Thanks to Suzanne Morrison, Branch Librarian, U.S. Courts Library 8th Circuit, for the this article: Libraries in Change. This article was originally published in the 2009 Best Practices for Government Librarians: Change: Managing It, Surviving It, Thriving on It.
The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by
more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies,
courts, and the military, as well as from professional association
leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.
Read on...
Libraries across the country are shortening hours, cutting staff, and suffering
financial crunches. Are we on the brink of extinction? According to Charles
Darwin, it is not the strongest of the species that survives nor is it the most
intelligent, but it is the one that is the most adaptive and responsive to
change. Can this be applied to libraries? Can we accomplish this mission?
Our profession needs to embrace the changes driving us and learn to
manage and adapt to them. Think of the caterpillar who does not inherently
know that it will one day become a beautiful butterfly, but it does.
How do we change our image and see ourselves as the butterflies of the
future? We open ourselves up to new ideas and visions. We become more
proactive. Collaboratively, we brainstorm and use new technologies to
change our image and prove our value to communities of library users.
Recently, my community of Fargo, North Dakota, experienced a flood that
surpassed the epic flood of 1897. Fighting flood waters that expanded tiny
creeks and a lazy Red River forced our thinking out of its everyday
parameters as we needed volunteers quickly. Our son immediately put out a
plea for help on his FaceBook account. He sent out another email request to
the university where he teaches as an adjunct. Within hours, volunteers
arrived ready to fill sandbags and to help build a dike behind our house.
Using the social networking tools of the Web helped save our home.
Relying on a disaster plan, Fargo city officials held twice daily television press
conferences disseminating information that people in the community needed
to know. An automated emergency call system dialed individual homes
letting people know addresses of homes in their area that needed volunteers
to reinforce dikes. Within fifteen minutes, hundreds of neighbors showed up.
After a few days the city’s flood volunteer coordinator set up a Facebook
group to publicize where and when help was needed. Within a week, the
network had more than 4,550 members and was growing by a member every
one to two minutes. Members were getting e-mails or text messages to their
cell phones with the newest calls for volunteers. Phone lines were inundated
and slow, many government Web sites were overloaded, but the Facebook
site had the strength to support this kind of usage.
Unfortunately, the local library system did not react in a proactive manner.
There was little response beyond cancellations for Story Time listed on their
web pages. Digging through the pages, there was general information on
flooding but nothing significant to this flood. An opportunity slipped away.
Sadly, a major facility purporting to be the information center of the city did
not fulfill its purpose. The director did not appear with other city officials at
press conferences. The library did not step forward to serve the community. No announcements were scrolled on the bottom of the television. No vision.
No coloring outside the lines. No value was given to the community.
To manage change the library profession needs to think ahead and be
prepared. Planning saved our community. City workers developed a plan
before disaster struck. Beyond that, they seized upon a new technology and
massaged a new social phenomenon to respond to this disaster. Being
proactive saved many homes in our city. Developing a strategic plan that
involved a collaborative effort working with all levels of society helped the
city to get out the word. Furthermore, listening and hearing the voices of the
citizens, identifying their priorities, collecting and distributing this
information, and finally letting the system analyze the information.
The message to librarians is to observe and learn. Identify the priorities for
your community of users. Look beyond the problems to discover the vision
that will be needed to address these priorities. Do not be confused with the
symptoms but look underground for the root of the problem. Accept the
recommendations from your users. Do not assume that you know better
than they do. Develop an action plan. Only an action plan moves you
forward from today to tomorrow. Information by itself does nothing if there
is not an action plan to back it up. Throughout this process, keep in mind
how important it is to have buy-in from all levels of your organization and
community. Address resistance from individuals by listening, acknowledging
their objections, and helping them overcome their opposition. Build
stakeholders out of these same individuals to help lead the library forward.
Embrace your function as the information center of the community and be
available during the good times and during the times of disaster.
Time is of the essence in today’s competitive world, and change is a way of
life. Embrace that change. Take time to prepare but also take time to
brainstorm and think outside of the norm. I heard someone refer to it as "agile operations", and I find that a satisfying description. Be ready to
engage in a metamorphous relationship with new ideas and technology.
Think quickly. Remain open. Keep energy flowing through the ideas.
Develop your agility. Try tossing out a scenario at staff meetings and
encourage agile feedback. But, please don’t stop with the staff. Invite input
from the public. Don’t be afraid of change. An unknown author stated that "if nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies". And remember, to
paraphrase Richard Bach, "what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
world calls a butterfly."
