Funding the Margin of Excellence

Keeping up with this blog is even harder than I imagined. I am constantly confronted by two problems—lack of time to write and lack of anything of worth to say.

For me the last week here at Joyner has been really hectic, with having to participate in two to three evaluations on the days that I am here—and then there is the problem that I don’t seem to always be able to be here. Yesterday, along with Alan White form the College of Arts and Sciences, I participated in a follow up to April’s ECU Foundation Spring meeting, working on strategic planning for the organization. The Strategic Planning Committee is led by Carol Mabe, who recently during our Staff Development Day led the Library in a discussion of branding and marketing. Carol, who is joining the Board of Trustees, is an excellent and well organized leader. She helped us come up with a Vision for the ECU Foundation—Funding the “Margin of Excellence” for ECU. We will take that vision plus some strategic goals to the Foundation Board in October. It seems very likely that the University will launch a Capital Campaign in the next year or so and is looking to raise from $50 to $100 million. I hope the Library can be an active participant in that campaign.

I have very much enjoyed an email debate that has been going on among the members of the RTF about appointments and recruiting—with the Task Force recommending that we not do any more appointments at least until their work is closer to completion. It has been good to hear and see the debate. I have asked the RTF to post the discussion on their blog—if they don’t do that, I will try to get people to post it here.

Later this week I am off to ALA—I am chair elect of the Building and Equipment Section and assume those duties after this annual conference. As chair elect, one of my prime responsibilities has been to appoint committee members and chairs, but the database which one is suppose to use to do that has not functioned very well. I am hoping that I can get things finalized at the conference—when I can talk to folks face to face.