The Council on Library and Information Resources is delighted to announce CLIR Institutes, New Zealand, a program with international scope, focused on learning from diverse perspectives, contributing to connecting people across national boundaries and working towards a shared vision of the present and the future.
CLIR welcomes applications to one of the three inaugural New Zealand Institutes: https://institutes.clir.org/
Auckland: October 30-November 3, 2023
Wellington: November 6-10, 2023
Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland): November 13-17, 2023
This new series of institutes builds upon and furthers the models of the highly regarded Frye Leadership and Leading Change Institutes, which CLIR co-sponsored with EDUCAUSE for over 20 years. More than 800 professionals worldwide in the fields of higher education and cultural heritage have participated in the Frye and Leading Change Institutes, whose resounding call to “lead from where you are” remains at the core of this newest iteration.
The goals of the CLIR Institutes mirror these previous versions, incorporating an international scope, offering diverse perspectives, connecting people across national boundaries, and encouraging participants to work toward a shared vision of the present and the future.
Each institute has a similar structure but a slightly different theme. Together, they look to help create three international cohorts of knowledge professionals, who will focus on leading through creating, preserving, providing access to knowledge, and educating in the fields of IT, cultural heritage, and academia. The vision is to build networks both within and across these sectors.
Each of the three inaugural institutes has a similar structure but a slightly different theme, and will feature in-person virtual conversations with leaders from around the world. The deadline for applying is October 1, 2023.
For more information about the Institute’s goals, curriculum, cost, and application process, visit our website at https://institutes.clir.org/. Questions? Contact us at institutes@clir.org. We look forward to your joining us in New Zealand.
Please see below a reflective overview from the president of CLIR, Dr. Charles Henry.
CLIR Institute: Aotearoa
At the turn of this century CLIR, in partnership with Emory University and EDUCAUSE, inaugurated the Frye Leadership Institute. Early drafts of the grant proposal that established the institute called the new program the Frye Digital Leadership Institute, which succinctly conveyed its impetus and focus: to develop better ways of organizing and managing scholarly information and resources in the emerging digital age. Traditional professional boundaries were impeding a more flexible, effective higher education workplace wherein librarians, information technologists, faculty, and staff could collaborate, sharing new competencies that the new era required. The Frye Leadership Institute would provide a vibrant annual forum to identify new means and methods of knowledge management, with the goal of Frye students returning to their institutions motivated to instantiate these more effective practices.
Two features of the foundational Frye Leadership Institute seem especially striking today. One is the program’s explicit response to an existential challenge—digital technology—that resembled traditional scholarly information models but was sufficiently different to warrant a new kind of intervention. And secondly, by establishing the Frye Leadership Institute, this challenge was perceived as manageable, with sufficient multidisciplinary analysis and appropriately re-fashioned expertise. A two week, intensive retreat could thoughtfully contribute to the aegis of this new world.
CLIR Institute: Aotearoa is framed within the scaffold of the Frye Leadership Institute and its successor program the Leading Change Institute. But at the quarter mark of the 21st century it is situated in a world of unprecedented and wrenching challenges. Climate change, with its rising seas, wildfires, draughts, and infestations; pandemics; the rise of authoritarian oppressive states in which censorship, violent conformity, and the squelch of fact and history pervade: the cumulative effect of these existential threats is the effacement of our humanity.
What began as a leadership program intent on effective management of our knowledge comes round today to a program that must urgently explore and develop guidelines for a world in which knowledge, and our agency, can seem as fragile as chalk portraits in a late autumn rain. What is leadership today? What does it mean in an environment so roiled and corrosive? What qualities and character should define a leader? These questions animate CLIR Institute: Aotearoa as they did its predecessors. As before, we will provide a platform for collaborative inquiry and new insight, and as before we will predicate its mission on the aspiration of our students’ return to the workplace wiser, motivated, and resolute.
