Pat Wagner <lead@pattern.com> is the primary contact.

Description: Learn how to identify and improve your leadership skills, no matter what your current role is in your medical library or institution. Through a series of interactive writing exercises and group discussions, you will discover how to better identify and overcome barriers to success with staff, colleagues, decision-makers, and your medical library’s users. Topics include the differences among leadership, management and professional points of view, the characteristics of everyday leadership, dealing with risk, understanding the big picture, creating and communicating vision, ethical influence, applying leadership in workplace situations, mistakes in leadership, and how to break through self-created glass walls and ceilings. This class can be presented as a live, face-to-face class, or as a self-paced, online class, which lasts six weeks.

Educational Objective: The objectives of a leadership class describe what leadership looks, feels and sounds like in a medical library. Participants will be able to: Dream more about new ideas that apply to the whole medical library, and beyond its walls. Think about the future more, and how they can affect it. Volunteer more for new roles inside and outside their libraries that provide them with greater responsibilities. Feel more confident taking risks and making difficult decisions. Believe people treat them with more respect, seek their advice more often, listen to their opinions more, and act on their suggestions more often than before they started the class. More effectively can influence groups of people to act for the better future of their medical libraries. Make more positive changes in the lives of the people their medical libraries serve. Set and achieve more short- and long-term goals for themselves and their medical libraries, institutions, and communities. Contribute more time and effort to their library communities, including serving as committee chairs and initiating activities related to their professional associations.

Agenda:

This class is available both as a live face-to-face class or an online class. Complete online instructions and a preview of the class syllabus and agenda can be obtained from the instructor, Pat Wagner, by contacting her at pat@pattern or 303-778-0880 in Denver, Colorado.

This six-week online class has a starting date and ending date. The class will begin and end with a live webinar, which will be recorded. If you are not able to attend the live session, we will ask you to view the recorded session. The online class is divided into chapters, and each chapter has pages with links to the LINKEDIN discussion group, where you will be directed to post responses to questions and assignments. Each week, you will be asked to read and respond to one-to-two chapters, in addition to reading and responding to the comments of your classmates in the discussion groups. The live class will cover the equivalent information in written exercises and discussion.

Week One: 

1. Introduction to Leadership in Medical Libraries, your fellow participants, and to the online class environment and its tools.

Week Two

2. Becoming an Everyday Medical Library Leader: Can You Learn to Be a Leader?
3. Characteristics of Medical Library Leadership, and How it is Different from the Tasks and Management Duties of a Medical Librarian

Week Three

4. Risk Management: The Challenges of Leadership, even when you do everything right
5. Understanding the Big Picture: Why Medical Library Leadership is about the Library and the Larger Institution.

Week Four

6. Vision: Creating and Communicating the Better Future for the People You Serve
7. Influence: The Importance of Ethical Influence in Every Relationship

Week Five

8. Mistakes Even Experienced and Competent Medical Librarian Leaders Can Make
9. Applications: What Are You Going to Do Next?

Week Six

Post-test, applying the class information and the final plus/delta evaluation

Need for This Course: The first live version of this class was approved in 2001 for the Triple Chapter MLA conference in New Orleans. Since then, I have presented different versions for both the national conference and various chapters, and it has been well-received. However, more and more medical librarians have told me that travel costs and workplace scheduling pressures, even as they apply to local chapter meetings, have become problematic. Requests for online continuing education, for both certification and personal career development, are growing. I informally surveyed medical librarians the last year, and enthusiasm was high for online classes. This class can be taken live or online. The live class can be designed for four, six or eight credits.

The instructional methods used include Lecture, Slides, Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming, Sharing/Self-disclosure, Hands-on Exercises, Case Method, Case Study, Problem-based, and Other.

Participant Materials: Participants online materials include: 1. An online interactive class site, which participants will read and use during the six weeks that the class is active. 2. Downloadable quizzes and resources. 3. Use of the online LinkedIn group, where participants will post responses to class materials and exchange ideas. 4. Access to the Librarything online bibliography. 5. Links to pertinent news articles and websites. 6. Live webinar using GoToWebinar.

Facility Requirements: Complete instructions and a preview of the class syllabus and schedule can be obtained from the instructor, Pat Wagner, by contacting her at pat@pattern or 303-778-0880 in Denver, Colorado. Participants for this online class will need to be able to: 1. Use one, and only one e-mail to register for and access the class, whether at home, at work, or at a public terminal. 2. Access the University of North Texas LE@D (Lifelong Education @ Desktop) software, which requires the ability to turn off "pop-up" blockers, and accept cookies, applets, and plug-ins. We will supply you with a free password to test a class and determine if you will be able to access the software as well as supply you and your technicians specifications. Our experience with thousands of participants is that most people are able to log-in with no trouble, even if their computers do not perfectly match the requirements. We have experienced, friendly, live humans beings to help you. 3. Set up on an account at http://www.linkedin.com/. There is no cost, and thousands of your library, university and institutional colleagues are already there. You will be asked to "link" to your instructor, and you will be set up with a discussion group online, where you will be posting your comments and responses to the assignments during the month you are taking the class. 4. Print out various pdfs from the class site. If an organization would like to hold this class as a "live" event in a shared computer lab, arrangements can be made. However, the technical requirements listed would still apply to the individual. So, facility requirements are described in "virtual" terms. Note on privacy: All of the class sites we use are password-protected.

Additional Evaluation: A pre-test and post-test will be part of the class and is built into the online class. It is designed to test the knowledge of the participant before and after the class and focuses on major educational objectives. Also, at the end of the class, participants will be asked four questions regarding the class: what will they apply in their workplace, what would they include in their own class on leadership, what they liked about the class, and what they would want to change about the class.