The Green Kangaroo

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….