Well, here’s the final part of this two-part article about the worries of librarians and what we can do about them. You’ll find the final six questions and conclusion. (If you missed the first part, check out the February 2006 SirsiDynix OneSource.)
7. How do we deal with the changing vendor landscape?
There is no doubt that there have been changes in our vendor marketplace. Vendors are truly key players in the information world – providing content, hardware, software and services, and in no small amount the innovations that allow libraries to adapt. New players have arrived – some huge and some just for a short period. Mergers and mutations of our vendors have changed the landscape. Why, even SirsiDynix has undergone positive changes in this way! There are vendors on the fringes of our sector that can easily move in and change our paradigms. Publishers are no longer just traditional publishers. Library software is no longer just for library enterprises, and rises to end-user and community levels. It’s just very different. We need to adapt.
The world is moving too fast for the focus in our sector to be on a sleepy annual product innovation cycle. It’s also moved beyond the one-size-fits-all mode. It’s time for more partnerships between vendors and other vendors, vendors and consortia, and vendors and individual library partners. No one player in Library Land knows the answer – it’s a joint project, and the answers are multi-faceted.
8. How do we brand, market, and sell the library and its great services and collections?
Library Land is challenged by delivering the message about its value proposition. Getting new card holders, sustaining the collection, and growing are critical challenges that nearly every library faces. The recent OCLC survey, Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources 2005, shows how weak library branding is and how we are still too tied to the “book” and “reading” positioning. Our other great services to support research, learning, and entertainment are not hitting the high water mark on the awareness meter. We need to ring that bell.
Experienced librarians generally know what our value is to our communities. Unfortunately, we are pretty bad at taking that light out from under the barrel and shouting it from the rooftops. A distinct discomfort with promotion and sales is holding us back. Library leaders are worried about how we engage our colleagues and workers to take this message to the community. We need to add energy to this critical task, and everyone is worried about how we make this happen. We have an army ready to fight. It needs training and generals!
For new librarians, this is not quite so clear, and the proofs need to be visible and tangible. It needs to be more personally engaging and valuable for prospective members. And our advocacy training for senior workers needs to be reinforced.
Advocacy skills need to be built in this emerging group. This is a big challenge. We like to believe that there is some altruism in belonging to the field of libraries and that there is a “public good” that is understood and recognized. We cannot depend on this anymore! While some subscribe to this philosophy, clearly others do not, and they’re apparently in the majority. I believe that many library workers subscribe to the Henny Penny school of effort. They’re quite content to sit back and watch others work to achieve change and eventually taking advantage of others' efforts. This lack of involvement doesn’t stop them, of course, from having opinions about the efforts either.
We need to ensure that our value proposition is clear in the minds of users as well as decision-makers and funders. Library leaders are worried about how we create a sense of urgency and energy in this critical effort.
9. How do we energize the entire sector and avoid polarization: smokestacks and islands?
We are a diverse profession. We share more in common than our diversity suggests. School libraries, public libraries, academic and college libraries, special libraries, and all the rest – we all play a key role in the knowledge economy. Our voice, however, is disconnected. Our volunteer efforts are dissipated in administration and governance. Too great a percentage of our efforts are on back office operations, and not enough effort is focused on strategic initiatives.
The challenge over the next few years will be to bring greater leadership and collaboration to this sector. Over the coming years, libraries must develop our consortia to a higher level of cooperation. There will be mergers here that will challenge us. We must learn how to improve the cost efficiencies and effectiveness of the important back room operations of our operations to a whole new level. This is an arena where the challenges are legion. There are many excuses and a few reasons for the slowness of change. There are a few models to review.
Generally, the organization and workflow structures of many libraries bear a greater resemblance to early 20th century organizations than to modern organization management. We need to experiment with governance and structures that are more fluid, collaborative, team oriented, and nimble. And we need to get the discussion about this into the open so greater progress can be made. Some library leaders are very worried that some libraries are susceptible to criticism and attack due to the lack of innovation in their governance and the difficulty in proving that they are at top efficiency. These worries are creating barriers to pilots that may provide the direction for implementation of such technologies as RFID, self-check, wireless, etc.
10. Advocacy
On the advocacy front, we have to admit that there are just too many issues – most of them are too complex, and everything is getting more complicated! There’s a carnival game called “Whack a Mole” where two dozen moles pop their heads randomly out of two dozen holes and the player must whack them back in. It’s a fool’s game, but you get a better score if you keep as many down in their holes as possible. This game is a great metaphor for the advocacy world of libraries today. Look at any library association’s list of “critical” issues, and you’ll likely be amazed at its length and diversity.
Most library boards and their staff, when they’re being honest with themselves, will admit that there is no way every issue will get the effort and energy it deserves. This poses a real quandary for the management team to set priorities and position staff and budget resources strategically and judiciously. It is not for lack of resolve, but there are issues of just how much work this actually takes and sustaining the effort. Issues of targeting, energy, motivation, and staff support really weigh down any effort.
11. Leadership
Across all sectors of libraries, there is a constant debate about leadership – ensuring that we have enough leaders and that we’re incubating the next generation of leaders. Sustainability of our institutional leadership is always an issue. Burnout is, too. How do we mentor those that will replace today’s leaders in our complex environments? How do we ensure that there is a succession of leaders to follow us in the library movement? When we look around our places of work, do we see people coming up the ranks?
Another aspect of leadership is ensuring that we have the right mix of leaders now. We need the inspiring speakers. We need the crafty backroom lobbyists. We need the strategy mavens. We need the great doers. We need youthful enthusiasm. We need the innovators. Do we have the right mix in our professional leadership now? If we do, can we create the ecology to let their special talents bloom?
I don’t know all the answers to the questions above, but I do have an opinion. There needs to be room for a lot more leadership styles in our profession. We need to create a bigger tent for more people to lead. Some of them need to be younger, and we need to be more open to youth. It’s not bad to be an older librarian. I am one myself! It is bad for everyone to be the same. We need more diversity, and by that I don’t mean just traditional diversity, but also diversity in learning styles, communication styles, background, and talents. It is incumbent on us to volunteer, and it’s incumbent on our nomination and participation committees to seek a wider range of leaders and volunteers. Let’s just do it.
For many years, there has been a Canadian initiative to create leaders. It is at once an independent effort and a cooperative effort of the Canadian library community. Based on the U.S. Snowbird model, it is called Northern Exposure to Leadership (or NELI for short). Founded by Ernie Ingles of the University of Alberta, NELI’s vision is to contribute to the vitality, growth, and success of the library profession well into the 21st century, by positioning professionals to be proactive, effective, and consequential voices in a dynamic and sophisticated information environment. Its mission is to motivate professional librarians in order to assist them in developing, strengthening, and exercising their individual leadership abilities so that they are better prepared to create, articulate, and achieve organizational visions for the benefit of library service, initially, and society at large, ultimately.
Occurring about every 18 months, the institute is a residential experience for about 26 candidates who are mid-career (about 5+ years out of library school) and provides a unique opportunity for professional librarians to share with peers and mentors in a five day experiential and theoretical learning situation in Canada. Participants explore and experiment with such leadership concepts as vision, risk taking, creativity, communication, change, power, and styles of leadership – all done within a context of self-exploration, evaluation, and development. The institute also provides an opportunity for those attending to develop integrated professional networks. NELI has been successful in ensuring a population of trained information professionals are ready to lead. It has been supported by SirsiDynix for many years.
We are worried about creating a great generation of leaders. How do we ensure Library Land survives and thrives?
12. Vision
Lastly, our library leaders are concerned about vision and crafting a diverse but powerful range of options for all libraries. We need to be providing an incubator for members and their institutions to craft their own vision of the future and to provide some of the support and means to achieve that vision. They also need to be exemplars of this vision.
We need to depend on our associations, vendors, and colleagues to provide that environmental scan of what’s happening in our world. What will change in technology and how? How will our users’ needs, their information habits, and their personal environments be changing? How is society changing? What’s happening out there, and what does it mean to libraries?
My definition of a library vision is a comprehensive and detailed future state that has never existed before, but should. It tugs at our deepest desires. No one vision will suffice for all of the libraries and library workers. We’re far too diverse for that. These visions should be aimed to benefit our users, their communities, and society overall. We must share this vision and ensure that it gains support (that’s where advocacy comes in).
Our challenge for librarianship, and the goal I set when I am in leadership positions in library associations, is to develop great visions – more exciting, bigger, more inspiring, and with greater impact. We live in a world crying out for our services, competencies, and resources. It’s up to us to sell our vision of a better world.
Conclusion
Maybe we need to consider that perhaps we’ve been too operational in how we’ve organized our libraries around service and information. Maybe we do have a professional culture that prefers process over action. I hope not. I think that we need to focus on a few basic principles in the short term to achieve greater success:
Libraries and information professionals help people make sense of their world. We support and empower communities, workplaces, learning, research, culture, and entertainment. Let’s get this message out more clearly and strongly. We have the studies to prove our impact. We must find our voices and make them confident, loud, and clear.
Influence comes from two places – competence through intelligence or sheer size. Libraries can stand in both camps. We are a rational profession, based in strong values, and we study our positions until they are correct. We also speak for many. It’s not just ourselves for which we speak. It is for the rights of end-users – citizens – to access the discoveries of the ages, the works of the great writers and the research that will allow them to progress – to learn. We bridge the digital divide. We speak for all, and we need to invest more time and effort in bringing the user on-side to work alongside us in protecting their rights to libraries and information.
Stories are the way people transcend their daily lives and learn the underlying principles of their culture and information. Libraries, despite being strongholds for the storage of our society’s stories, fail to tell their own stories often or well enough. Every library worker develops hundreds of powerful stories about the impact of their work on users every day. We need to share these. While statistics garner a lot of effort in their collection, everyone understands a powerful story. Powerful stories lead to support.
People live in communities. That’s where they live, work, and play. Lately some of these communities have been virtual too. Libraries are key players in the community ecology – whether it’s a neighbourhood, learning community, or workplace. Let’s make sure we develop and evolve the strategies that cause communities to be more successful.
Do these questions ring true for you? Are there others – piling worry on worry? Could they form the basis for some nice strategic discussions, debates, retreats, or lunch bag sessions? This isn’t meant to be scientific – just a qualitative memory of the past year of conversations with an amazing group of library leaders. Don’t just sit there and worry; do something about it!
Stephen Abram, MLS is Vice President, Innovation for SirsiDynix. He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the immediate past president of the Canadian Library Association. In June 2003 he was awarded SLA’s John Cotton Dana Award. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@sirsidynix.com.
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