xiii Foreword I've often commented that if you had asked me what academic librarians would be doing in the 21 st century when I was in library school in the early 1980s, I would not have come close to predicting our future. Those of you who are of a certain age can recall what kind of work you were doing profession- ally twenty-five years ago or so. As a reference librarian, I was serving on a desk about 20 hours per week, working from a print reference collection and a first generation automated circulation system. I taught bibliographic instruction sessions using an overhead projector. I showed students sample pages from the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature and the library's green-bar serials holdings list. My exposure to computers and automation in library school was an assignment using an OCLC "beehive" terminal and another using punch cards and a knitting needle. The Walkman had just been introduced in 1980 and the first IBM PC in 1981. Change, indeed! As I pondered my first job move in this profession on the cusp of great change, I decided to apply for a position that involved supervision. I took that step and haven't looked back or been disappointed about my decision, although one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes humorously reminds me that, on some days, the administrative career path can be rocky: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." While it always gets a laugh, Allen's quote also provides a wonderful launching point to talk about the themes of this wonderful collection: our human resources. The library workforce plays a key role in our effort to remain relevant on our campuses. The impor- tance of building and sustaining a strong and talented workforce has taken on a sense of urgency in the early years of the 21 st century. It may not be too hyperbolic to say that human resource management and development is more critical than ever in our profession, and our success depends, in large part, on taking advantage of and responsibility for effective and creative recruitment, retention, and profes- sional development for all library staff. As we look at the demographics of our profession, the current economic environment, changing forms of scholarly communications and applications of technology, new modes of teaching and learning, and other factors that impact our staff and the work they do, we look to strategies and best practices as important tools to help us think creatively and resourcefully about the professional workforce. This volume provides a timely contribution to that toolkit by focusing on current trends in recruitment, retention, and professional development. Many common themes are threaded through the articles in this collection with succession plan- ning, mentoring, and recruitment and retention being the strongest. The chapters that focus on these topics contribute to our profession's national dialog around critical questions: How do we mentor and develop the next generation of library staff, particularly leaders? How can we to attract a diverse pool of potential workers to our profession, especially to hard-to-fill jobs in academic libraries? How do we