The Future of Libraries is IT

The Future of Libraries is IT:

and some people just don't get IT

Anecdotal evidence of discontent with

organizational culture of libraries

We wanted to put data behind the anecdotes

Conducted a survey of 240 future leaders

72% response rate

93% answered open-ended questions

Our questions:

• Are future leaders satisfied with their organizational cultures and management styles?
• Does their current organizational structure limit their effectiveness?

The ability of organizations to succeed in times of change is often attributed to organizational culture

What we learned

Librarians prefer more flexible

and externally focused culture

Librarians feel thwarted by

current organizational cultures

To what extent do you feel that your libraries organizational structures and processes limit your impact or effectiveness?

What else we learned

concerns...

over the top

processes

scale,

not niche

value risk

taking

lack of technical

proficiency

continued focus on

low-value functions

consensus

culture

Do More

"The web...will never decrease in importance, and we've never staffed ourselves for success here."

"Our users constantly tell us, though words and actions, that they use technology constantly in every aspect of their work and research, and yet we don't train or hire an adequate number of librarians who can respond to these needs."

Summary

We are a deeply conservative profession and have been slow to react to new technological service demands of users.

We don't employ technologies intelligently, and we fail to develop technically-proficient professionals.

We don't invest enough in areas of future growth, and we continue to invest in low-value functions

Traditional organizational hierarchies and management styles thwart younger librarians' efforts to make an impact.

The organizational culture and management style

that IT staff find productive is the same type of

organization all librarians want to work in.

inability to employ

technologies effectively

Competing Values Framework (CVF)

Do Less

"We persist in using systems (both technical and organizational) that confound users, and then create an instruction empire to unconfound them, with the predictable less-than-stellar results. If we put half the energy into system and organizational design that we put into user instruction currently, we'd be doing a better job for our users. I often think that 'information literacy' is a concept that arose from bad interface design and system architecture."

Maloney, Antelman, Arlitsch, Butler.

"Future Leaders' Views on Organizational Culture" College & Research Libraries, May 2010

Pre-print: http://bit.ly/futureleaders

"Traditional reference services need to end."

"AACR2-MARC-OCLC cataloging"

"Move staff from traditional library collections to e-resources, thus making print the specialty and e-resources

the locus of 80% of our efforts."

"1) Leverage the massive amounts of data that we have available and build innovative services that reveal research collections to patrons

2) hire technologists to create such services."

"... academic libraries are not providing the best online access to their resources. Examples include difficult-to-use catalogs and websites that are not keeping up with modern technologies and new ways of learning...

Librarians are wonderful at one-on-one, face-to-face time, but how many users are we losing who try to access resources or find online help and leave (never to come back) in frustration?"

We invite your comments, questions

Kenning Arlitsch, Univ of Utah

Kristin Antelman, NCSU

LITA Forum 2009

Salt Lake City, UT