Choosing Our Futures

Abstract

Nearly all academic librarians agree that academic libraries have to change in order to respond successfully to the new realities of the higher education environment, rapidly developing information and telecommunications technologies, and the crisis in scholarly communications. But there is little agreement on what must change, how the changes will take place, how fast the changes must occur, and how much change is necessary.ne view of the future proposes that little or no organizational changes are required. Proponents believe that current structures are adequate to implement the new services, information products, and work functions and tasks that will evolve. Change, where necessary, will occur incrementally. New services and products will be add-ons rather than replacements for what is currently done. The existing fiscal austerity will abate or libraries will somehow manage to live with diminished funds. This view posits that for the foreseeable future, the library will essentially be dealing with traditional formats side by side with new technology. The library will maintain its traditional activities in supporting teaching and research, changing only the tools used.The countervailing view of the future that the authors hold is that academic libraries must change-fundamentally and irreversibly-what they do and how they do it, and that these changes need to come quickly. Change is going to occur continuously and the pace of change is likely to increase rather than decrease indefinitely into the future. To be successful under these conditions, libraries must reshape the prevailing corporate culture. These actions include giving up the focus on acquiring, processing, and storing physical objects, overcoming the aversion to risk-taking that assumes it is better to miss an opportunity than make a mistake, and conquering the tendency to work in isolation on library, rather than institutional, goals. Libraries must, instead, build into their organizational structures and their approaches to work, the ability to identify, anticipate, and quickly respond to constantly changing customer needs. They must be capable of leaps forward and breakthrough performance. They must reduce cycle times for implementing new services. They must be able to anticipate those needs rather than wait for customer needs to be articulated fully. And they must be ready to abandon formerly successful approaches to work, strategies, processing systems, services, and products that do not continually prove their value to customers. What is required is a transformation, not a refining of organizational structure, work, and external and internal relationships, including those between and among all levels of

Shrink to Fit or Prune to Strengthen: Adapting the Strategic Plan in an Academic Library as Response to Environmental Change

“…This thought is in line with that of other authors (Targino & Sousa, 2017;Stoffle, basics". In other words, faced with so many stimuli and at the same time with limitations in action, we must stop to think about our priorities and the core functions we cannot forego and should focus on more than ever, simplifying processes, procedures and courses of action to the maximum.…”

Shrink to Fit or Prune to Strengthen: Adapting the Strategic Plan in an Academic Library as Response to Environmental Change

“…This thought is in line with that of other authors (Targino & Sousa, 2017;Stoffle, basics". In other words, faced with so many stimuli and at the same time with limitations in action, we must stop to think about our priorities and the core functions we cannot forego and should focus on more than ever, simplifying processes, procedures and courses of action to the maximum.…”

From Acquisitions to Access: The Changing Nature of Library Budgeting

“…Budget redefinition efforts at Arizona continued to evolve through the 1990s in response to a recognition that collections was the only possible funding source for "strategic priorities, new activities, or investments that will allow the library to do work in new ways" (Stoffle, Renaud, & Veldof, 1996). Stoffle noted in her annual report in 2000 that "Next year, the University of Arizona Library will devote approximately 20% of its information access budget to access activities .…”

“…. the library's customers (faculty and students) will not allow it to reduce services or divert dollars devoted to buying things unless there are actual budget cuts" (Stoffle et al, 1996). Open and honest communication that facilitates trust is crucial, and risk to that trust as a result of changing to an access model is also described: "If librarians are eventually to propose and implement new models of information delivery and new measures of successful service, then they must have the faculty's trust.…”