Scenario planning: a tool for academic health sciences libraries

Abstract

Objective: Review the International Campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine (ICRAM) Future Scenarios as a potential starting point for developing scenarios to envisage plausible futures for health sciences libraries. Method: At an educational workshop, 15 groups, each composed of four to seven Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) directors and AAHSL ⁄ NLM Fellows, created plausible stories using the five ICRAM scenarios. Results: Participants created 15 plausible stories regarding roles played by health sciences librarians, how libraries are used and their physical properties in response to technology, scholarly communication, learning environments and health care economic changes. Conclusions: Libraries are affected by many forces, including economic pressures, curriculum and changes in technology, health care delivery and scholarly communications business models. The future is likely to contain ICRAM scenario elements, although not all, and each, if they come to pass, will impact health sciences libraries. The AAHSL groups identified common features in their scenarios to learn lessons for now. The hope is that other groups find the scenarios useful in thinking about academic health science library futures.

Envisioning the Library's Role in Scholarly Communication in the Year 2025

“…Multiple directors [8,9,14,15,17] commented that the scenarios were very library-centric. As Director 8 put it, "scholarly communication is much larger than libraries, so it is quite difficult to talk about the role of the library in a vacuum."…”

“…The ideas generated can then be applied by institutions considering a change in direction, improving shortterm decision making and expanding long-term strategic planning. 8 Scenarios have been developed to understand possible futures for digital libraries, 9 the role of the Federal Depository Library Program in member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), 10 and the future of academic health science libraries. 11 A current scenario project sponsored by ARL engaged the member community in contemplating possible situations in the future.…”

“…Several comments [Directors 2,4,[7][8][9]13,15,18,and 20] were made about the economy as a driving force. The influence of the economy on scholarly communication was discussed throughout the interviews.…”

Revisiting Strategy in a Time of Crisis

“…Not only has this strategy tool seen much use in military and business environments (Friga, 2020), it has also been employed in the library world (Mathews, 2014, p. 455;Staley & Malenfant, 2010). Ludwig, Giesecke, and Walton (2010), who applied it to the field of academic health sciences libraries, provided this rationale for its use:…”

Gazing into the Crystal Ball: Using Scenarios for Future Visioning of a Distance Learning Library Service

“…A number of articles, research reports, and edited volumes use scenarios to express future directions of academic libraries (Deiss & Giesecke, 1999;Dupuis, 2009;Hardesty, 2002;O'Connor & Au, 2009;O'Connor, Blair, & McConchie, 1997;Reyes, 2006). These writings represent the directions an academic library might take to re-define reference desk service of the future Watstein (2003), portray scenarios as a planning tool in health sciences libraries (Ludwig, Giesecke, & Walton, 2009), or encourage future thinking among libraries within the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) (Staley & Malenfant, 2010). Malenfant (2011) uses scenarios during a planning process which examined how perceptions of disciplinary faculty members can inform and expand academic librarians' thinking about devising future oriented action plans.…”