The Green Kangaroo

Over the months of inactivity – well, inactivity at The Green Kangaroo – I’ve accumulated a score of “things about which I should post” – interesting books, exploration of virtual worlds and gaming, things ALA. By inclination – and usually necessity – I keep moving forward, and there is always a new question, a new insight. Still, I have a compulsion to tie the pieces of my life together. All those paths that criss-cross through greenroo space have relationships and consequences.

A couple months ago, for a retreat on technology and libraries, I gave some thought to my twin passions: libraries and associations. Over a long career – really -- I have come to think about them and their importance is some very similar ways.

Optimisim. Both libraries and associations are inherently and unavoidably optimistic. The world can be made a better place. You can shape your life. We – individually and collectively -- have agency.

Persistence. Memory and mission. Identity. Focus. Purpose. Associations enable persistence of effort – across time, across individual participation. Amidst “radical decentralization” they provide persistent identity.

Discovery. In their different ways, libraries and associations aggregate and organize for discovery. Each contrives to take you outside your comfort zone, outside the familiar, outside of the “like me.” They bridge – geography, interests, backgrounds, time.

Context. The social construction of meaning, of knowledge is fundamental to and a consequence of libraries and associations. New information and creation have context. In perhaps different ways, both are containers for our responses to destabilization in our mental models, our social environments. Both libraries and associations are significantly about the individual – in the context of the collective.

Conversation. Discourse. Deliberation. Interaction with the artifacts of culture. Social construction of meaning also implies conversation -- interaction, the push and tug of differing conceptions, the struggle for agreement or common understanding. Conversation is vital for discovery in a multicultural world. Our stories live in libraries. They live in associations.

Both libraries and associations are institutions. They are complex systems. As they face ever-changing technology, social and economic structures, they must respond to fundamental questions. What do we adopt – and on what basis, with what consequences? What does “user-centered” design look like – for what users and how do we get there? Do we take an active or reactive policy stance – and how do we bring together competing interests and values? Above all, what is our narrative – and how do we build it collaboratively?

Over the past weeks, as I’ve followed the discussion – in blogs, at conferences and meetings – on “improving ALA,” it has become important to me to talk about why this association, which has been a thread connecting disparate parts of my life as both a librarian and an association executive, is important. These concepts – optimism, persistence, discovery, context and conversation – have shaped my views. They are my starting point – or perhaps my ending point, to which other experiences and conversations have led me.

The Green Kangaroo has been inactive since October – while I dealt with my own sense of overload, saw a son home from Iraq and a daughter defend a master’s thesis in geology, struggled to keep up with the 2.0 world – “friending” in Facebook, learning not to fall off buildings in Second Life and so on. But, the conversation among bloggers is too interesting to stay away – and so, I’m back. I’m back, observing and conversing from “the middle” – which is where I’ve mostly been.

This blog takes its name – and inspiration – from “The One in the Middle is a Green Kangaroo,” by Judy Blume, about the difficulties of being a middle child. I am not a middle child – but being “in the middle” has often described my adult life.

As Senior Associate Executive Director of The American Library Association, I am “in the middle” a lot – between the executive director of ALA and the executive directors of 11 ALA divisions, between the forces of change and continuity in key policy areas such as intellectual freedom and accreditation, trying to sort out the choices in areas as seemingly diverse as IT and Conferences Services. I’m in the middle of a wonderful conversational flow between staff, members, colleagues in many other associations – though the people in those conversations aren’t always connecting with each other.

An ALA staff member since 1995, I’m also a long-time member of the Association – 35 years and counting. I went to ALA because I was working with early library automation and desperately needed to connect with other people who could offer advice and understanding ears. So, LITA was my point of entry – though it was then known as ISAD, the Information Science and Automation Division of ALA. I’d finished my MLS at UCLA (1965), taking one of the very early courses in library systems analysis, and been supported (by the Los Angeles Public Library, which was then implementing a pre-MARC ILS) for a post-MLS term, focused on library automation, at USC. Right place at the right time.

A native southern Californian, I have lived outside of California since late 1977, when I was lured to Chicago as Head of Technical Service, and later Assistant Commissioner for Reference and Research Services, at The Chicago Public Library. Family and professional exploration took me to the DC area to direct USBE (The U.S. Book Exchange – a small, interesting nonprofit) and then to work for Gaylord in their information systems area, before heading off to Buffalo as executive director of the Western New York Library Resources Council, a consortium of public and school library systems, academic libraries and special libraries. In 1995, a call from a California colleague brought me to Chicago again – and to ALA staff.

My point of view “in the middle” has been shaped by a professional career built on variety and change. It has also been shaped by active participation as an ALA member -- on ALA division committees and boards, on Council, the ALA budget committee (then COPES, not BARC) and finally, struggling with organizational issues, on a self-study committee. Though I remain a member, “member” activity now is necessarily outside ALA – in the American Society of Association Executives and other organizations – but still informs that POV.

Like that middle child, I have found the middle – in libraries, in associations -- a good place to be. Now – back into the conversation….

In a session at the annual conference of the American Society of Association Executives (still working on a post about that), William Taylor (Mavericks at Work) advised advised us to focus on our "architecture of participation." A Google search takes me a Wikipedia article and from there to Tim O'Reilly's June 2004 "Open Source Paradigm Shift."

The "architecture of participation" has been one of the most persistent focal points in the greenroo space during the past months -- and will be for months to come.

I began thinking about this in association space -- trying to facilitate broader discussion on a 2005-2006 study from ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership on major trends affecting associations. Many association executives are serious readers -- probably not a surprise to those of you in the library world. So, we took the mechanism of a existing association executives book club -- a monthly teleconference on a specific book -- and tweaked it a bit. We shifted the discussion focus to a trend area -- but sent out an advance reading list for each session and asked the month's facilitator to use books, journal articles and web-based resources (including blog posts) as "springboards" for the discussion. That lead us into some interesting explorations.

At the same time, an association colleage -- Ben Martin at the Virginia Society of CPAs -- built a discussion group within an online community structure. That discussion, the exchange of stories in that community month by month, trend by trend, was very rich.

Then, Ben and I worked together to present a session at the ASAE conference in Boston this August. Well, we started down the path of doing a panel-style presentation -- then changed our architecture. We decided to facilitate a series of small group discussions. There were groups at tables, on the floor, clustered in the doorway -- a full house. People in each cluster took rough notes -- which we added to the website. Our change in approach came after the program deadline -- so people came expecting talking heads. Presented with an opportunity to sit or stand and share their worries and their success stories with colleagues -- people not only adjusted and stayed, the energy level zoomed upwards. Maybe we all need more opportunities to do that.

On the library side, the ALAL2 prototype was an intense six-weeks or so before the New Orleans conference -- and taught me, and others, a lot about what works, and what doesn't work, in architecting participation in the 2.0 environment. We've spent time thinking through feedback and have more thinking to do about next steps. I'm watching with considerable interest the "Five Weeks to A Social Library" (sociallibrary@gmail.com) educational opportunity being developed and managed by Meredith Farkas, Michelle Boule, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Karen Coombs, Ellyssa Kroski and Dorothea Salo.

ALA has had a small explosion of blogs and wikis in the past few months. This past Monday, Meredith Farkas -- who built and managed both the ALA2005 (Chicago) wiki and the ALA2006 (New Orleans) wiki -- spent a day here talking to ALA staff about wikis, sharing what she's learned, and providing us with some basic training. She created a lot of enthusiasm and energy around the concept of using wikis -- and we'll see where this path may take us. There is a wiki up and ready for your use for the 2007 ALA Midwinter in Seattle.

This, though, begins to bring us to place where we need to think together as we build an "architecture for participation" in the 21st century world. How do we effectively and respectfully blend different concepts of experience and participation? How do we facilitate without stiffling? How do we honor the needs for both experimentation and persistence? ALA President Leslie Burger has appointed a special task force to look at "member participation." The committee is chaired by Jim Rettig and includes some active bloggers, such as Michael Stephens and Karen Schneider. Jenny Levine is the staff liaison. This is a discussion of importance to all of us -- those who blog and those who don't, members and staff, regardless of generation.

This is a path -- architecting participation -- that will get wider and deeper with use over coming months. In the meantime, I keep exploring, reading and listening -- watching for the direction signs, the unexpected options.

On my reading stack now is Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, which has me thinking about the need for a serious talk with an organizational anthropologist. A couple of posts ago, I quoted from James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which brought me a recommendation (from Jenny) to read Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck & Mitchell Wade, which I've just finished and passed along to ALA colleague John Chrastka. I think the dynamics of the gaming environment have something to tell us about architecting participation -- but I have a lot of thinking and listening still to do. Finally, for late-day trains, I've picked up a book by an environmentalist who took a year to look -- seriously -- at her backyard: Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn, by Hannah Holmes. We won't talk about the growing stacks of unread...

Blogs continue to provide ideas, book citations and discussion threads -- which reminds me that I made a note to check out Edward Tufte's latest book (Beautiful Evidence) after I picked up the citation from Paul at Thinking About the Future, who picked it up on the O'Reilly Radar ... and so it goes.

Checking up on earlier paths followed....

For anyone out there interested in being a library voice at the next World Future Society conference, the early bird registration -- substantially cheaper than on-site -- is up and ends mid-September (yes, these folks take early seriously). To get the session proposal form -- or just get more information -- go here. The announced theme will be "WorldFuture 2007: Fostering Hope and Vision for the 21st Century." Sounds like a library to me.

It's nice when paths come together... Doing my homework for something I attended back in May, I read master mediator Mark Gerzon's new book, Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences Into Opportunities. When I finally had a chance to read the August issue of Associations Now, the monthly journal of the American Society of Association Executives, there was an article by Mark Gerzon, "From Me to We," on "bridging leadership," which he defines as "building partnerships or alliances that cross the borders that divide an organization or community." It's a role libraries and the people who make them work have often filled. He lays out four fundamental skills for leaders -- in libraries, in associations -- seeking to bridge member or community differences: integral vision (the big picture), inquiry (asking good questions), conscious conversaton (making conscious choices about how we communicate with each other) and dialogue (ultimately creating new options).

Then, the title of Gerzon's article in Associations Now reminded me of another encounter -- well before the Green Kangaroo set up a post in the intersection here. At the 2005 meeting of the Ontario Library Association, Craig Keilburger, founder of Free the Children, an international network of "children helping children," provided a "get yourself up and do something" sort of opening plenary speech. An interesting story this -- and it came with a great t-shirt: "We are the generation we have been waiting for." Keilburger was then a student at the University of Toronto. He became an activist at 11 -- when his local public library branch was threatened with closure, and the proposed new location was too far away for kids to walk or bike. He organized other 11-year-olds for a campaign. His next step came at about 13 when he saw a newspaper story about child slavery -- and went off to his local public library to learn more. That led to Free the Children. The connection -- twisting, I know -- between these paths? Craig and Mark Keilburger pulled together a book: Me to We: Turning Self-Help on Its Head, including contributions from Oprah Winfry, Dr. Jane Goodall, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others. Response from Canadian libraries and librarians to Keilburger was strong, in the form of raising money to build libraries and hire librarians in places with few such resources. My friend Larry Moore, executive director at OLA, tells me that Keilburger knows libraries and library people are a major part of the solution -- and would welcome contact with U.S. library communities.

Thinking about the children served by public and school libraries, I pulled a couple of items from my stack of "interesting stuff." These two came off the ALSC-L discussion list.
Sylvia Vardell -- a faculty member in the School of Library & Information Studies at Texas Woman's University -- has a blog focused helping adults find and share poetry with kids. Her latest entry is focused on the Katrina anniversary.
ALSC past-president Gretchen Wronka also posted an announcement to ALSC-L of a "low-residency" master of fine arts degree focused solely on writing for children and young adults. The program is at Hamline University in St. Paul (MN). If you're interested, additional information is available here. The faculty includes a number of well-known authors of books for children and young adults, such as Kate DeCamillo.

Then, in the process of pulling these items from my ever-growing stack of "interesting things," I spotted this one -- from ACRL Forum. Northeastern University, along with the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, has launched a new online learning tool in the spring, with a "supplemental discussion blog." The announced purpose is to explore "key concepts in new media and address a host of new media issues including the collapse of distinctions between media forms and the societal effects of new technologies such as blogs, chat rooms, TiVo, and Facebook." Checking in, there are some interesting pieces to discuss and the fall term is just beginning...

Finally, in my incoming email, I just got a welcome invitation from Matt Ivaliotes -- the individual in ITTS who is supporting ALA's growing array of blogs and, soon, wikis -- to join BUG, our internal "user's group" for ALA staff working with blogs. This is good - good because I'll learn how to do more things, and good that there are enough people interested that IT needs to organize us into a manageable, "tell 'em all at the same time" information exchange group. There's also a b2evolution upgrade -- promising more "robust" antispam capabilities.

A lot of twists, turns and connections here. That is, truth be told, the way the intersection looks to the Green Kangaroo much of the time. Things bump into each other, ideas get exchanged, directions are adjusted, and so forth.

As usual, I'm behind -- on posts, on projects, probably on life. I take one thing out of the "stack of interesting stuff" -- and add two or three things. There are two projects where one existed before. In balance, it's a stimulating way to live.

This has been the annual "transition" time at ALA. We measure time here in "member years" -- from the end of one annual conference to the end of the next. New terms of office, new appointments begin after Council III at Annual Conference. The internal operations of the association -- budgets, performance reviews and related work -- are on a September 1 to August 31 "fiscal year" cycle. July and August are always a period of winding up and starting new: learning the work and communication styles and preferences of new officers, new board members, new committee chairs; providing "here's where we are now" information to people joining in on ongoing projects and advocacy efforts; integrating new ideas.

At the same time, we all try to enjoy a little summer. About those heirloom tomatoes I planted in May... but that's another post.