This document summarizes strategies for academic libraries to remain relevant. It recommends conducting needs assessments to prioritize programs and services. Libraries should offer programs beyond just text, and partner with other organizations to create scalable and sustainable initiatives. Libraries need to offer more educational opportunities and credentials by partnering with outside institutions. They should grow digital collections and integrate virtual and physical services. Libraries also need to promote themselves more and offer services online as well as in-person.
Anne-Marie Tarter: Our Common Future (SLA Weekend Course 2013)SLA
Anne-Marie Tarter – Our Common Future: What the Learning Commons approach could mean for school libraries. Plenary session at 2013 SLA Weekend Course in Belfast
Anne-Marie Tarter: Our Common Future (SLA Weekend Course 2013)SLA
Anne-Marie Tarter – Our Common Future: What the Learning Commons approach could mean for school libraries. Plenary session at 2013 SLA Weekend Course in Belfast
7. Up Your Game
• Know your local community demographics
• Focus on needs assessment and social assessments
• Prioritize: Love all, Serve all, Save the World means nothing
gets done
• Priorities are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, & Time bound
• Look for partnerships that add value
8. Up Your Game
• Programs that aren’t text first – Arduino, Makerspaces, music, media…
• Scalability, reproducibility, sustainability, affordability
• Targeting
• Align with Collections – every collection must be justified by programs
and strategic alignment
• Force strategic investment budgeting
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Don’t go it alone. Focus on large scale sustainable programs
• Connect to the longer process not just events
• Virtual and in-person
• In the Library and reaching out with partners
9. What are the real issues?
• Craft versus Industrial Strength
• Personal service only when there’s impact
• Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
• Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy and Fluency initiatives
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units and program dissemination
• Citation and information ethics
• Content and repository archipelagos
• Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment
10. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – But add virtual experiences
• Start being Mobile in the extreme
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Focus on relationship management / liaisons
• Ensure the program delivery person is embedded including
librarians
• What are your top learning or research domains? Start there.
• Don’t go it alone. Build scalability and sustainability.
• Look for replicability – look for commonalities
12. Up Your Game
• Start offering diplomas and certificates
• The Non-credit Course
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Offer real educational opportunities not just adjacencies
• What does your community need for economic advantage?
• What courses to you offer or recommend? (MIT, Harvard, Stanford,
TED, Khan Academy, etc.)
• Play and connect yourself
13. Up Your Game
• OCLC Linked Data & APIs
• DPLA Vault & APIs
• 3D, learning object, LibGuides, audio, or streaming media repositories
• Understand Pedagogy in the context of student experiences and
educational goals
• Understand human development from teens to adult learning
• Understand the projects
• Makerspace… laboratories – onsite relevance
• Consider partnerships to put librarians into real liaison
• Consider coaches and tutoring partnerships
14. Up Your Game
• Take the strong ‘library’ brand and add dimension
• Personal branding – Who are your stars? Promote them.
• Program branding
• Take risks for attention (AIDA)
• Embed your brand beyond the library walls and virtually
• Go beyond the information brand to informing, creating, and
social
15. Up Your Game
• Grow collections investments in strategic areas but digital first
and not just size . . . Alignment trumps size any day
• Develop hybrid strategies that are consistent and integrated for
digital and print and programs
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Truly integrate virtual and physical – hybridize
• Social alignment rules
16. Up Your Game
• Learn how to reach and teach online
• Teach how to learn online
• Teach how to research online
• Everyone in academic libraries should be focused on
teaching/researching first, then library
• Learn more systems than one!
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Social alignment rules and use the tools
17. Up Your Game
• Dog, Star, Cow, Problem Child/?
• Reduce investment in successes
• Increase investment
• Look at TCO
• Look at all costs incurred and not just hard costs
• Do NOT value your time at zero
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs
18. Being Open to Ambiguity
Be the Change We Want to See
19. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr: Stephen Abram
LinkedIn / Plaxo: Stephen Abram
Twitter: @sabram
SlideShare: StephenAbram1