Greetings Colleagues, I trust you're well. Today I'm celebrating the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Leadership Program and the many learning opportunities it provides to our community. The web-based class, "Developing a Legacy of Leadership, Succession Planning and Management" was presented earlier today by Dr. Consuella Askew. Consuella is a long-time advocate of the Alliance and brings a high level of knowledge and expertise to her instruction. Consuella shared a number of interesting facts in support of succession planning. The following data was supplied by a 2009 report compiled by Denise Davis of ALA's Office for Research and Statistics to project the future supply of librarians. * Since 2000, the overall number of librarians in Census data has been nearly level after a history of strong growth from 1980 to 2000. * For the past 25 years, the median age for both sexes in the profession has risen by over 10 years, with women going from a median of 41 in 1980 to 52 by 2005 with men's median ages paralleling from age 39 to 51. * In 2005, 41% of librarians were in their 50's - we can estimate that many of them are now or close to being in their 60's. Based on the reported ages of the librarians at that time, there was a projection made of over 28,000 retirements between 2005-2015. As we consider additional learning opportunities, I'd like to very quickly learn about retirements and age ranges within our community. Paste this link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YGQS7XJ into your address bar and complete the two question survey. The survey will close next Friday, June 15th. Thanks in advance for your prompt response. Respectfully, Sandra SANDRA M. PHOENIX Executive Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 800-999-8558, ext. 4820 404-520-0593 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children. Register now http://www.hbculibraries.org/html/2012meeting-form.html for the October 21-23, 2012 HBCU Library Alliance 5th Membership Meeting and the Photographic Preservation Pre-Conference in New Orleans, LA. The Pre-Conference and Membership meeting are open to directors and other librarians.