Katharine Macy, Trendsetter

In my previous life, I was an analyst who supported negotiations in the private sector. When I became a librarian, I realized how little formal training library workers received regarding negotiations. Even though libraries are negotiating for millions of dollars of resources with complex licensing agreements, most training happens informally on the job—I started by negotiating for resources in my areas (business and economics), and later took on roles around collection assessment and resource negotiation.

I began formally teaching negotiation skills to library workers in 2020, presenting and writing on how libraries can create relative bargaining power in vendor negotiations. I have also provided negotiation education to academic libraries, most recently for the Medical Library Association and for the Negotiation 101 and 201 series sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Research Coalition (SPARC).

For the last two years, l have been leading what I consider to be my passion project. It combines my business background with my career in higher education. While most library professionals learn how to negotiate on the job, I was fortunate to have more formalized training which I gained while doing my MBA at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, as well as experience gained while working in the private sector. I decided that librarians should have access to similar training.

I started by teaching workshops and webinars, but both of those options had scalability problems. I wanted to extend my reach. With the encouragement of others, I formed a multi-institutional team and was awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant from the Institute of Museum & Library Services to start the Open Negotiation Education for Academic Libraries (ONEAL) project.

The ONEAL project is a collaboration between IU Indianapolis, Grand Valley State University, and Belmont University to develop curricula and open educational resources to support negotiation education for academic libraries and Master of Library Science (MLS/MLIS) programs. These resources introduce negotiation theory and practical strategy in the context of negotiating for vendor agreements within academic libraries.

Thus far, we have held community forums, conducted research interviews, and designed and pilot-tested curriculum. The Foundations module of the curriculum is now live on the website of our project partner, SPARC. This open (freely available) curriculum is designed to allow for individual or group learning for working professionals. Materials are provided for graduate school faculty in MLIS/MLS programs to integrate into courses.

The lesson plans include video lectures, curated readings, hands-on exercises, and fictionalized case studies to practice negotiations based on real situations. Topics include an introduction to contracts and licensing, negotiation best practices, analyzing internal data, researching vendor positions, and negotiating for accessibility. (Learn more about how the curriculum can be used here.)

I am so proud to have this out in the world, and there is more to come. We are working to develop content for the Strategies module including a deeper dive into contracts, values-based prioritization, stakeholder engagement, and vendor management. We also are developing lessons around hot issues such as Al, privacy and surveillance, and text data mining.

Explore a selection of resources recommended by the ONEAL project team and community members.