 Hello, my name is Zhivu Xie from University of California Riverside Library. Today I will represent my colleagues at Virginia Tech, Los Alamos National Lab, University of Colorado Boulder, and University of North Texas to give an introduction to our new initiative to build a joint professional development institute for librarians. The project is founded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through its Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. IMLS has previously founded many professional development programs, both to develop critical skills and data AI, and boost research capabilities. This project will leverage and complement these programs, but also has its specific emphasis. Our focus is to cultivate collaborative library scholars. So what do we mean by collaborative library scholars? We believe this is a distinctive type of research librarianship that more closely aligned with the ARL 2033 vision. The vision states that by 2033, the library should have shifted from its role as a knowledge service provider to become a collaborative partner. The ARL vision indeed makes it crystal clear that a regular service provider, as what we are right now, does not qualify as a partner. Otherwise there's no need for any transformation right. This is especially true for service providers who offer commodity services that are readily available. For example, utility companies. When was the last time we heard a Silicon Valley startup retains its utility companies to the board? This doesn't mean water and electricity are not important to the business. They are, but they are relatively easy to buy from the open market than other critical and proprietary technologies or finance. So it does not make good business sense to let utility companies hold stake or even make strategic decisions for the startup. Similar dynamics also plays out in the library's relation with campus researchers. So unless we can provide something that are both unique, critical and sought after, it is unlikely that will be treated as a serious partner on campus research and learning. On the other hand, partnership with our campus constituents cannot be gained by unilaterally claiming that we are already their partner without them knowing it, right? It must be earned through hard work and impact. In a business setting, a partnership is often signified by the formal title. For example, a partner in a law firm or a voting member on the board of directors in a corporation. Then what signals a library's partnership in research and teaching? Here is a non-existive list of possible library and partner titles. We can be our faculty members, co-instructors, co-pis, co-authors, and or master's PhD committee members, co-chairs or members. But there are times that even titles like these are not a very good indicator for partnership. For example, some academic disciplines regularly produce papers with tens if not hundreds of co-authors. Junior researchers and lab technicians were far from research partners are included as co-authors. In other disciplines, it's not unusual that the single author will only thank important research partners in the footnote or in the acknowledgement section. What's more important than title is the nature of the substantive contribution what makes to the partnership. Using this as a yardstick, we should consider, are we librarians contributing the routine stuff or commodity stuff that can be easily obtained from airsware? Often referred to as the supporting role, or are we providing unique and critically important research components that can only be done by a specialist? Or are we generating innovative ideas and lead our faculty partners throughout implementation? The Joint Professional Development Institute wants to cultivate librarians who go beyond the supporting role and reach either the specialist or leader level in their research partners. Let's sum it up whether this kind of research partnership is ever visible for a library. We believe it is and have solid proofs. Indeed, many of us know a few very good librarian scholars who are extremely smart and highly productive in terms of scholarly output. Many of them are also highly collaborative. Their occurrences feel more random or hidden myths. It is not usual to find a large cohort of such librarian scholars working in the same place as the result of a deliberate effort to cultivate them. Virginia Tech Libraries turns out to be one such place with a deep research culture permeating the whole organization. At Virginia Tech Libraries, many librarians have co-authored papers published on top journals with 10 plus impact factors. They have taught independent or as co-instructors for credit-bearing core courses in various academic departments from computer science to biochemistry as fully qualified instructors of record. And they have chaired or co-chaired masters or PhD committees. If we only use co-PI as a yardstick, for example, since 2015, Virginia Tech Library staff have submitted about 120 external funding proposals with VT faculty members, requesting about $30 million from a wide range of federal, state, and private funding agencies. Two-thirds librarians have submitted at least one such proposal. About a third of these proposals are collaborations with the College of Engineering faculty and a quarter with College of Science and another quarter with Liberal Arts and Human Sciences faculty. So the coverage of the library's research partnership is fairly even and consistent. The librarians' role are also quite prominent. In these proposals, a little less than half of the proposals are led or co-led by library staffs. About a third of the specialist co-PI's are librarians. And a little bit less than half of the supporting co-PI's are librarians. In the past eight years, Virginia Tech Libraries have formed about $5 million external funding from a wide range of funding agencies from NIH, Department of Agriculture, to Mellon Foundation. This even including NASA's career awarded to library staff as the PI. Even without an iSchool, if we compare the number of IMOs and National Leadership Grant and the Laura Bush 21st Century program grants won by Virginia Tech Library staff with large library association and universities with an iSchool. Virginia Tech Libraries can still rank the 18th, indicating the library's research strength may be comparable to that of an iSchool. So all this is to prove that first, collaborative library scholars is not a pipe dream, and second, it can be cultivated. Virginia Tech must have done something right, and other libraries may be able to learn something from it. This is why we initiate this joint professional development institute, starting from four ARL member libraries. So what pain points does the project intend to address? We mainly target these five barriers. The first is the lack of research skills and knowledge to seek, manage and effectively utilize research funding. The second is the lack of confidence in the mentorship. The third is the lack of growth opportunities and experience engaging in multidisciplinary research and scholarship. The fourth is the lack of startup funding, and the fifth is the lack of designated time release to focus on research endeavors. Unlike many prior efforts that approach the professional development from a library association or an iSchool program. This project emphasizes the organizational approach that the library administration needs to commit sufficient resolution and resources and also grant their staff sufficient freedom to pursue growth in various ways. Project co-pIs include library deans, ADs and AOLs to ensure that administrative buy-in and participating libraries have committed sufficient cost share to invest in their own librarians. Although initiated by four ARL member libraries, much of the institute's curriculum and educational activities are open to anyone. The practicum portion of the institute, however, are only open to the libraries who are willing to consider making organizational accommodations to cultivate the research culture. This is indeed one distinctive feature of this program that we put a lot of emphasis on organizational changes that must be implemented from top down. So the institute is designed as open as possible. The curriculum includes three parallel levels that allows participants to join at any entry point they feel comfortable with. For new researchers, a free online 10-unit master of library science level research methods course will be offered on Coursera by University of North Texas iSchool faculty for anyone to audit free of charge. We will also produce a series of online videos and discussion forums to boost the research confidence through case studies. Topic include balancing service and scholarship in a library career, how individuals bridge skill gaps, research partnership with academic faculty including both arts, humanities, social sciences and STEM researchers. Because there are no easy answer to this workshop topics and each success story contain unique factors and circumstances, we intend to build a comprehensive library of success stories covering diverse experience with special emphasis on those with BIPOC and underrepresented groups. Part three of the level one activities include a series of guided workshop intended to prepare participants for competitive external grants, followed by small group mentoring. Many modules must be adapted for local circumstances and will have significant hands on components, therefore cannot be pre-recorded and shared outside of participating institute. The topics at this stage include navigating local research administration and family agencies, writing a grant proposal, learning from successful grant proposal, grant budget and finance, managing research project as PI co-PIs. Your local office of sponsor programs may be involved in this at this stage. The part four of level one activities include self-organized research interest group, journal clubs and or writing groups. This project will provide opportunities for participants to exchange ideas and facilitate the formation of peer mentoring group, but we will not interfere with their implementations. At level two, following VT libraries model of collaborative research grant, participating librarians will provide more than $240,000 seed funding for their selected employees to conduct at least 48 collaborative research projects with their local faculty with particular emphasis on attracting participation from diverse backgrounds. The joint professional development institute will facilitate the matchmaking of research interests, expectations and expertise between librarian research and their local faculty. At level three, we have budgeted funding to support six library professionals from Virginia Tech, University of Colorado Boulder and University of North Texas libraries to take about three months full-time release from work to conduct a focused research and produce concrete scholar work. The scholarly work may be in the form of manuscripts, grant proposals, data sets and or experimental results. Each participant may negotiate with their home library on how to spread the three months full-time research leave throughout the year. For example, three months during the summer, during the winter or half time for six months will take several days off per week throughout the year, etc. The joint professional development institute through project staff and external experts will provide them with group and one-on-one career and academic mentorship assistance. If you do not already work in any of the Co-PI libraries, are there opportunities to participate? Indeed, yes. And there are a variety of format of participation. As an individual, anyone can join level 1.1, 1.2 and 1.4 which are designed as open as free events. There are no paperwork for application or selection. You learn and participate on your own terms at your own pace that suits your own work-life balance needs. Level 1.3 must be adapted for local circumstances because research administration varies from institute to institute. Participation of this level of activities is spared down at institutional level. If you do not work at Virginia Tech, University of Colorado Boulder, University of North Texas, or University of California Riverside, please speak with your library administration and urge them to join us. Co-PI libraries are more than happy to share our experience and often our local organizational adjustments necessary to cultivate research grant work among library workers will be shared. The same applies to level 2 and level 3 because there are costs involved and our current budget model is that each participating library commit money to be used on their own library's development. Participation at this level also needs to be at the institutional level and each library commits budget to support their own library employees activities. Each library can pick and choose which level they are comfortable with participating. For example, University of California Riverside will not be participating level 3 that grants research leave, but will participate level 2 to provide seed funding to its own library and faculty. The same may apply to your library if your dean or UL decides to join us. This is our current project organizational structure. As you can see, it includes both library administrators, iSchool educators, and domain scholars. We welcome you and your library to join us soon. How do you get in touch? Please visit us at jointpdi.github.io. Thank you very much.