Change is a good thing, right? New Collaborations

Abstract

In the fall of 2003, a new Director of Libraries at Binghamton University outlined a vision for transforming the University Libraries into a student centered learning community. This required reorganization of the Library public services departments, with an emphasis on improved staff morale and leadership, in order to set public services on a positive, user centered path. Within the first three months of my arrival in January 2005 as the new Associate Director of Public Services, facilities related situations dictated the merging of the Reserves, Circulation and ILL service points. This was to occur while simultaneously planning was under way for the first phase of an Information Commons collaboration between the Libraries and Computing Services. These transitions were in addition to the ongoing process of combining Reference and Access Services in a branch library, and were furthered influenced by a number of pressing matters, some predating the new Library Administration, and some set in motion by the transitions themselves taking place amid the shifting formal and informal organizational changes occurring in the Library. This session will focus on 3 specific examples of change, as described above, in the first year of reorganizing and energizing Public Services at Binghamton University Libraries and will utilize elements from the Three-Phase Transition Model (Endings, Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings) for managing the changes and transitions.