INLS 131
Management of Information Agencies
Fall 1999

Getting Ready for Class of Nov. 15, 1999

CAREER PLANNING SPEAKER SERIES

PREPARING FOR FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION

We have two wonderful speakers today -- both from the public sector. I hope to balance this with two speakers on another day from the private sector. In any event, I hope you've learned through this course that you can learn about management from many different sources.

One of our speakers, Dale Gaddis, heads the Durham County Public Library System. Her title is Library Director. Our second speaker is Deborah Pedersen, Information Resource Specialist for LEARN NC. She is responsible for the Links Library.

LEARN NC stands for the Learners' and Educators' Assistance and Resource Network of North Carolina, a statewide network of educators who use Internet technologies "to deliver professional development opportunities and learning resources that increase student achievement, enhance teacher proficiencies, and foster community participation in the educational process," to quote from LEARN's official literature. Deborah has 15 years as a librarian/media specialist in grades K-12 and 3 years as a full-time technology specialist and is now serving the state K-12 educational community as an Internet librarian.

Please explore the LEARN site in preparation for the visit. If you can make the time to do and haven't already visited, a trip to the main library in Durham is worthwhile and will be fun. It will be interesting to see what you observe about that organization -- how it's physically organized as well as the services it offers.

I'm also assigning a reading to prepare us for talking about issues of management budgeting and control in the following week.

Daft, Richard, "Management Control Systems," chapter 20 (pp. 656-681) of his Management. Dryden Press, 1998.

Note this is a textbook reading and it's dense. Please plan to spend enough time on it between now and Monday, the 22nd, that you have a good understanding of the material. Be prepared for a test of your knowledge of some kind, probably ungraded, but still ...