Twenty + years of working with advisory groups

Note: This week I am on a "writing holiday" from my day job. I'm using the time to work on a revision of my 1997 book The Indispensable Librarian. (Personally, I think it is still just fine, but others have asked if we still use Gopher as a search tool in our district.) While I wrote the draft for my last book I took advantage of Blue Skunk readers, using you as a sounding board for my book materials. Consider yourselves so used again. Thank you. – Doug

Twenty plus years of working with advisory groups - what I've learned.

My first library advisory committee was born out of pure frustration. I had been hired by a small high school in 1999 to replace a librarian who had been in the same position for thirty-five years. By the end of Bertha’s term (names have been changed to protect the innocent), this poor tired soul had two main goals: to never, ever throw anything away and to keep as many people out of the library as possible so she could have some peace and quiet. OK, those probably weren’t her real goals, but it seemed like it given the state of the program and collection.

            So, I weeded and weeded. I added some new and exciting resources including, as I remember, one of the first electronic Grolier electronic encyclopedias on a stand-alone workstation. I spruced the place up. I put out the word that students and teachers - alone, in groups or as classes – were welcome and appreciated. I did about everything I could except pay people to come to the library.

            But at the beginning of the second semester of my first year, I still felt like the lonely Maytag repairman.

            As anyone will tell you, I am not a patient soul and I was desperate. I decided to invite of a few of my fellow high school teachers over to my house one evening for a little wine and cheese party. Sensing free booze and food, some even showed up. After getting them a little tipsy and feeling guilty for eating all my crackers, I pulled a fast one on them. “You are,” I announced, “my newly formed library advisory committee. I don’t know what the hell the teachers and students of this school want in a library program, but you’re going to tell me.” And happily they did.

            For just a little wine and cheese, these wise folks would leave their families and far more interesting activities to come to my house a few times a year and talk about libraries and computers and how adolescents learn best. We hammered out an articulated vision of what a media program should do. They helped me set my professional goals, and then listened when I reported my trials and triumphs. It was the best deal I ever made

            Their suggestions turned into my first library plan with goals and objectives. The principal was delighted. I felt I had others now helping move the program forward and, in return, making me successful.

            While this first group I formed was just a few teachers and a couple of parents, my advisory committees have become larger and more formal since that time, but they still serve very much the same purpose: to help me make better decisions. All my advisory committees have given me terrific ideas, huge challenges, and timely warnings over the years.

            After having been served by and served on a number of these advisory groups, I offer some advisory advice:

Keep your group small. Any committee much larger than a dozen is difficult to get together and difficult to bring to consensus. If you need a much larger representation, keep your full meetings few and do most of your work in sub-committees.

Work for a wide representation of stakeholders who serve limited terms. My current committee is comprised of teachers, librarians, students, and administrators, of course. But parents, business people, a multi-type library representative, and post-secondary educators also serve. Our computer coordinator, student information system manager, network manager, and a building technician are permanent members. We don’t have a set selection process for membership, but no one usually serves for more than three years. Remember when selecting your members, that communication is a two-way street. What your representatives learn at your meetings will be taken back and shared with that person’s colleagues.

Have few, but important, meetings. Advisory committees only need to meet three or four times a year. A fall meeting is a good time to establish working subcommittees and refine the year’s goals. One or two meetings to work on budget or policy issues in the winter and a final spring meeting to review the year’s work and set objectives for the coming school year are enough. Setting our meeting dates for the year at our first meeting makes them a priority for many members. Take attendance, and include who is there in your minutes.

Only hold meetings when there is needed input by the committee membership. If the communication at meeting is only one-way, members will begin to wonder why this buisness could not have been done simply through e-mail.

Send out good agendas and write clear, concise minutes that are quickly distributed. If members see agenda items that they think are important (how the budget is to be divided up this year, for example), they’ll be more likely to attend. All my advisory group members use e-mail and we rarely send hard copies of anything through the mail. I e-mail myself a copy of all agendas and minutes for easy filing and retrieval. (Our meetings have all been paperless for the past two years.)

Give your group well-defined responsibilities. Yes, sometimes these committees can try to micro-manage a program. I heard a story once of a parent member wanting the library to be re-arranged based on feng shui principles, much to the librarian’s discomfort. A committee should not be making your professional decisions for you, but it should have the power to shape the direction of the library/technology program. And well it should, since these folks, as well as you, will be held responsible for the program’s weaknesses as well as its strengths. My advisory committee works on:

• long range planning and goals and my department’s yearly objectives
• program assessment
• budgets
• policy making

And that’s about all the work we can do. And remember, it’s an advisory committee. If they offer advice that you believe is not in the best interest of your students, you may respectfully not take it.

Expect and accept the "ugly baby” comments.  Ask any group of people if they themselves are the parents of an ugly baby. No one is. Ask the same group of people if they have ever seen an ugly baby. Nearly all the hands go up. This phenomenon is why all of us need reality checks of our programs, our policies, and our priorities. The things we hold dear and have ownership of always look pretty darned good to us. Our advisory committee can tell us if we have some “ugly baby" qualities of which we may not be aware. It’s not always easy to accept these criticisms, but it’s in our students’ best interest to get an objective opinion on our programs – even when they are our “babies.”

       Ours can be a professionally lonely profession. In all but the largest schools, there is rarely more than a single librarian. Kindergarten teachers, custodians, coaches, special education aides, and administrators outnumber us. An advisory committee is one way of giving ownership of the library program to everyone in the building. If the goals, the budget, the assessments, the long range plan are known to be important to more than just a single person, when they are presented to decision-makers they will carry more weight. And if your advisory group includes parents, community members and students, it will be seen as a very important body indeed.