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I'm quite excited about this column because it touches upon so many interesting subjects at once: RUSA, professional marketing, collaborative blogging, and the Emerging Leaders program. I met Amy Barlow two ALA Midwinter Meetings ago in Dallas, and she immediately struck me as an enthusiastic new librarian who was going places. Judging from this excellent column written in collaboration with her entire Emerging Leaders team, they're all a credit to RUSA and the Emerging Leaders program itself.-Editor
The American Library Association's Emerging Leaders program "is a leadership development program which enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity."1 As part of this program, Emerging Leaders are put in small groups, and each group is assigned a project. Projects are proposed by ALA divisions, committees, and roundtables to address various needs within ALA. Each Emerging Leaders group works with whoever proposed the project in order to meet the project's goals and intended outcomes.
In 2012, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) Publications and Communications Committee proposed an Emerging Leaders project to create a blog for RUSA members. This blog would encourage professional conversations about emerging trends relevant to the members of RUSA. The blog would encourage RUSA members to share ideas about issues relevant to reference and user services. Amber Prentiss, committee chair, helped to instigate the project; Michael Hermann, incoming committee chair, served as the project's mentor for the Emerging Leaders team; and Andrea Hill served as the RUSA staff liaison. The goals and outcomes of this project, set forward by the Publications and Communications Committee in the original project proposal, are as follows: Emerging Leaders will make editorial decisions about blog content, style, and presentation; will recruit reference and user services library professionals to serve as contributors, as well as writing themselves (if individual members so desire); will develop recommendations for marketing the project; will develop recommendations for the blog's future; and will keep the RUSA Publications and Communications Committee apprised of their progress. Emerging Leaders Amy Barlow, Heather Love Beverley, Carrie Dunham-LaGree, Sarah Elichko, and Emily Hamstra were selected to work on the project....