Phillip Berg, Executive Director Morris Automated Information Network (MAIN)

My name is Phillip Berg and I have served as Executive Director of the Morris Automated Information Network (MAIN) in Morristown since June, 2015. My diverse work history includes positions at the BELS Consortium for School Libraries, Montclair PL, Felician University, St. Peter’s University, West Point Museum, and both pharmaceutical industry and logistics company data management departments. I hold an MLIS degree from Rutgers University, a BA in History from Manhattanville College, a NJ school library media specialist certificate, and professional librarian certificates from NJ and NY. In the past several years I have served on LibraryLinkNJ’s Delivery Task Force and Discount Advisory Group. In 2016 I was appointed to serve on the NJLA Technology Task Force and the PLA John Iliff Award Jury. I am a member of NJLA, ALA, PLA, LibraryLinkNJ, and the Morris County Chamber of Commerce. I regularly attend conferences, webinars and meetings for each organization.

As a potential member of the NJLA Executive Board I would of course look to support the current Strategic Plan. I believe the “Membership” goal is particularly important and that we should challenge our colleagues to think about new ways to increase overall membership as well as conference attendance. Engaging and listening to newer members of our profession might be especially illuminating.

Other areas where I believe we can collectively come together to improve are educating elected officials, businesses, and the public at large about libraries by having a simple message that can be broadcast by all librarians in the Garden State until we are blue in the face. An organized, concerted PR campaign to help evolve the public perception of our profession would potentially be costly in the short-term, but could be immeasurably beneficial in the long-term. We might investigate partnering with other states’ professional organizations to help offset costs. I believe that we can better prepare librarians to become supervisors/directors by working with higher education to create an online academy or certification program which covers vital business principles like accounting, management strategies, marketing, public relations, NJ purchasing regulations, and NJ library law. Supporting school libraries is essential, but convincing school administrators to finance them is the tricky part. It might be possible to design a study to measure the connection between school library funding and student achievement with the help of experienced library scientists. Again, partnering with other states could help defray costs associated with such a study. And finally, I would advocate for the lobbying of vendors to design better user experiences for our patrons and students that mimic non-library products already on the market. Patrons and students are more often than not preprogrammed to expect to have everything at their fingertips from one screen or search box, but that user experience often changes once utilizing an eBook or online catalog platform. Vendors appear to be slowly moving in the right direction, but with the help of professional organizations like NJLA, we can advocate for change more efficiently when vendors realize there is money to be made by competing to create new and dynamic discovery-like products. I would be happy to further explain any of these platform proposals.

In summation, I believe my ideas, tenacity, and unique skillset could be of great use to NJLA and it would be my honor to potentially serve as an Executive Board member. Thank you for your consideration.