Listening to libraries

Each October, we at MCLS anticipate our Board of Directors’ annual fall retreat. Our Board members always appreciate knowing what’s on library leaders’ and staff’s minds leading up to the retreat, as they and I discuss MCLS’s future together. Recently, I’ve started a new series of conversations with library directors in Indiana and Michigan, using questions I co-created with some Board members and staff. This month, I’ll share the questions and summarize some responses I’ve heard so far from some academic and public libraries. I plan to talk with school and special library leaders soon.

I invite you to connect with me at garrisons@mcls.org to arrange a time to discuss your answers to these questions and let me know what else is on your mind, either in person, online, or by phone.

What is top of mind for you right now?
What is top of mind for your organization (i.e., library and/or institution)?
What impacts is your organization seeing from the pandemic?
What’s the best way to hear from you, and engage with you?
What changes did you make during COVID that you want to continue, and why?
What gaps have emerged during this time for your organization?
What areas might you be thinking about training, upskilling/retraining with your staff?
What are you looking forward to most as we appear to be emerging from the COVID time?

1. What is top of mind for you right now?

• Budget impacts on staffing and collections
  • Losing positions has led to combining teams and workflows (including cross-training, merging desks, and redistributing work)
  • How to roll out collection reductions to a campus
  • Collection assessment with fewer staff
• Building and renovation projects (both at smaller and larger libraries)
• Figuring other things out in new circumstances
  • What permanent changes will the pandemic cause?
  • What will fall look like? What will the campus masking policy be?
• Getting users back in, while keeping staff safe
• Positioning the library for the future
  • How to position the library to be part of larger university plans
  • Trying to figure out what the future looks like – hard to predict
  • How to pivot back from “response mode” to “active mode”
• Staff issues
  • Morale and managing anxiety, frustration, and/or anger
  • Harder to be aware of how staff are doing while remote
  • How to focus personnel on the future after a lot of loss and disruption?
  • Turnover means losing institutional knowledge
  • Filling vacant positions (difficult for some, e.g., fewer applicants)
  • Getting new staff up to speed
  • How to work toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)

2. What is top of mind for your organization (i.e., library and/or institution)?

• Completing renovations
• Enrollment and being a desirable institution for students
• Figuring out where users are now (using library online? Not at all?) – not all have come back to the building yet
• Finding ways to continue being creative, add value to the community in a different way
• Finishing programs that pivoted, e.g., when summer reading moved outdoors
• How to find capacity for collaboration and creativity
• How the library can help the university do new things
• Staffing
  • Have had to give up some positions due to budget cuts
  • Many other campus departments have also lost positions due to cuts – need to do things differently/stop doing, relearn who can help the library
  • How to consider DEI in hiring
  • Eagerness to get new staff in and relieve others
  • Navigating masking: some have mask mandates, others don’t

3. What impacts is your organization seeing from the pandemic?

• Budgets
  • More stable for more public libraries (i.e., as property values and tax bases have remained stable so far)
  • Many academic libraries have taken budget cuts
    • Forcing the library to prioritize what work will get done
  • Collections
    • Figuring out where users want them to invest materials budget
    • Moved all collection profiles to patron-driven, big increase in streaming
    • Pursuing more open access and open educational resources
  • Enrollment challenges
  • Facilities and ability to manage them
    • Facilities work processes that have to change, given fewer workers
  • In library buildings:
    • Lower door count
    • Shift from instruction to consultation
    • Had to change furniture placement, sanitize
    • Some users are coming back, and happily (especially children)
  • Spurred innovation in services
    • New forms of fulfillment, including curbside, home delivery, book/other mailing, controlled digital lending, self-service/pickup
  • Staffing
    • Some maintained stable staffing throughout
    • Some had staff leave/retire/positions eliminated (some, over masking/vaccination expectations)
    • Made it hard for staff to feel safe and valued – led to new focus on morale and safety, starting from the top

4. What’s the best way to hear from you, and engage with you?

• Depends on the question, and the urgency
• Establish contact via email, and schedule something
• One-on-one meetings (like the ones that generated these notes)
  • An invitation to a conversation
• Zoom works well and is normal

5. What changes did you make during COVID that you want to continue, and why?

• Added technology
  • Extended Wi-Fi, more hotspots
  • Switch from desktop labs to checkout laptops
• Changing how the library serves the broader community, prioritizing the institution first
• Changing where some personnel report, to get existing work done in new ways
• Contactless/self-service holds and pickups (academics doing open hold shelf like publics)
• Flexibility for library personnel (hours, schedule, technology, work location)
• Forced to think about how to change, or handle changes already planned
• Re-crafting services
  • Mailing material to users
  • Controlled digital lending for online reserves
  • Curbside pickup
  • Home delivery
  • eBook lending
  • Relaxed some copyright restrictions
• Remote/hybrid work
  • Was rare before, requires more intentional communication
  • Be equitable – not everyone can work from home 100%
  • How to balance some remote and some in person
  • A struggle for some who need to be at the library with their public
  • Will continue allowing personnel some remote/hybrid options
• Shift to digital/online services
  • Added more digital collections content
  • Course reserves went online
  • Instruction > consultations
  • Programs (went from talking about it to being forced to do it – will it stick?)
  • Video content and video tutorials
• Staff have better relationships after forming teams based on who would be in the building (got to know and support each other better than before)

6. What gaps have emerged during this time for your organization?

• Ability to do new things is a challenge, but still trying
• Critical thinking beyond “follow the process” – need problem-solving, but also problem-finding, and opportunity-finding, as well as solution-finding
• Data management – how, and what does the institution have, to do it?
• DEI at all levels
• Following changing REALM recommendations
• Forced to think about how to change
  • Changing course suddenly (from building new initiatives to responding to crisis)
  • Navigating through sudden, unforeseen personnel changes
• Grasping how people work when so many, including management, work remotely
• Handling it when staffing shrinks
  • Cross-training
  • Reorganizing (and helping people understand others’ work)
  • What to prioritize, what to stop?
• Messaging about value the library brings – not everyone gets that during a pandemic when they’ve had to do so much themselves
• More support for creating videos, digital exhibits – design help needed
• Open resources – how to make that part of people’s job
• Perceptions about library space – what belongs there, how to run it
• Policy, including collections audit, code of ethics for staff and board
• Tech skills
• Training (ongoing, needed for all staff)
• Weren’t “digital first” before this for services, had to pivot, and not everything can go or be online easily

7. What areas might you be thinking about training, upskilling/retraining with your staff?

• Customer service, including confrontation skills
• DEI, including anti-racism
• Growth mindset for personnel
• Marketing
• Making online meetings look professional, throughout
• Teaching and learning support
  • Online pedagogy and tools to do it
  • Open educational resources
  • Scholarly communication (including open access and “transformative agreements”)
• Technology and tech skills

8. What are you looking forward to most as we appear to be emerging from the COVID time?

• Buildings full of people who want programs and materials, seeing flow of people and activity
• Collections getting used
• Fewer virtual meetings
• Getting people together more in the library and community
• Focusing on what’s most important, rather than what’s most urgent
• Learning what users need, now
• Prioritized library work over mask enforcement
• Requests for assistance and instruction
• Return to more traditional programming
• Team being fully-staffed, being stable
• Traveling (e.g., to do development work and gauge where people are)