An Australian info pro's four decade journey.

Not too long ago SLA member Susan Henczel was considering her career options when she and her husband purchased a beach front home in Ocean Grove, near Geelong, an hour's drive from Melbourne in southeastern Australia.

"Ralph and I built a house on the coast last year and it was going to be part of our 'gradually-moving-toward-retirement' phase of our lives, thinking about where and when we're going to retire," Henczel said. "We thought we would spend weekends down there for the next five or six years and then reduce the number of hours working. When, only four months after the house was finished, a job came up at Deakin University, which is 20 minutes from our beach house. We made a radical decision to move out of the city and down to the coast, and I would move back into libraries."

Henczel had never been far from libraries since she entered the profession in 1973. The job opening at Deakin arose while she was working for CAVAL, an academic library consortium in Melbourne, which she had worked for during the previous ten years. She held many positions within the organization, including training and consortia manager and business development manager. Over the years, she was involved in the development of pricing models for products and services, workforce planning for specific projects, the development of consultancy proposals and teams, business and strategic plans, initiating and managing international partnerships and consulting work.

Among her primary achievements at CAVAL, she considers the development of CAVAL's training program from four courses to an international program of more than 100, which included the establishment of relationships with international consortia, associations, trainers and consultants, and the creation of CAVAL's consultancy business and its international consultant register.

"Working at CAVAL showed me what it was like on the other side of the fence," said Henczel. "During this time I worked outside libraries to provide them with the support services they needed, such as consulting, training, and opportunities to collaborate. I was also fortunate to be part of a senior management team that provided me with opportunities to interact with the board of directors, lead board committees, and participate in high-level strategic and business planning processes."

And during her last couple of years at CAVAL, she purchased the beach house. But then the opportunity opened up last year at Deakin, which she accepted and began work last September. Henczel's duties are considerable: she provides library services to the faculty of Science and Technology and to researchers across all faculties, as well as managing the Waterfront Campus library, which is one of four campus libraries and located in the city of Geelong.

"I'm excited about this job. It's a great environment--the campus is contained within architecturally converted woolstores and the library overlooks the water. I have a client services staff of ten. I also have a cross-campus faculty liaison team of four. The university has four campuses-one in Melbourne at Burwood, two in Geelong, and one in Warrnambool about 200 kilometers along the Victorian coast. We have liaison librarians at each of those campuses, and I manage the Science and Technology team."

When she was at CAVAL, Henczel wasn't really putting out feelers for jobs. But when her current post at Deakin University in Geelong became available, many people knew she had recently built a house nearby and made sure she knew the position was open. In Henczel's 35-year career, she has been employed in all types of libraries, including regional and state public libraries, academic libraries, and special libraries in defence, sport, and energy.

"I have a fondness for the special library," Henczel said. "It's a perspective. It's a way of looking at things, and there are a lot of things that come out of special libraries that many, many other libraries can learn from. I had a discussion with Janice Lachance a few years ago when she was in Sydney, and we were talking about how SLA was attracting more and more members from academic library environments because of the nature of the collections they're looking after--like special libraries and special interest needs--and there's such a close correlation in what people are doing in special libraries and what they are doing in academic libraries. For me it hasn't been such a big jump, but the environment and daily work are quite different. With the consortium [at CAVAL] I was focusing on earning money. I had to match earnings with what was budgeted for the business in the coming year."

Australia and New Zealand 

The SLA Australia and New Zealand Chapter is one of the newest units within the global organization and its formation is in large part, due to the hard work and leadership of Henczel. She has been a member of SLA since the early 1990s when she was conducting research for her Master's degree. At that time, there was no local chapter in Australia. Information pacific fell under SLA's Hawaii-Pacific Chapter.

"That was an interesting situation," Henczel recalled. "The Hawaii-Pacific Chapter is very active, but it's all very local. In 2003, they invited me to their annual business meeting and dinner, and we talked about what the libraries were doing and how that might mesh with what the chapter is doing. I realized then there was not enough critical mass to make anything work across the distance, so that got me thinking about starting a new chapter. There was quite a bit of support here when I started talking to people because they felt that the activities and events offered by SLA would provide valuable support for information professionals in this region."

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In late 2003 and early 2004, SLA CEO Janice Lachance had a number of conversations with Henczel on how a local SLA chapter in Australia and New Zealand could work effectively. Henczel lauds Lachance's supportiveness.

"I really appreciated her availability and willingness to discuss issues as they arose." Henczel said.

The SLA Australia and New Zealand Chapter took about a year to form.

"We had to go through the process of creating a petition and getting the required number of signatures," Henczel said. "Considering that it was all work done in people's spare time, credit must go to everyone who made things happen, people are busy these days and, yet, they always manage to find time to make the important things happen."

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The new chapter was ratified in June 2004 and Henczel served as the first chapter president from 2004-2005. She is an honorary member of the chapter board and participates in chapter planning and activities. The current membership of Henczel's chapter is about 100 and equally split between the two countries.

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"We have some pockets that are pretty active," she said, "but members are pretty spread out so it's hard to develop activities. We take advantage for information conferences to meet. It's important to understand what the issues are. When I was working for the library consortium, we were always looking for ways we could support working in libraries.

In these early years of the chapter, Henczel and other members have not had an opportunity to develop new programs for the chapter due to the vast distance between the two countries. Of late, however, members are beginning to find ways to network more effectively and to bring initiatives of other chapters to Australia and New Zealand.

"The activities we've run have been networking activities. We have a member who organizes regular coffee mornings in Sydney. We have dinners and breakfasts associated with conferences where we think there will be a reasonable number of people attending. If we're traveling around, we'll always contact the members in those places to see if we can connect for a coffee or dinner. I think it'll be that way until we have a few more new members on board. The major activities we're looking at right now include a membership drive, and that's going to be done comprehensively across both countries."

Henczel and her fellow chapter members are hoping to reach the 250-300 membership mark over the next couple of years; a goal they believe they can achieve.

"We have to make sure that we promote SLA in the right way," she said. "There's been a perception amongst some that it would be disloyal to join SLA while they are a member of the national professional association in Australia. ALIA is the Australian Library and Information Association. I've had to explain to people that I've always been a member of both associations and receive different types of support from each. The upside of this is I'm organizing the first joint ALIA-SLA event."

Henczel has been working with Sue Hutley, ALIA's executive director, on this event, which she hopes will break down these perceptions and help information professionals realize that the two associations can work side-by-side and gain different perspectives from each other. The joint activity will be held in Adelaide, Melbourne and sydney in September and will feature SLA President Stephen Abram, along with local speakers. Although targeted toward special librarians, the event is open to anyone.

Henczel has been traveling to SLA events overseas since she attended the Global 2000 Worldwide Conference on Special Librarianship Information in Brighton, UK, and attends the SLA Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO regularly. She presented her first CE program in San Antonio in 2001 and, since then, has conducted courses on information audit and business competencies for librarians.

"I enjoy the diversity of the people and the opportunities at the annual conferences," she said. "As well as the presentations, it's the unofficial gatherings I enjoy. I go to as many dinners and open houses that I can--to have off-the-record conversations with people and find out how things really are and what people are doing."

Henczel represents SLA on the IFLA Standing Section Committee on Statistics and Evaluation, is Convener of SLA's International Information Exchange Caucus and was made a Fellow of SLA in 2006. She also is a member of Librarians Without Borders and the United Nations (Asia) Consultant Roster.

INFO PROS

As Henczel and her associates build the membership of their new chapter, she sees three major issues impacting the Australian information industry. Like many other countries, one of the critical issues is the aging population of info pros. Most library organizations are moving into workforce planning mode and library schools and professionals are working together to actively promote the profession in order to attract high quality and sustainable candidates to the profession.

"According to our most recent census data, over 65 percent of librarians are over 45 years of age," Henczel noted. "During the next ten years we're going to have a lot of people leaving the workforce, lose a lot of knowledge and key skills and in many parts of the country we will be unable to replace the people who leave."

Henczel said that the rising cost of providing information resources and maintaining a physical library in relation to its perceived value is another critical issue. The third is the emergence of new technologies and changing user expectations with regard to service delivery. Henczel spoke about an experience she had at Deakin. During her first orientation, she observed the behavior of the students, and how they interacted with technology and what their expectations were of library services. She said it was a real eye-opener.

"The students showed me two things. Firstly, with their mobile phones and their laptops, the students have it covered: their social networks and access to course materials, etc. Secondly, they don't want to know about things until they don't want to know about things until lthey need to--the JIT generation (Just-In-Time). This impacts how and when we deliver information to them. I have always known that in any library environment it's important to communicate with the users in a way that both appeals to them and suits the way they prefer to communicate. Right now for me, it's the academic library environment and the users are students, staff and researchers.

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"With the generational differences we are trying to identify ways to align our services with what the students want, but we also have older academic staff and researchers, and there are some mature-aged students as well. Rational reflection tells me that, as a profession, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by trying to meet all of their expectations with regard to technology rather than persevere with the 'tried and true' traditional methods of delivering information they need, and have them adjust when they need to. We seem to be at risk of trying to be all things to all people and, with the limited resources we have, we must make sensible decisions about how and when to adopt new technologies, particularly if they duplicate and don't replace existing services."

Her library is one of a network of physical libraries on each campus of the university and has a very large virtual library that includes online databases, online research and reference collections, and electronic journals and ebooks. Henczel and her staff serve a diverse clientele that includes students, staff and alumni, and also the localcommunity. The university population is roughly 30,000 alone.

ORIGINS

Henczel is amongst those who fell into the profession by accident. She married at age eighteen. Her first husband was in the Australian Army. Part of the military lifestyle was moving from one base to another. Each move would bring Henczel in search of a new job in a new city.

"Each time we moved I trawled the local papers for opportunities," she remembers. "One of the first jobs I applied for was at the local university as a library assistant and that's the job I got in 1973. My job was filing catalogue cards (above the rod!) and inter-library loans. This was in the very early days of our national interlending scheme, and finding who had what and working out how to borrow the items, particularly when based in a Queensland country town, was a challenge."

While she spent many years working, Henczel also raised a family of three daughters. She entered library school in 1992, graduating four years later with a Bachelors' degree and continued straight on to complete her Master's degree just a year and a half later.

"I was fortunate that I made some significant connections while conducting research for my Master degree. One of those was Guy St. Clair, who saw potential in my information audit research and sent my work to his publisher. Having a book published opened many doors for me in my chosen profession and also in the broader business environment, allowing me to train and lead consultant teams in the UK, USA, Asia and Australia."

The book is The Information Audit: A Practical Guide. Throughout the years, Henczel has shared her knowledge in many books, publications, magazines, and conference presentations.

"I have had some amazing bosses who probably saw in me something that could add value to the profession. The encouraged and supported me to study and to become invelved in professional activities outside the workplace" she said. "They knew I was passionate about my work and that I enjoyed it. Most remain friends to this day. In my first library job, when I was 18 years old, one of the researchers I was working with was a fellow named Bruce Dawe--now a well-known Australian poet. We became good friends and I learned from him the value that librarians provide in the way of researching and sourcing materials for someone researching a topic. It was a wonderful start for me. He took me seriously, and he made sure I understood the importance of the support I was giving him. Looking back, in each job I've had, there was always someone who gave me particular skills, who gave me an opportunity to do something I wouldn't have done otherwise, or encouraged me in a particular way, that led me to my next job."

And in turn. Henczel has passed her knowledge on and been supportive of others' endeavors in the field.

"I'm conscious in finding opportunities for staff to find new skills and to become passionate about something that they do in their job," she said. "Working with teams over the years instilled an awareness that individuals have strengths and weakness--as a team you need to nurture the strengths rather than agonize over weaknesses. Many of the high stress levels in organisations are caused by people doing work that they don't enjoy or that they are not well-suited to."

Although difficult at the time, Henczel said the advantage of changing jobs so often was that it gave her a broader perspective of different environments, different priorities, and in different types of libraries.

"I feel like I've come full circle--my very first library job was in a university library and now I'm back again and looking forward to the challenges, new networks and friends that this job will bring."

Susan Henczel

Joined SLA: 1994 as a student

Job: Manager Faculty Library Services (Science and Technology) and Manager Waterfront Campus Library

Employer: Deakin University, Geelong Australia

Experience: 35+ years

Education: Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, 2006; Master of Business (Information Technology) RMIT University, 1997; Bachelor of Business (Information Management) RMIT University, 1995; Associate Diploma of Social Science (Library & Information Studies), Box Hill TAFE, 1982.

First Job: Laboratory assistant

First LIS Job: Library assistant, School of Resource Materials, Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, (now the University of Southern Queensland), Toowoomba Queensland, Australia

Your Biggest Challenge: Balancing work and home life, as well as finding time to do all the other stuff I want to do

FORREST GLENN SPENCER is President of SpencerConnects LLC, an information service and public relations company based in the Washington, D.C., area. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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