“As much as I want to support our local libraries, I do not have the time to allocate to visiting the library in search of books. Unfortunately, I have found your website so tedious to use that it became easier for me to pay the Amazon price for electronic books than to waste my time trying to use your site any longer. I hope that one day this will not be the case.”
~Recent feedback on schlowlibrary.org

Public Libraries are poised to benefit from a deep existential crisis. Our value is implied, but our worth is in question.

As both defenders and embodiments of democratic ideals, we enjoy a rich reputation for simultaneously representing our patrons’ best interests and meeting their real-word demands for education and entertainment. With the internet scaling to encompass so much of our patrons’ lives, this duality feeds our current struggle for identity.

There is hope. We may never have the resources to provide the kind of consumer services Amazon accomodates their users. What we can do is remind our patrons what we stand for, how that can be interpreted locally through an online planet, and then show them how it is more important than ever. We were never great at warehousing information to begin with; what we must bring to families and individuals throughout the Centre Region is a culture of discovery. Even today, within our walls, our users feed their passions; they connect with their peers; they even contribute to our local knowledge economy. Even today, with online requests, demand for eBooks, and WiFi sessions at all time highs, we must boldly step out of our comfort zone (transactions) to support these new modes of facilitation (transformations). What the end result looks like has yet to be determined: Digital Publishing Platforms? Open Data Stores? Makerspaces? Coworking? Micro-performances? Online community classrooms? We have a lot to explore with our peers in the library world.

Necessarily, IT services will be the fulcrum of this critical transformation. Simply providing stable IT service in a typical office environment is not enough for the same reasons simply checking books out to people is not enough. Serving both our library staff and the general public, we have to embody the difference we want to make in our library and in our community. We have to soothe fear, coax collaboration, and inspire discovery. To do this, we must coordinate several important elements:

1. We must become masters of our resources. What is essential? What is distraction? Where does efficiency intersect with efficacy? Project management must be well organized. Meetings have to mean something, and every interaction matters. We have to constantly define, assess, analyze, and document both our successes and failures. Communication has to be more transparent, more horizontal, and more effective.
2. We must empower our users to catch their own fish. With every support ticket, training request, and major project, we need to ask: “What barriers exist between our users and their ability to self-identify, self-educate, and self-resolve their technology needs?” It doesn’t matter if the barrier is poor ergonomics, learning disability, inadequate training, or low self esteem–we have to play our part to remove them.
3. We have to provide an inclusive and approachable vocabulary for what we do. This means easily understandable presentations of meaningful data. It means creating and curating content that tells our story and broadcasts our vision.  What is trending? What is the counter argument to the trend? When is it appropriate to react, when to lead?
4. We have to always be looking to learn. We have to be humble. While it can seem luxurious to be the “expert in the room,” we should aspire to slaughter all sacred cows in our pen. Collaboration must be as much give as it is take, and it must have integrity.
5. We have to cultivate lasting partnerships that are both radical and much bigger than the sum of their parts. We must identify and maintain relationships with leaders in our community, the library IT world, and beyond.

We can do this. We will do this, because we have to.