2005-2006 Transformation of the College Library Workshops

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Letter of Invitation

We are pleased to invite you and a small “team” from your institution to apply to participate in one of three regional workshops on The Transformation of the College Library. Institutional teams that are accepted as participants will receive a travel stipend of up to $1,600. The workshops will focus on the dramatic changes now occurring in college libraries and are intended to help small and mid-sized colleges and universities deal successfully with those changes. The programs will address such critical issues as advancing information literacy as an element of liberal education; the role of the library in teaching and learning through collaboration between librarians and faculty members; the changing use and conception of the physical space of the library; the challenges of using technology in improving students’ learning; setting institutional priorities for library-related costs when they increasingly exceed standard budget guidelines; implementing institutional change; and assessing the institution-wide impact of changes in library services. A draft of the full workshop program is attached.

Workshop dates and locations in 2005-2006 are:

Chicago, Illinois, September 29 – October 1, 2005
New Orleans, Louisiana, February 9–11, 2006
Boston, Massachusetts, April 20–22, 2006

The workshops are being organized by the Council of Independent Colleges and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education with the generous financial support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation. The workshops are sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Council on Library and Information Resources. The Appalachian College Association and the United Negro College Fund have both endorsed the program. All independent colleges and universities are eligible to apply. Preference will be given to institutions not already having attended one of these workshops that are members of CIC, NITLE, the Appalachian College Association, and/or the UNCF. The workshops continue CIC’s highly successful workshops of 2004, which could not accommodate all who applied.

Co-directors of the workshop are Scott Bennett, Yale University Librarian Emeritus; Rita Gulstad, Dean of Graduate and Extended Studies and Learning Resources at Central Methodist University; and Thomas Kirk, Library Director and Coordinator of Information Services at Earlham College. The advisory committee for the project includes Michael Bell, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Elmhurst College; Sister Patricia Matthews, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Marywood University; and Susan Perry, Senior Advisor at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Director of Programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources.

You may apply to one, two, or all three of the workshops, expressing a preference among them; we will try to honor your preference in assigning your institution to one of the workshops should you be a successful applicant. The workshops are designed for institutional teams; each workshop can accommodate 20 colleges and universities. The workshop will begin at approximately 2:00 p.m. on the first day and end by noon on the third day. A team attending the workshop should consist of three persons including the library director, the academic vice president or provost, and one other person from among such campus leaders as a faculty member, the director of academic technology, or the individual with responsibility for faculty professional development programs. Our hope is that the workshop will assist teams in developing plans they can implement upon returning to their home campus. Faculty participation in the workshop is likely to pay especially high dividends in any campus-based activities that follow the workshop.

Applications will be evaluated on the basis of the evidence of the ability of your institutional team to effect change upon returning home, your institution’s present engagement with information literacy, your readiness to take appropriate next steps with your information literacy program, and the likelihood that the experience of your institution will be valuable to others attending the workshop. Institutions that are currently considering construction or renovation of a library building, re-organizing the relationship between IT and library functions on campus, developing an information literacy program, and/or actively encouraging faculty members and librarians to work together are especially likely to find the workshops profitable.

We hope you will apply to participate in the workshops. Each institutional team that is accepted to attend a workshop will receive substantial subsidies from CIC and NITLE—several meals provided to all conference participants and up to $1,600 to offset some travel and lodging expenses. There is no registration or tuition fee. Please complete the application form and return it by May 16, 2005, to Leslie Rogers, CIC Conference Coordinator, lrogers@cic.nche.edu. Participants will be notified of acceptance by June 30.