? (3) How do we develop the relationship, so it grows into something we both value? (4) How do we adapt and recover from changes and challenges? And, (5) How do we end this relationship, so the director, trustees, library and community can move forward?

That last one is tough because it is inevitable. I have had to leave two libraries and two boards in my career, and neither time was easy. Fortunately, both times ended on a positive note with lots of well-wishes. But, there will always be a natural sensation of separation anxiety for both parties. How do we make that separation as painless as possible for all stakeholders?

I hope everyone has a great week, and I encourage you to participate in this year’s event. I would love to see attendance increase by 13% over 2014, which seems like an obtainable goal. But more importantly, I would like to see participation increase because STLS team members and trustees value the time spent with member libraries.