New PALS Director: Stephen Elfstrand

Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Stephen Elfstrand, the new Executive Director of PALS. I started August 1^st, and my head is still spinning.  I have a lot to learn about ALEPH, the consortium, and MnSCU just for starters.  Also, moving from one town to another is both an exciting adventure and a burdensome chore. Anyone want to buy a house in Eau Claire, Wisconsin???

For those of you that didn’t see me when I interviewed, I came from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire where I was the Head of Systems and Circulation and was tenured as an Associate Professor in the McIntyre Library. At UWEC we ran Voyager, SFX, Metalib and ILLiad, so Aleph is new territory for me. However, I have been involved in library systems since my internship with IBM while I was in Library School at the University of Texas at Austin. Previous positions include Automation Librarian at the University of Wisconsin - River Falls, Technical Service Manager at the James J Hill Reference Library, Sr. Librarian at Unisys Defense Systems Division. In all I have more that 25 years in the library automation field.

I have a previous connection to PALS as well. I was an undergraduate here at Mankato State University and worked in the music library as PALS was being created. Later, when working for Unisys Corp., I advocated for the use of PALS for the Unisys Corporate libraries in North America as the original P{ALS ran on Unisys Equipment. We did in fact bring up a PALS instance at Unisys. While at James J. Hill, I worked closely with Dale Carrison and we migrated to PALS; I believe we were the first private library in PALS.

So it was with great interest that I greeted the announcement for the Executive Director position. Managing a large library system, back in my home state, in the town where I was an undergraduate, seemed like the ideal next step in my career. In addition, I was so impressed with the staff I met while interviewing, I thought to myself “these are my kind of people”. So it was with real pleasure that I accepted the job when it was offered to me.

As I said, I have a lot to learn and I am looking forward to meeting and working with the MNPALS consortium as well as others in the State and region.

I hope that having worked in another state for the last 12 years that I can offer some new ideas, skills and approaches to the MnPALS consortium. As I mentioned, I have experience with SFX and Metalib and perhaps we can think about how the PALS office can deliver new services such as OpenURL to all of our customers.

My first goal was getting to know my staff a bit. To that end I am setting up a series of one-on-one meetings with no particular agenda, just to get acquainted. I’m about 2/3s of the way though at this time. In addition, we have been having all staff meetings and I have been meeting with the management team regularly. Getting to know the people at our libraries is also very important to me. I expect and plan on doing a number of site visits. So far, I have been to Southwest Minnesota State, South Central CTC, and Bethany and I attended the MnSCU Library Leadership meeting in St.Cloud. I’ve been to my first User Council and Executive Committee meetings too. I have invitations to meet with the CALCO group and our friends in the St. Cloud region. Beyond the consortium itself I’ve met with Bill DeJohn and attended the MINITEX Advisory Council where I got the chance to meet people from North and South Dakota, and CLIC. That’s just the start.

Let me take this opportunity to invite you all down to the PALS User Group Meeting in Mankato, Oct. 11th & 12^th. I’ll look forward to meeting many of you in person there!

Sincerely,

Stephen F. Elfstrand
Executive Director, PALS
(507) 389-5059
(507)  381-6999 mobile