Ginny Steel: Oh, a lot of things. First of all, the Libraries have a very fine reputation and the University has a very fine reputation. There are a lot of good things going on here in terms of strategic planning, of looking at the future of the University and looking at the future directions of the Libraries. I think that's very exciting. There's a lot of collaboration within the State of Washington among the libraries and the various universities.

I am really strongly committed to the concept of public education and so, while I've enjoyed being at a private university (most recently at MIT), I wanted to get back into a public university. We [public universities] fulfill a very important role for people who want to get an excellent education at a reasonable cost at [locations] that are around the country. So, I think public higher education institutions deserve a great deal of support.

And this part of the country attracted me. I've spent most of my adult life in the Southwest and really enjoyed my time there. Then I moved to the Northeast. It's a wonderful area, but I found myself really drawn to the idea of coming back to the West, to a different part of the West than I had lived in before. And the idea of coming to Pullman? It seems like a very nice environment. I've been telling people it strikes me as a nice university or college town that's very livable in a beautiful part of the country. Then, when I came and interviewed and met everybody, I felt that there is so much knowledge and expertise and commitment here that it was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

2. LW: How would you describe your management style?

GS: I try to be as open as possible. I like to know people in the organization. I like to talk about ideas and hear what other people think; to know what's going on and have an open door. So, I guess I would say [my style is] relaxed and engaged. And I think that we ought to have fun while we work.

3. LW: What is your educational and professional background? Why have you chosen higher education as a profession?

GS: I went to college at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. While there I thought about librarianship, as well as a number of other careers. But I didn't really end up deciding what I wanted to do. So I went back to Chicago and worked in the Graduate School of Business [at the University of Chicago] and in the department of Economics. Then I worked for a journal published in the field of economics by the University of Chicago Press. During that time I was continually reflecting on what I was doing and librarianship was sounding more and more interesting. So I applied to the University of Chicago library school and was accepted. Actually I started on a part-time basis and only went full-time when I got closer to the end of the program.

After finishing library school I did, for a brief time, work in a corporation in San Diego. I managed the library and did some other work. They didn't have much of a library, so a lot of the library-related work I did for them was online patent searches. I enjoyed that work, but found that I missed the environment of a university. I missed being around students and faculty. The corporate world has many things to recommend it, but there was an emphasis on product development and profit-making that….. I just didn't feel that I fit in. So, as I was looking for my first professional job, I restricted my search to academic libraries, and that's where I've been ever since.

4. LW: What do you find to be the most challenging aspects of working in this profession? The most rewarding? The most frustrating?

GS: Actually, I can [answer all of these] in one - which is to say, I think that Libraries are not well understood in our universities and in society in general. So, it is a challenge to try to help people understand the role that libraries play and the fact that we're not going away anytime in the foreseeable future. Even though the Web is here and there's a lot of information available, those of us who work in libraries know that there's a lot that isn't on the Web and there's a lot of misinformation on the Web. [Libraries] have tremendous resources in the form of print collections that will never be digitized and put on the Web. We have a role that will continue into the future to preserve information and make sure that information continues to be available. It's both challenging and frustrating, to be aware of how little of this is known and understood. But it's very rewarding to engage in a process that helps people understand why libraries are important and why there will [continue to] be libraries in the Twenty-First Century and for many years to come.

5. LW: What is the most surprising or unexpected thing you have encountered while working in this profession?

GS: [Laughing]…Oh, the things they don't teach you in library school! …. There've been a number of things. There've been things that I never dreamed I would end up doing. For instance, driving a forklift. We had a storage facility at the University of California-San Diego and were moving it from one building into another. I got to drive the forklift, which was a hoot. I loved it. I think everybody who likes things like that should get to try it sometime. [LW: Yeah, that's fun.] It was very fun. [LW: It could be your fallback job, just in case?] That's what I figure. I tell my husband I'm going to come back in my next life as a heavy equipment operator.

So, there are things like that. [Also there is] dealing with issues related to buildings and physical facilities. I never expected that I would spend so much time on that. In fact, when I was in library school they offered a course on planning library buildings and I thought about taking it. Then I very naively thought to myself, "Oh, buildings are only built every twenty or thirty years, and they're not renovated that often. I will never need this in my career." And, boy, have I lived to eat those words many times. Every place I've worked there have been building issues and projects to deal with. [LW: And this place is just the same.] Yes, I've already found that out.

6. LW: Given the current environment (with regularly announced budget cuts, staff reductions and disruptions) employee morale is bound to suffer. What ideas do you have for dealing with the morale problems that accompany these challenges?

GS: Well, I have various ideas, some serious and some not so serious. First of all, everybody in the Libraries should be very proud of all that they have been able to accomplish, and we need to have opportunities to celebrate those accomplishments. I know there are things [at WSU Libraries] like the Ice Cream Social, but I don't know whether there are any remarks made [at the events]. I think that, in meetings, we need to talk about the things that have happened, the achievements, and, you know, pat ourselves on the back because, hey, if we don't, who else is going to? Yes, we'll get expressions of appreciation from other people, but we really need to do it for ourselves too.

One of the first things we need to do is to engage in an in-depth planning process where we look at the strategic plan for the University and for the Libraries. We [need to] think about the constraints that we live with and the possibility of the budget continuing in the direction it has been going (which is not our preferred scenario, but may happen). [We need to ask ourselves] how we can plan so that, if we have a situation in which we will be making cuts, everybody understands what the change will be [and] there will be no last minute surprises. [We want to avoid saying] "we're just going to lop off this or close that." We want to have really thought about it ahead of time and brainstormed a lot about what, as an organization, we can stop doing to conserve our resources.

So, I would hope that, as difficult as that is, that might help people have more confidence that we, as an organization, will survive. We can deal with these bumps in the road and, really, will be able to do something positive with them. I also think that, in the long run, going out and raising support for the Libraries from donors and trying to get grants and gifts of many kinds will be very important to the long-term health of the organization. There's no immediate payoff in dollars or morale in that, but, over time, there's the real prospect that that can help.

7. LW: In a large organization units or departments can become almost provincial in outlook (especially given the stresses from budget cuts etc). What ideas do you have for developing a sense among employees that we are working for the library as a whole as opposed to working more specifically or exclusively for units or departments?

GS: This is an issue that I've spent a lot of time on at MIT. We have a very decentralized library structure [at MIT] with five large libraries and five small libraries. When I first arrived there was a sense that people were in silos. They would work with the people that they saw everyday, but they wouldn't work across the Libraries. So I worked very hard there with other colleagues to try to give out a message that the library embraces the concept of "systemness" and we need to think across boundaries if we're really going to be able to do what we need to do effectively. So we formed committees that spanned the units and, in fact, for the librarians we actually asked them to choose functional areas that they wanted to specialize in, as well as their collections responsibilities. For the functional areas there were committees that looked at whatever these functions were across all the Libraries that we had. That really helped. When people began to work together with colleagues they didn't necessarily see on a day-to-day basis they began to develop some other relationships, friendships, [and] to find out how things were done in other units that might be a little more efficient or be a work-around to a problem that they had encountered.

Now that's not to say that there isn't still a strong identification with the individual department or unit, but I think we've broken down some of the barriers to helping people understand that the Libraries, as a whole, are one organization and it's important to understand everything that's going on. Communication is another big piece of that. If there's not a lot of communication about what's going on across the Libraries, then it's very easy to lose sight of [each other] and to just say "oh, well, they're off in some other building and I don't know what they do and I don't care." But, if we have good, open communication and we talk about things, that really helps people understand the larger picture.

8. LW: This concern was raised by a member of the classified staff. In these times of dwindling resources and increased demand it is often all the average employee can do to perform his/her daily tasks and serve patrons. Given such time constraints, what would you say to an employee who was reticent about participating in the Library Council/Working Group model?

GS: Well, we need to have some conversations about what our culture is as an organization [and to ask] what are our roles and responsibilities within the organization. And [we need to] decide, if we are going to embrace the working group model, how we are going to do that to make it an inclusive model: what does that mean for every individual?

We also need to recognize that people's jobs will ebb and flow. There will be times that will be very busy and stressful and there will be [other] times in which [we will] be able to free up time to serve on a working group. So, it's not that everybody has to participate every single year on something, but they [do] need to build it in and to pay attention to the working groups so that they know what's going on with them and understand the issues and can participate.

The other piece of that, which is much more easily said than done, is that we have to learn how to stop doing things. It's much easier to do that as an individual than it is as an organization from what I've seen. It's really easy for us to say, "we're going to stop doing this [in general]," but then, when we say "we're going to close earlier or we're going to stop this process or do something else [specific]," the natural reaction is to get very uneasy about that. And yet, as individuals we make choices all the time about what our priorities are and how we're going to allocate our time during the day when we are at work. Often we end up having things kind of slide off the table that are lower priorities. It's hard to move from that individual prioritizing to do it as an organization, but I think that we have to recognize that we have to stop doing things. We need to give ourselves permission and, in fact, feel good when we say, "okay, we're not going to do this because it's not valuable anymore, either to our users or to us as an organization."

9. LW: What do you perceive as the future and ongoing relationship between the University and the Libraries here at Washington State?

GS: I think the Libraries are an essential part of the University. We are a real asset for the University because we provide services and resources to faculty, students and staff. Without the kinds of resources that we provide, the faculty couldn't do their work, the students couldn't learn what they need to learn, and, in many cases, the staff could not be successful. So, I think we're tremendously important. We're part of the infrastructure, or the "commons", part of the general assets of the University, and we need to be thought of that way. And, we need to help the University remember that - which is another challenge, but it's one that we can meet with some thought. If they really think about us in the way we think they should, they will understand.

10. LW: Is there anything about your home-life you would like us to know, e.g. family, pets, hobbies?

GS: Well, I have a husband [Doug Stewart] and [we have] two cats, named Spud and Bubba, who will be shortly making the move out here (not very happily, I fear). They get to fly across country again, but they'll survive. And Doug and I say we're "nesters", we like our home, we like to do things around the house and we like to have a comfortable place to live. So, we expect to do that here in this area and to see a lot of people at our house too, over time, once we get some new furniture. I told Doug, "we've got to get rid of some of this stuff. It's not worth moving." So that's part of my plan, we're going to buy furniture.

11. LW: Where were you born, raised?

GS: I was born in Chicago, Illinois. My parents actually lived in Valparaiso, Indiana, where we were until I was about seven years old. My father was transferred at that time to downtown Chicago, so we moved up to the northern suburbs. We were only there for about two or three years, then we moved to the southern suburbs because my father was transferred back to northern Indiana. Then, basically, I stayed there until I went to high school and then went off to college. So, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterner/Hoosier, as my husband likes to remind me.

12. LW: How do you, personally, deal with stress?

GS: (Laughing) Oh, you should ask my husband, instead of me. Let's see…. I try to keep a balanced perspective on things. If I feel stressed I try to acknowledge that I'm feeling stressed and to understand what it is that's really causing me to feel that way. If it's something at work I'll try to really figure out what it is and then talk about it. Talking helps! [I also try to see] if there are ways of approaching whatever it is.

I also like to do different things. I like to cook and to do things at home. I like to make jewelry and to read mysteries. There are various things that I'll try to do more of when feeling stressed, so I get my mind off of whatever is preoccupying it. [I try] to be as balanced about it as I can be. But, yeah, we all get stressed. If I had the answer to how to really deal with stress, I could make a lot of money. Then there would be a big endowment for the Libraries.