Leaders and would-be leaders: A two-part invitation
Who’s a leader in the library field–or will become one at some point?
You, quite possibly. Leaders aren’t just directors and managers (and not all managers are leaders). I believe every librarian is potentially a leader in some areas, at some points–as are many nonlibrarians in the library field.
- Take a look at the PALINET Leadership Network (PLN). It’s an international network to provide resources and share ideas among library leaders (present and future) of all varieties. It’s free, it’s open to anyone who believes they belong, and it’s off to a good start–with
just undermore than 300 users and some 200,000 words of content already in place.
One small piece of content, which also appeared in the January 2008 Cites & Insights, is “Who’s a leader?”–which, as with much of PLN, you can read even before you create an account. Steven Bell offers some additional thoughts on the topic on the article’s Talk page; make sure to read that as well.
“Create an account”? Yes–to take full advantage of PLN, you need an account, which takes about a minute to create. We ask for your real name, your institution (optional), your email address (which must be a real email address), your choice of username and password. You enter that, you get a confirmation email with a link in it, you click on the link–and your account is open, giving you access to all the content in PLN. A little while later (maybe a day, maybe less), you’ll probably get another email, and your account will be fully authorized, meaning you can comment on articles, add to some of them, and create your own articles (or take part in the fledgling forums). (As I was typing that, a new user just created an account–and I just approved it. If not me, then PALINET support would do so. We’ll only turn down approval if an account has obvious signs of being a spam agent.)
I posted about PLN earlier–the first public announcement of its open availability. Since then, I’ve organized lots more material, a fair amount of new material has come in, and we’re just about to hit the 300-user mark.
- We also know that most leaders (and would-be leaders) are busy people, who don’t have time to go check a wiki every week or two to see what’s new. With that in mind, we’ve created PLN Highlights–yes, my third blog (the first is only used to announce C&I issues). You can add PLN Highlights to your aggregator–or, if you’re not a big aggregator person and blog reader, you can sign up to get posts via email (click Subscriber to posts under the Pages heading on the sidebar). You can expect roughly one post a week–never more than two a week, rarely fewer than two a month. Posts will note some of the new additions to PLN and, once in a while, milestones and interesting facts.
When you create a PLN account, you can be sure your email address won’t be sold for marketing purposes. We will, however, send you occasional email–almost never more than once a month, rarely less often than once a quarter, and always concise (my aim is 150 words or less)–to remind you that PLN is around and benefits from your participation. PLN Highlights is PLN’s primary “push mechanism,” the way to keep you informed on what’s happening in PLN; the rare broadcast emails are supplemental.
PLN can and should be a primary international hub for library leadership–a resource that complements leadership institutes and helps current and future leaders to think about leadership issues, continue their own development, and contribute to shared understanding of issues in the field. Take a look. See if it’s helplful to you–and, if not, whether you can contribute ideas and resources to make it more useful. We’ll continue to bring in content from various sources, but we’d love to see a growing body of content and discussion directly from PLN’s users.
Update: Within an hour and a half after this post appeared, PLN went from “nearly 300 users” to “more than 300 users.” If the post itself was responsible for passing that milestone, thanks!
