Ulrike’s first 10 days with the 2023 Mortenson Associates Program

After the first one and a half week of this year’s Mortenson Center Associate Program I can already say – if nothing more were to come in the next weeks the trip to Urbana-Champaign would already have been worthwhile. I like the mixture of tours, presentations, discussions and individual and group tasks. For me as a back office person in my home library it is appealing to hear and learn a lot about user-related issues. Although I found something interesting in everything we saw or listened to I would like point out one topic or experience for every day of the program so far that made me smile, think or left me impressed:

May 24th: Our group – I am looking forward to work with you and Clara and Peggy in the coming weeks!

And the library trading cards we discovered during our tour in the Main Library – this is certainly an idea I will take back home.

May 25th: In the IFLA webinar on innovation in libraries Rick Anderson, the University Librarian of Brigham Young University, had some very wise thoughts on innovation.

May 26th: Maurice York’s presentation of consortia and the Big 10 Alliance strategy and his observation that „collective action is the pathway to build resilience for an uncertain future.“

May 29th (Memorial Day): Thinking about a personal Professional Development Plan – although I am in the last quarter of my career it is still important and worthwhile to think about personal and professional goals. The refreshing jaunt to Custard Cup after enjoying the trip to Allerton Park ….

May 30th: The tour at Grainger Engineering Library – I found it very impressive how Megan and her team are constantly transforming the library, altering services and spaces. And another personal highlight (having dealt with metadata and cataloguing for many years): The work of art displayed in the School of Information Science which is based on catalog data and proves that cataloguing is making for an art …!

May 31st … was an intense DiSC® day and Shirley Stelbrink offered almost too much information, examples, stories, but with a lot of common sense in it: Take home message: We are who we are, but we can (and should) temporarily adapt to another person’s style if a work situation calls for it.

June 1st: Another take home message from the CITL: What research shows: Brainstorming brings better/more results if first done individually and then jointly.

June 2nd: Our program at the Siebel Design Center contained so much inspiration and food for thought that it is hard to pick out just one highlight. The building with its furnishings alone has been an inspiration. I was surprised to hear about the importance of paper and pencil as the most powerful design tools, and enjoyed trying this out with Tereza, Jinsook and Minsang in our group task.

Leave a Reply