My good friend, Roy Tennant, has just accepted a sweet job at OCLC, and he didn’t even have to leave Northern CA! I don’t quite understand exactly what he’ll be doing there, but I know that anything he works on is going to be great. OCLC has been making some good hires lately and I can only hope that this will lead to better products, services and innovation.
Roy writes about his new job here:
Certainly change is constant. But there are times of minor changes and times of greater ones. For me and for libraries this is a time of great change. On a personal level, I am leaving the California Digital Library for OCLC. This is bittersweet for me, since I dearly loved my time at CDL and continue to be impressed with the caliber of my colleagues there and what they are accomplishing. But for me it is time to move on to new challenges.
With OCLC I have an incredible opportunity to be active on a broader stage. OCLC is big enough to put libraries on the Internet map in a way that none of us could achieve alone. Open WorldCat is but one example of many. I will be working as a Senior Program Manager with the RLG Programs unit of OCLC Research and Programs. I will report to Jim Michalko, who in turn reports to Lorcan Dempsey. I have met virtually all of the top management team at OCLC and I’ve been very impressed. They know where things are heading and they’re determined to position libraries in a way that will do us the most good.
There are a lot of people I admire in this profession, but none more than I admire Roy Tennant. He is the embodiment of class and generosity (on top of being a first-rate speaker and writer whom I have tried to emulate in both of those arenas). I have been so lucky to benefit from his mentoring, support and friendship. OCLC is damn lucky to have him and I hope they know it.
Congratulations!!!
Aside from offering congratulations to Roy on a cool new opportunity, I think we’re all lucky when OCLC makes these hires. The more they develop services that libraries really need, and think creatively about our fit in our increasingly webby society, the more we all benefit. So, you know, YAY for everyone!
The DigCCurr Advisory Committee discussed in detail last weekend the values and competencies that should be promoted in a curriculum about curation (of information in electronic form). Roy embodies and espouses the core values we identified in our brainstorming sessions. He is agile, he is curious, he is service-oriented. I am delighted he will be working on a much larger stage and I join everyone in wishing him great luck and great pleasure in his new venture. Congratulations, Roy!! (See you soon in Minneapolis.)