My library just got a huge, anonymous donation to fund ten new positions for as long as we want them. We're now in the process of figuring out the basics of these new lines. It's an exciting time for us.

I may have been dreaming this. I'm not quite sure. Just in case, I thought I'd share our initial plans for use of this funding. What's nice about having ten positions is that we can divvy up aspects of new positions we've seen advertised by other libraries and devote entire positions to them. We can also come up with new ideas, beef up current tasks not getting enough attention, and follow up on notions discussed on this blog. It's an opportunity of a lifetime.

We realize that there is overlap among these positions. Lucky us!

Social Networking Support Librarian. Assists students with their research on third-party social networking tools, including use of IM and chat rooms. Promotes library resources and services on these networks. Mounts library podcasts, videos, photos, presentations and other documents on social networks. Works with reference librarians and bibliographers to set up collections of topical bookmarks on social bookmarking sites. Tracks developments in social tools, and promotes and recommends their use to faculty, students and colleagues. Provides training on the use of these tools.

Collaborative Publishing Librarian. Coordinates blogging, wiki and RSS publishing for the library. Coordinates the effort to develop a library Web site based on wikis, blogs and regular Web pages to create a community-based Web presence. Initiates user-participatory folksonomies in the library's online spaces. Assists with the university's efforts to implement an institutional repository that includes features of social networking tools such as comments, tags, RSS feeds and social bookmarking. Incorporates local and remote RSS feeds into the library's Web presence, including e-journal TOC alerts. Must be an expert in designing interfaces optimized for mobile computing.

Multimedia Publishing Librarian Creates podcasts, videos, Webinars, Flash and other multimedia presentations to support teaching, research, and use of library services. Creates multimedia tutorials to assist students in using the library and its resources. Assists instruction librarians in using these technologies to create interactive, customizable training materials, with the goal of phasing out in-person credit courses and moving the instruction program online. Establishes a library presence on iTunes U. Establishes an in-house multimedia publishing center to support students' creation of their own presentations and their publication; also serves as a resource center for downloading library and other educational multimedia from library and third party sites. Must be an expert in instructional design.

Coordinator of Student Participation. Coordinates student participation on library committees, on the library's community-based Web site, and in the development of new services and the improvement of existing services, etc. Assists in various assessment efforts. Manages the universally popular Wal-Mart greeter program.

Programming Risk-Taker. Creates innovative, customizable applications that support access to library resources and services utilizing cutting-edge technologies. These will include mashups that enhance the searchability, findability and usability of library materials. Implements widgets in the library's online spaces. Will be alert to open source or inexpensive software that can do the job. Must enjoy beta implementations, be comfortable with quick turn-arounds, be extremely responsive to user feedback, and relish public experimentation.

OPAC Transformation Librarian. Coordinates the effort to create a next generation catalog. Conducts research on next generation options. Works individually and within relevant consortia to propose enhancements to the library's ILS vendor. Explores and helps to implement third-party solutions to enhance the catalog, as well as create in-house ehnahcements. Works closely with the Programming Risk-Taker (see above) and Testbed Technologist (see below). Must have expertise in user search behavior, Web site usability, the search engine scene, information retrieval, Web 2.0 interfaces, and mobile computing interface design.

Testbed Technologist. Works full-time on the collaborative testbed project proposed in the Lankes and Silverstein report that would implement a participatory network of libraries to provide a common technology platform to host blogs, Wikis, discussion boards, RSS aggregators and the like, and develop a modernized ILS. Must have significant back-end experience in all these areas. This position is a donation to the testbed project. (We won't be selfish and keep all the positions to ourselves.)

Digitization Librarian. Identifies and selects materials of local value for digitization. Applies for digitization grants. Oversees in-house and outsourced digitization projects. Works with Web programming staff to make digitized materials available on the Web site, institutional repository, third-party sites, etc. to achieve open accessibility. Plans for the time when most scholarly materials will be digitized by dot-coms and other publishing entities, and digitization of local materials becomes a prominent part of an academic library's contribution to cultural history.

Remote User Librarian. Ensures that library services are optimized to meet the needs of remote users. Enhances current services to meet remote users' evolving expectations. Provides technical and other types of support for these users using IM, e-mail, phone, social software tools, virtual worlds, etc. Creates online FAQs, videos, podcasts and other types of presentations to assist remote users. Trains and supports colleagues in serving users remotely, both in library spaces and on third-party sites. Also works with colleagues to move services, library documents, and research, training and support materials online. Plans for the eventual near-ubiquity of anytime, anywhere use of the library and increasingly diminished on-site use.

Exploration and Training Librarian. Does what all librarians should do but will get to do it full time: read, experiment, play, develop skills, listen to conference and training broadcasts, imagine and ruminate. Will develop a seminar program to present colleagues with the results of these efforts. Will assist colleagues in determining new ways of doing things based on these explorations. Will recommend readings, Web sites, podcasts, RSS feeds, etc., to assist in staff education. Establishes a culture of fun-loving, beta-craving, humorous attitude toward change.

We had hoped to save one position for a future need that we couldn't quite anticipate today but would wish we could hire for as soon as we realized it. However, our current needs were too pressing due to the pace of change. In fact, we couldn't meet all our goals with these positions, so we're revising our current ones to fill the gaps just as I recommended last week. We're hopeful that the new positions, in conjunction with our current ones, are flexible enough to take us into the future.

We decided to spend no more than three to four months hiring for these well-paying positions. Maybe this is the part I was dreaming about.