In an attempt to stay focused and not allow the urgent-immediate/important things box out consideration of not-urgent but important things, I’m trying to dedicate Thursday mornings to reading/thinking/considering/writing/pondering. I might not make every week, but I can at least try. My management seminars call this “big rocks” — if you fill your bucket with small pebbles you’ll never have room for the big rocks. Put the big rocks in first and the pebbles will fill in the spaces.

Through blogging or twittering I’m going to try to make this social: keep others informed on what I’m reading, invite discussion, solicit suggestions. Big Rocks could mean anything that helped me in my job, but right now IT governance and remodeling on campus is a big topic, so I’m starting there.

Last Thursday’s goal was reviewing the IT@Illinois Concept papers and Chuck’s Concepts about Concepts white paper. I only got through the Illinois Tomorrow paper, but I have three pages of typed comments. (My first week and I’m already behind.)

This Thursday I might be traveling, so I want to read a few more things ahead of time to ponder in the car. I hope to get through the rest of the concept papers.

The next goal is to review the Library Service Models: reskimming the Budget+ report from last April about the future of the library, and then reading the New Service Models (NSM) Action Plan (April 2009). I care about the university libraries, as a student and staff member, so this is interesting to me. But in a larger sense, I see the NSM program as a resource to better understand IT@IL. Like campus IT, the library was faced with “do more with less” and has spent the last two years in a process of evaluation, communication, and now action. They’re essentially ahead of the game for what we will face as IT@IL. What can we learn from their experiences? How far apart should IT@IL and the library be? (You probably can already guess my thoughts on this.)

There’s a talk/discussion on Friday about the Action Plan but I’ll be out of town. Will someone go and take notes for me?

IT@IL people: Even if you don’t read anything about the NSM, check out these three things discussed at the Feb 4, 2009 faculty meeting: www.library.uiuc.edu/nsm/spring2009update.html. From the PPT: Guiding Principles: Interdependence, Resilience, Deep engagement in research and teaching communities, Commitment to building strong, responsive collections. That directly parallels many of the IT@IL concepts.

If any of my library friends are reading this, do you have pointers to any other ‘must reads’ that have come out of the library program? Anything good from the project teams bubble up to the top?