9 The Future of Libraries

Chapter Overview

The purpose of this chapter is to:

• Use what you have learned about library Access Services to imagine the future of libraries.
• Suggest some trends to be aware of as you set career goals for yourself.
• Spark your curiosity about what is possible in libraries.

Introduction: The History of Libraries Looking Toward the Future

When you think about the future, do you think that libraries as physical spaces will still exist? Often when we think about the future, we focus on technological changes that will strengthen libraries in some ways and threaten them in others, and this chapter will consider some technology trends. But we also need to think about how our social and cultural future will affect the development or weakening of libraries. There have been times when it seemed like things might fall apart and people who were wondering about the future of libraries were not always hopeful. In the 1970s, libraries and other civic institutions in the United States faced pressures from economic, cultural, and international crises that are similar to what we face in the 2020s. After traveling the country in the early 1970s, Arthur Plotnik, a journalist who became a librarian in the 1960s, concluded that:

the view that library life in America is an unholy mess is held by quite a few who believe they understand the total picture. Just listen to them at conferences, read them in the literature. […] I partly disagree. That libraries are a mess, or in a mess, may be true. To be human is to be messy, to live by trial and error, to make mistakes, to be well-intentioned screw-ups. We are messy about the way we fund our libraries, the way we measure our services, the way we define our goals. But that the mess is unholy—I’m not sure. […] I find it a religious comfort to know that even the rottenest library somehow survives not very far away in America. (1975, pp. 216-217)

There have been four generations of library workers and library patrons since Plotnik, and we still are re-affirming the amazing power of the humanity that is built-into library services. Rocky Herrera, an hourly Library Tech at Palomar College explained in 2023:

Because technology has taken over more and more these days, I think it’s always a good thing to make sure people know that there’s a space like the library because we’re kind of fighting a losing game in a way with all the technology and AI [artificial intelligence] stuff. We’ve got to make it a worthwhile reason for people to come out and see what the library has to offer. And that only happens with us treating our patrons well—providing a good service and just giving that human interaction.

Like if they’re doing a research paper, [library workers can make statements] like ‘Things will be okay.’ You don’t really get that from technology, I don’t think, where people can feel the comfort of another human telling them, ‘Okay, look, slow down. Let’s get you on the right track so you don’t have to stress about whatever you’re working on.’ Just help people feel less stressed out. […] I’ve noticed the change in [patrons’] step when they’re walking out. It’s totally different, you know? They’re pretty grateful about it.

But I’ve gotten that [reaction when people hear I work in a library], like, ‘Oh, people still go the library?’ Yeah, people still go to the library. Just because you don’t, doesn’t mean everybody doesn’t. It is kind of annoying. It’s kind of frustrating when you’re in there and you’re passionate about it a little bit. It’s like, ‘Hey, come on.’

As we conclude this textbook, let’s use the shared knowledge we now possess—knowledge about how library workers work, how libraries are funded, the interesting new things our colleagues have been trying, and all the ways that patrons rely on all kinds of libraries—to imagine a future of strong libraries that are making their communities resilient, humane, and understanding.

Librarian and futurist R. David Lankes has spent the past 15 years encouraging library workers to see that libraries have two defining features. One of the features that define libraries is their physical space, including the collections they emphasize and the activities they facilitate, which “will reflect the unique make-up of their service communities, and [their second defining feature is] a staff that is constantly connecting great ideas from abroad to the hyperlocal situation” of the community (2022, slide 2.3). The tricky balance for the future will be maintaining the meaningful services that our communities rely upon while also taking calculated risks to offer our communities access to services, tools, or information from beyond the community that they hadn’t even realized they needed yet. The balance is tricky because resources are finite, so library workers risk letting their community down by either:

• staying with old ways too long and not strategically using part of the budget to add what the community comes to need
• jumping ahead of their community and spending money on innovations that the community can’t use without a lot of help that the library doesn’t have the funding to provide (Espinal, 2001).

So, understanding our community is the key. Lankes (2022) defines community as a “group of people associated based on some known variable (like where they live, work, or study) and a mechanism to allocate scarce resources like land, or money, or authority” (slide 12). Though this is not a very poetic way to think about community, it is instructive because we can use it to help us identify what are the most meaningful associations among our patrons and what scarce resources the library can provide to reduce structural disparities and “stitch our fractured communities together” (Lankes, 2022, slide 5).

Forces Shaping the Future

No library can be everything for everyone, so many library workers and commentators worry that trying new things and putting less emphasis on traditional library services will create “mission creep.” Mission creep is when an organization or business that started with one focused mission starts to offer new services that are not related to their original mission. Whereas the word “innovation” tends to have positive meanings in library work, the other side of the coin, “mission creep,” tends to have negative meanings. In particular, innovation is associated with staying relevant to the community and making the most of new capabilities. Mission creep, on the other hand, is associated with watering down the organization’s strengths and chasing relevance while running the risk of losing the original mission (Stavick, 2017). When library workers try something new or stop doing something they used to do, there is never a guarantee that the new idea will be an innovation and avoid creating mission creep. But library leaders have to take risks and make decisions without ever knowing exactly what will change in the future, altering the context within which their plans are carried out. In the near future, library workers will still be adapting to the COVID era as well as grappling with their long-term role in contributing to social justice and reacting to new technology capabilities.

The lasting effects of COVID safety protocols

All libraries in the United States were affected by COVID safety protocols in 2020 and 2021. Some libraries closed for a few weeks between March 2020 and May 2020, while others stayed closed and provided only online or curbside services for more than 18 months. Although the time of total closure and quarantine seems far behind us, library workers and library services will continue to be shaped by the effects of COVID in the near future. Effects include:

• discontinued, suspended, or altered services
• new services
• new expectations

Suspended or altered programs

The COVID safety protocols came so suddenly and were so strict that there was no time to gradually prepare and nearly anyone working in libraries at the time can think of at least one project or program that they were not able to continue. Many leaders with responsibilities for overseeing libraries considered COVID a reason to delay carrying out decisions while they waited to see what the pandemic would do to their budgets and to their community’s demand for the library’s services. An elementary school LMT II, for example, mentioned that the assistant principal had been pursuing the option of turning the library’s two half-time assistant positions into one full time position until COVID made him worry that the state would cut school funding. So even when California made it clear to schools that their budgets would not be cut and they would even be augmented by one-time grants, the assistant principal was still not comfortable making a budget commitment to a new full-time library position because there was too much uncertainty. In cases like this, once COVID interrupted the planning, there was no longer any momentum and some abandoned proposals will probably not be revisited for years, if at all. A high school LMT II explained that their whole school was scheduled to be under construction so that they could move into permanent buildings, but COVID delayed construction indefinitely. In cases like this, the construction timeline will resume, but the plans are now old and the new construction will likely be out of sync with technology and education trends before it is even started.

Even award-winning library programs and services were derailed by COVID. For example, the Brooklyn Public Library program called TeleStory won the National Medal from the Institute of Museum & Library Services in 2020. The service allowed families of inmates to make free video calls to their loved ones in jails and prisons (TeleStory, 2022). COVID hit prisons hard and they made a lot of changes, including prohibiting in-person visits and creating the option for people to place video calls between the detention facilities and people’s own home computers. Although this new service was a benefit to many families, the families who relied on the library’s computers for high-speed video call access suddenly did not have anywhere to make their calls because the COVID safety protocols shut down the Brooklyn Public Library’s TeleStory program between the spring of 2020 and the spring of 2023.

In Chicago, the famous teen programming YOUmedia at Chicago Public Library was closed because of COVID safety protocols and then all of the mentors, who were considered subcontractors rather than library employees, were laid off instead of being given the opportunity to create online programming that would maintain the teens’ connection with the library (Moore, 2020). YOUmedia is re-opened now but some of the mentors who were laid off in 2020 refused to return after being treated with so little regard by the library leadership and others were not able to return because they had new jobs or had moved (Moore, 2020). The deep roots of YOUmedia in its community were ripped out and, though the technology and the space are now available to teens again (About YOUmedia, 2023), the people with whom they had created meaningful connections are not there.

New Services

The sudden changes required during COVID-related closures also resulted in some new services that might have never been tried or might have been rolled out very slowly under normal circumstances. For example, surveys done by the American Libraries Association found that curbside pickup (allowing patrons to order materials and then have them checked out and brought to their car) and drive-up Wi-Fi (boosting the library’s Wi-Fi signal so that people near the building, including the parking lot, can connect to the library’s wireless internet for free) are two services that many libraries offered for the first time in 2020 and that they will continue to offer as standard services for the foreseeable future (Dankowski, 2023). Lora Diaz, LMT III at Mission Hills High School, said this about Chromebooks:

ironically the pandemic did a lot to change [strict policies regarding laptop checkout]. We went from having to get a parent permission slip to check out a Chromebook for three days so that you could do your assignment—like very weirdly tentative to give kids [Chromebooks]—to suddenly, when the pandemic hit, it was ‘Take, take, take, take please. Every kid needs to have a Chromebook.’ And so that really expedited the one-to-one program that we have now. I think we still would be gradually making our way there, but the pandemic really sped that up, which I think is great for kids. Like they all need a Chromebook. They need something. Not everyone has a personal device at home to work off of and all that. So that was a huge jump in the right direction.

These examples of expedited innovations show that library workers were thinking deeply about who to include in their definition of community and what scarce resources the library was in a strong position to offer when COVID revealed how easily people could become isolated without access to communication technologies. Crises can often lead to great new ideas, which have to be appreciated and even celebrated at the same time that we recognize the devastation that crises also bring.

New Expectations

Many library workers and educators had to learn new skills very quickly in order to move services and classes online when libraries and schools closed. Some library workers capitalized on this chaos to position themselves as technology and learning experts who could support their colleagues in the transition to online work. A recent study of school librarians showed that the librarians were not recognized as experts by their site administrators, but that they were still able to create informal learning networks with the teachers at their school so that they could work together to sustain students’ learning during school closures (Wake, Hu, & Shaw, 2022). Based on the survey results, the researchers concluded that the school librarians in the study have knowledge and skills “including insights into the curriculum, depth of knowledge in best practices for technology integration, and extensive knowledge of [open education] resources” to support teachers and students during online learning and that “schools/districts can and should be more inclusive of [school librarians] in planning for technology use in teaching and learning, and position them as leaders in this work” (Wake, Hu, & Shaw, 2022, p. 16). After experiencing these learning communities during the COVID crisis, school librarians and teachers now have the expectation that school librarians will be part of planning for online learning.

Library workers and leaders should also be mindful of the new expectations for flexibility that COVID closures inspired in those of us who were fortunate enough to be able to keep working by moving our work online. For example, Octavio Hernandez, Library Specialist II at North Central University, explained that going through the COVID pandemic, he noticed,

people’s varying health situations, and noticed [some] people’s life situations being more difficult than others. And employer willingness to be flexible was super important. […] It’s amazing to get to see mothers have their children there [while working from home] and be transparent. […] I just see it as so much of a healthier working environment. I’m much happier for my coworkers and for their kids […] The remote work environment can provide so much more flexibility and quality of life in my opinion. And I feel like if jobs aren’t doing that, they’re not going to last. So libraries and people working in them need to figure out how that’s going to work. It’s super important.

Though many library jobs cannot be done online, Octavio points out that flexibility, in whatever form that can take in library work, is a benefit that many skilled workers will demand from their jobs going forward.

COVID-related safety protocols are just one dramatic example of how libraries are always being shaped by social and technology changes.

Recent innovation efforts that may have long-term effects

Some library leaders keep things the same regardless of whether or not they are working, but “[g]ood libraries understand the need to see everything they do as a service because it is evaluated against use” (Lankes, 2022, slide 14). This means that the quality of the service is judged by how much it is used, since people using the service show that the service is designed well enough to have value for them—it meets their need, it’s worth their time (Lankes, 2022, slide 14). An excellent library, however, does not center its services, instead, it centers its community, evaluating its success based on how it makes “the world a better place by helping people find meaning and make better decisions” (Lankes, 2022, slide 30). For example,

a library garden is not a nice service for those who care about plants. A library garden should be a way to enhance the community—to make it healthier and happier, and better. [These goals can only be achieved] if that garden is part of a movement where the librarian stands side by side with students and scholars and entrepreneurs and parents and legislators seeking a better smarter community. (Lankes, 2022, slide 14)

Just trying something new does not necessarily create a meaningful future for a library. Instead, sustainable library services that make the world a better place have to be based on

• creatively defining the shared characteristics of people who do not currently use the library
• empathetically noticing what scarce resources the library is positioned to provide that it has not tried providing before and that it is uniquely positioned to provide.

Many libraries are successfully finding these intersections of community characteristics and needed resources and coming up with exciting innovations. The examples I use in this section are drawn mostly from announcements of award recipients. Most awards for library innovation are focused on public libraries’ services, so these examples are mostly from public libraries, but I have selected the examples that may offer ideas of service innovations that can be tried at school and academic libraries, too.

Social Justice

As you read through these examples of innovations that focus on increasing social justice, notice that the library workers are coming up with relevant new services by thinking in new ways about both a) which shared characteristics tie their community together most meaningfully and b) which scarce resources can be shared more effectively to empower people “to take agency and seek change” (Lankes, 2022, slide 30).

Y’all Mean All

Parents often are unsure about how to discuss challenging social issues with their children, but library workers who specialize in children’s literacy and development can help to bridge the gap. In 2021, the Youth Services Librarians and the Early Literacy Librarian at New Orleans Public Library created a Zoom storytime series focused on social justice issues (Sutton, 2021). The librarians collaborated with organizations including Conscious Roots, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Project Butterfly, and a local social worker to prepare for the programs and select picture books that address social justice issues to start conversations with children ages 5 and up in a developmentally appropriate way (Sutton, 2021, para. 9). The Friends of the New Orleans Public Library, which is the fundraising arm of the library system, funded the librarians’ work with Conscious Roots, which is a consulting firm focused on improving organizations’ and individuals’ abilities to carry out diversity, equity, and inclusion work (Social Justice Storytime, n.d.). Y’all Mean All is an innovative program because the library workers recognized that there is a community of parents who are interested in developing their children’s social awareness but who lack the thorough knowledge of children’s literature that is needed in order to find books that appropriately introduce difficult topics to children. If you are interested to know which books the librarians used in their program, you can contact the New Orleans Public Library.

Culinary Literacy Center

Several libraries have begun partnering with local nutrition-support organizations, like food pantries, to stock community refrigerators on-site where patrons can pick up free food to combat hunger (Bennett, 2023). But the Philadelphia Free Library, the public library system in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has gone a step further with a kitchen classroom that opened in 2014 in its central library. Library staff and community members use the Culinary Literacy Center to offer cooking classes. The Philadelphia Free Library also offers cooking-related library programs at most of the branches. Although not a traditional library service, the Culinary Literacy Center (n.d.) website explains that “Cooking and eating are educational acts and provide opportunities to learn math, science, languages, history and so much more” (para. 1). The Culinary Literacy Center and related programs are partially funded by the library but are only possible because of the partnerships with a long list of nutrition and health related non-profit organizations as well as financial support from philanthropic organizations (About, n.d.). A network of nutrition organizations delivers fresh food to people in the communities around Philadelphia’s central library and many of its branches because they are located in food deserts, which means that people do not have easy access to fresh foods in their local stores (Lankes, 2022). The food that the nutrition organizations provide becomes even more valuable and meaningful because of the library’s kitchen classroom and cooking programs (Lankes, 2022). The library workers additionally empower patrons to build relationships with their neighbors by inviting people to share the cooking techniques and recipes from their countries or cultures of origin (News, n.d.). The kitchen classroom and its related programs are an innovative service because the library workers value the power of food to cross boundaries that divide communities and library workers recognized that the skills and abilities that people need to have to get the most out of healthy food are a scarce resource that the library became well-positioned to provide.

Reading Engagement Through Play

In one year, from 2020-2021, 650 children between the ages of 6 and 12 engaged in the Radislav Nekcevic Public Library’s program “I Have the Right to Read” (Enabling Learning: Serbia, n.d.). The program focuses on developing children’s reading comprehension and enjoyment of reading. The weekly activities the library workers have organized include:

TV Commercials – children recommend their favourite books as 60-second commercials, learning how to summarize and retell stories.

Our Theatre – children adapt a book into a play, and perform the story or use puppets to tell it. They also integrate real-life experiences into their plays.

You Are Me and I Am You – children learn to understand the personalities of characters in books, and make connections to their own feelings and lives.

Draw to Flow – children learn to order the sequence of events in stories, organize their thoughts and communicate the story through drawings.

Battle of the Brains – the children pretend to be participants in a TV quiz show. In teams, they read and answer questions, learning to think analytically and make predictions.

I Spy With My Little Eye – the children practice paying attention to detail to better understand the intention of authors. They are detectives, looking for clues in text or that they hear in reading out loud sessions. (Enabling Learning: Serbia, n.d.)

Although the children who participate in this program also have reading comprehension classes in school,

according to Jelena Rajić, librarian in Public Library ‘Radislav Nikčević’s Department for Cultural and Educational Programmes and Reading Promotion, ‘The library is a neutral space, therefore children are not evaluated like in school and do not get grades, and so they can relax and enjoy the experience. They do not compete, just participate equally in the play.’ (Enabling Learning: Serbia, n.d.)

This innovation is a good reminder that not only public libraries but also school and academic libraries create learning environments that traditional classrooms cannot offer. The freedom that library workers and learners have to construct their learning environment together is nearly impossible for teachers and professors to achieve because of the physical and the bureaucratic structural constraints that define nearly all schools and colleges. In his autobiography, Between the World and Me, public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015) explained that when he was growing up,

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free. (p. 48)

The library is a place, whether in-person or online, where people can freely pursue their curiosities but with support—not left to sink or swim alone online. This is precious and libraries should connect even with the people who also have access to formal learning spaces, like classrooms, because library workers can facilitate relaxed, enjoyable, limitless learning.

Doers Program

Funded by an international non-profit organization called Fundacion Biblioseo, Biblioteca de la Creatividad (Library of Creativity) has two locations near Bogota, Colombia where young people between the ages of 7 and 18 become Doers by engaging in a problem-based curriculum that includes reading an inspiring book, identifying issues in their communities, coming up with creative solutions, and carrying out those solutions (Enabling Learning: Colombia, n.d.). Some of the solutions the Doers come up with and carry out also result in producing goods that can be sold and the proceeds from the sales are re-invested in the Library’s program. This is an innovative program because it engages patrons themselves in the challenging and meaningful work of defining the key characteristics that bring the community together and then identifying the scarce resources that the library is in an ideal position to provide.

Jail and Reentry Services

Librarians and library techs in the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) system are pioneering services to currently and recently incarcerated patrons. For the past several years, they have organized a team of interns and volunteers to reply to letters from people in prison asking for Reference assistance. In their replies, the library workers are able to provide photocopies of the materials that meet the incarcerated patrons’ information needs. Their newest initiative, called Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People, is a collaboration with the American Library Association and

will identify existing library services for incarcerated people, support professionals in the field in building out or creating new services, solidify library services to incarcerated people as a focused area of concern within librarianship, develop digital literacy programming for people who are formerly incarcerated, and provide guidance for librarians working in juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons nationwide. (SFPL, n.d.)

The strength of this initiative is the way it is connecting efforts that library workers have been pursuing in isolation and finding ways for different library systems to work together.

As R. David Lankes (2022) says, library workers “are vital players in not serving our communities, but saving them” (slide 22). Some of the examples of justice-oriented programs in this section may seem to stretch the scope of libraries’ mission. But consider that the American Library Association adopted the Code of Ethics principle on racial and social justice in 2021 to encourage library workers to contribute to their communities’ wellbeing by recognizing the attributes of their community and sharing the scarce resources that are unlikely to be allocated equitably without help from the library. ALA offers the Code of Ethics as “a framework for library professionals dealing with situations involving ethical conflicts” (Zalusky, 2021, para. 5). The newly added principle on racial and social justice states,

We affirm the inherent dignity of every person. We work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces.

Library workers who are defending or proposing social justice focused services or programs can point to this principle from our professional code of ethics to explain how justice-focused innovations fit within our professional standards and are a core part of our duty as library workers to practice “radical inclusivity” (Gustina & Guinnee, 2017, para. 7).

Emerging technologies and partnerships

As you read through the following examples of innovations that use new technology, notice that the library workers are coming up with relevant services by recognizing how technology offers new freedom to reach community members who do not usually come to the library. Library workers see an opportunity to provide community members free and quick access to scarce resources that they might have otherwise had to do without because they could not afford the technology on their own due to the inequitable ways that scarce resources are allocated.

Bringing the Library to Transit Riders

Las Vegas-Clark County Library District partners with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada to get riders signed up for and using Libby (an online ebook app that the library licenses) on the WiFi that the Regional Transportation Commission provides on the city buses (Bringing the Library, 2021). There are posters on the buses that show the steps for registering, users don’t have to already have library cards, and even people from out of town can use Libby for up to seven days while they’re visiting Las Vegas (Bringing the Library, 2021). Library workers had to think far beyond the typical definition of library users to consider every bus rider, including the tourists, as patrons they just hadn’t served yet. And they saw that their community had an abundance of WiFi access on the buses and an abundance of great ebooks through Libby, but that their scarce resource was the time it takes to go to the library to get registered and learn about its services. Without creatively defining community and scarce resources, the library workers would have continued to offer the same great services to their typical community, but would never have noticed this opportunity to serve a previously under-served community.

Mapping the Community

Library workers at a branch of the Medellin public library in Colombia realized that the neighborhood the library serves, San Javier-La Loma, had not been mapped since 1971 (Creative Use, n.d.). To help their community create a current and meaningful map of their neighborhood, library workers used technologies including,

computers and the internet, digital cameras and voice recorders […] and balloon mapping [which] involves suspending a digital camera [programmed to take photos] from the balloons […] allowing the balloons to drift over the chosen area [and] when the camera has taken enough photos, a participant reels in the balloons. (Creative Use, n.d., para. 6-7)

The library workers also collaborated with “experts in free Open Source mapping software to teach members of the community to create maps” (Creative Use, n.d., para. 6). The library workers who created this innovation recognized that despite the fact that their neighborhood was overlooked by the city, their community knowledge was in abundant supply and everyone living in the community shared a commitment to bringing together their experiences to create an authentic and meaningful representation of their neighborhood. And by sharing the scarce resources of technology expertise and hardware, they could create something together that no individual would have been able to create on their own.

Family Digital Activity Center Curriculum

Library workers at a public library in Northern Lithuania noticed that a large segment of their community had access to information technology and had basic skills as technology consumers, but that advanced technologies, like robotics, 3D printing, app programming, and drone operation were not widely available (Supporting Education, n.d.). So they used funding from a European Union grant program to collaborate with a technology company to create a series of courses designed to bridge skill levels and generations and create a new level of technology expertise in their region (Supporting Education, n.d.). Since it began in 2019, students of all ages have completed the technology curriculum and family members are encouraged to attend together (Supporting Education, n.d.). The program builds on participants’ curiosity about new technologies to also build intergenerational connections in the community, a resource that may be even more scarce than the advanced technologies that the library is providing.

These innovative programs are meaningful to their communities because they do more than just provide additional access to technology that most households cannot afford. Instead, they are meaningful because they extend the reach of the library, help communities to re-envision what the library can offer, and provide a model of how technology can be used for connecting rather than isolating people.

Your Role in Shaping the Future

Noticing the need for changes

When working with patrons, there will be issues that come up over and over again because of the difference between how people want to use the library and how the library is actually set up, including its physical layout as well as policies and practices that affect patrons’ experiences of the library. As one of the people who patrons will interact with the most in the library, you can use your experience as a tech to notice what isn’t working well for patrons and to suggest changes or make meaningful changes on your own. All of the possibilities for change should be rooted in empathy for the patrons and for your co-workers. Empathy is thinking about “how to solve another person’s problems by providing creative and innovative solutions that relate to [their] needs” because empathy “allows us to understand and share the same feelings that others feel” so that we “connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance, or situation” (Alrubail, 2015, para. 3-4). To practice empathy in your work as a library tech, regularly remind yourself to ask these questions:

• What is the person feeling?
• What actions or words indicate this feeling?
• What words would you use to describe their feelings? (Alrubail, 2015, para. 4).
• And when have you seen other patrons experiencing similar feelings in the library?

Empathy can help you to notice when people are having negative feelings, which can lead you to brainstorm changes that could reduce the causes of negative feelings in the library. Empathy is also really powerful for noticing when people are feeling good in the library. Taking the time to notice when patrons are feeling good can make it possible for you to advocate against changes that are likely to diminish patrons’ enjoyment of the library. It can also empower you to make changes that will make positive experiences more likely for more patrons.

Once you notice patrons’ feelings in the library and you identify either a problem or a super-success, then you can start to think about ways to create better experiences for library patrons more consistently. But remember that cultural humility means not making assumptions based on your own experiences. Do not give into the temptation to make a proposal based on your first instinct about what should be done. Instead, use idea-generating techniques like brainstorming, sketchnotes, and appreciative inquiry to explore options (Alrubail, 2015). Brainstorming can include making lists and drawing a mind-map that connects related ideas to see what patterns emerge in your thoughts. Sketchnotes combine words, arrows, shapes, colors, and simple drawings to explore connections among your ideas (Hutchison, 2022). And appreciative inquiry, in the context of generating ideas for taking action based on your empathetic observations, includes recalling achievements, focusing on your values and your library’s values, and avoiding getting stuck thinking only about the shortcomings or limitations of your library’s practices (da Silva, 2018).

In addition to generating ideas from which to choose, library workers also often seek data to support their proposals for changes. In 2014, public library director, Brett Bonfield, reminded library workers that our gut instinct and casual observations about our work do not give us a realistic sense of how well we are doing the job of improving our community’s wellbeing. He called upon all of us who value libraries to find ways to measure the impact of services we want to continue or that we want to improve, because measuring a service brings our attention to it and can lead to improvements even before all of the assessment data are collected and analyzed (Bonfield, 2014, para. 51). Some measurements Bonfield (2014) suggests for evaluating public libraries include: increases in voter participation; improvements in reading, “numeracy, information literacy, health literacy, and cultural literacy”; reductions in local unemployment; and increased social capital and participation in the cultural conversation “by creating opportunities for people to get to know their neighbors [and] helping people learn more about the topics that others are discussing” (paras. 35-48). Different types of libraries will need different measurements, but Bonfield’s examples for a public library can help you brainstorm measurements for any type of library. The focus is on how your community defines wellbeing and what specific roles your library has in contributing to facets of the community’s wellbeing.

Changes will have unintended consequences, too.

As you start to generate ideas for improvements in your library, keep in mind that changes are likely to have unintended consequences as well as the intended benefits. It can be okay to make a change that creates an overall improvement but has a temporarily or slightly negative affect on others. Changes may challenge library workers in two ways. First, they may receive negative feedback from patrons or coworkers. Second, they may feel uneasy about having to learn new procedures or policies. That uneasiness may lead to resistance and can even derail really good ideas. Even when library workers are open to learning new ways, it can be painful to realize that what they were doing before may have been hurting patrons. It can be tempting to continue the old way because it is more comfortable than taking a critical look at past practices.

For example, a high school LMT I interviewed for this textbook explained that she immediately started working with her supervisor to eliminate overdue fines from her library as soon as she was hired. The supervisor was an enthusiastic supporter of this change and recognized immediately how it would benefit students. The assistants who had been working in the high school for years before the new LMT arrived were open to the policy change but expressed defensiveness about their support for the overdue fines procedures in the past. They expressed that they thought the fines taught students responsibility and showed effective stewardship of the library collection. So the LMT needed to develop empathy, display understanding, and show compassion for her colleagues as they began to recognize that the new fine-free policy led to more books being checked out and fewer negative interactions with students.

An elementary school LMT I interviewed for this textbook explained why policies that are unpopular with students and are hard for the LMTs to enforce in her library are unlikely to change and maybe should not change:

as a student I’m not okay with being told to be quiet in this room [the library]. Like, I should be allowed to talk wherever I want, you know? Whereas adult-wise, we’re the ones who become the bad guys for telling them stop talking or don’t eat in here, no water in here. So you kind of just have to be okay with it because it is part of your job to instill these policies. I think for as long as libraries will potentially still be here, I think that policy will still stay. Whether it be eating food in the library, drinking water in the library, talking in the library, I think those are policies that have to stay because the library is considered a safe space for people. So you should be able to read and do whatever you want, but it is a quiet space for people. This is where people choose to read. They’re not reading out loud, they’re not reading to others except sometimes you read to a classroom. But even in a public library, I’m not reading to all these strangers. I’m reading to myself. Then when it comes to food and beverages, you don’t want to get ants—ants and books are not fun. I don’t need to see dead bugs in my book in page 55, you know? And then beverages are going to be harmful towards the books. So I don’t think those policies will ever go away. I think they will always stay for as long as the library is there. And I think they’re good policies to have because those are the only places that you will have those policies.

But these same policies have been successfully changed at other libraries because of library workers’ efforts, demonstrating that they are not set in stone. So before suggesting a change, even one that is likely to be popular with patrons, it is important to consider and help colleagues work through difficult feelings that can come when change is imminent.

People in Power May Not Agree that there is a Problem

When people in power care about fixing a problem, they will tend to expedite changes to solve the problem as quickly as possible, sometimes even skipping steps in the procedures that the organization has established for reviewing proposals and making decisions. But when people in power do not see an urgent need for change, they will tend to let bureaucratic procedures slow down staff or patrons who want to suggest changes. Be prepared to follow the lengthy process for proposing policy changes or come up with ways to get leaders excited about the need for change. Both strategies are probably necessary to make system-wide changes. For example, Christina Lorenzo, Library Assistant at a public library, observed that,

although we do want to help everybody, I think the [policy] that we’re struggling with now—and I’m hoping to work with someone to try to find a solution—is the library card procedure. So, our homeless population, most of them can’t get a library card because they don’t have an address or they don’t have a picture ID with them. You have to have both, no exceptions. And so I think that that makes it really hard because I feel like everybody should have access to our services regardless of what their situation is. And I think that that’s the one I struggle with the most because I want to help them. But then again, I can’t make that exception because everybody has to abide by the policy and procedures that we have. And the only thing we’ve been able to do is just do research on what they can do to kind of help them. Like, for example, if they don’t have an address, ‘Hey, you can go to the post office. The post office has a general mailing program that they do.’ So more than 80% of the time they don’t want to do that because of course, you know, it’s another thing they have to worry about aside from all the other things they have to worry about. So that one makes it hard. And it’s really hard when, you know, like I had mentioned before, our system’s very conservative and so [their views] sometimes don’t really align with what our patrons who frequently visit [need] but that [others] don’t really want to think about. It’s kind of like you’re talking to a wall because they’re just like, ‘No, that’s not what we need to focus on.’ Which is unfortunate and I understand, you know, you can’t fix every problem, but that is the one that we’re struggling with right now. It’s not that there isn’t enough staff who are passionate about that. I think it just comes with the procedure that you have to follow to even attempt to try to get attention to that subject and then the procedure you have to follow to even get it approved.

Johnny Rodriguez, Library Technical Clerk at Cerritos College, shared what he learned as a student at Cerritos College about how to advocate for a change that will improve people’s lives:

It started off as kind of a club on campus. It was all student led. We were basically advocating for students’ rights. And, at the time, I would say, between 2011 and 2014, there was a big movement in California for students to unionize. And so we were sort of following that. So, we were just this club of students and we had different members coming in and we all heard each other out. And we were thinking, ‘Well, you know, we want to have a voice on campus, but not only that, we want to make changes.’ So, we had different campaigns and one of the campaigns was providing access to textbooks, because we were all broke students. We knew how expensive it was and what a big deal it was to not be able to get your book. So even though this was really student led, we found solidarity with a lot of different groups on campus. There were a lot of faculty that supported us. And so we were able to, long story short, figure out that the bookstore on campus, their contract was up for renegotiation. And so we were able to really push for a change in the contract where they would give the library money every year. And it wasn’t that big of a stretch. They were already giving money to different departments, but it had never gone directly to the library. And it took a long time, took a lot of campaigning. There was a lot of backlash. But we were able to secure that funding and that money is what I still use to oversee [the library textbook reserves] to this day from that contract renegotiation. That was in the years after the recession. And so everything had gotten cut and there’s that fight, so it was part of that bigger Movement.

I learned about the politics on campus, all the nitty gritty of the [governing] board. We had board members get in our face and call us out. Most of them are gone. I can completely speak about this because they’ve since moved on, but we had a lot of backlash, definitely, on campus as well as support. [Now in my position as a library clerk] I’m well aware of the politics on campus. You have to be aware of not just the library, but its place within the community. It helps to be aware of the bigger picture. I mean, there’s definitely something to be said for being open to organizing even at an institution where you think that’s not necessary or that’s not really how things are done here. You can accomplish a lot. We kind of had to go to everybody and just advocate, advocate, advocate to whoever would listen or help. And this went for every campaign that we did. We’re in a place where they’re used to things being done a certain way. There’s a certain process that they’re used to. And I feel like that process is in place almost to kind of impede radical thought. There’s a whole bureaucracy that if they say no to you at the very beginning, there’s no way it’s going to get to the person at the top. And so we had to find ways to circumvent that. We would go straight to board members. We would set up meetings individually with them as students and say, ‘Hey, this is in our mind, we would like this, this and this. What do you think you could do? Do you think the board would be open? How do you personally feel about these issues?’ And some of them were receptive; some refused to meet with us. But we found that if we were able to sway a few board members that really helped in getting the ball rolling elsewhere on campus because all of a sudden it’s not like, ‘Oh, this kid is telling some counselor that he thinks this should happen.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, they’ve convinced different board members and the board members want to get on board with this.’ And then also going to the faculty union, they helped us out a lot. They were really supportive of us and they also advocated on our behalf. And the same thing with the library [dean]. She was more than happy to hear us out and see what she could do on her end.

This is an instructive example because it shows the power of patrons advocating on their own behalf, since Johnny was making this impact while he was still a student. It also shows the lengthy process of demanding change and shows how change requires allyship across different groups and including people with different types of power.

How to propose changes

After you have 1) noticed the need for a change, 2) generated ideas for how to make the change based on what you understand about patron needs and preferences, 3) selected one or two ideas from the list you generated that you would like to try, and 4) started to address potential barriers to your proposal’s success, then it is time to 5) start the process of proposing changes in your library. Remember that change happens slowest in large organizations and that your own credibility, rather than the quality of your idea, is likely to be the most influential factor in whether or not your proposal is taken seriously. Seeking allies among experienced and respected colleagues will likely be necessary when you are new at your library or when you are not in a position of authority.

Recommended steps

People who study how change happens in organizations recommend eight strategies for getting support for a new idea:

Sell it

This one is hard for a lot of us, but it’s vitally important to remember that “you can’t mention your suggestion once and expect it to be adopted […] champion your plan and sell its merits [and] explain your innovation in different ways for various audiences” (Morris, 2020, para. 2).

“Give it time”

Don’t be surprised or give up if it takes months or longer for your idea to be reviewed before a decision is made to implement it. This is especially true if it requires an official change to policy, but even seemingly small changes may need to be reviewed by all of the staff who will be affected before a decision is made. And that can take a long time. It’s okay to check back in with the library leaders or other organizational leaders who are responsible for taking your proposal to the next level.

“Use channels”

Ask around among your colleagues to see if they would be interested to pursue the change you are proposing, but don’t make it seem like you’re solidifying support before your supervisor knows about the change you want to make. Instead, make sure that the informal discussions you have with colleagues are clearly part of the approach that “built your case, rather than simply circumvented your manager” because if your supervisor feels embarrassed that they were not informed you might not be able to get their support when you need it (Morris, 2020, para. 5).

“Be humble”

To have the best chance of success, “if people disagree with you [about your proposal], don’t be indignant” (Morris, 2020, para. 6). Take their concerns seriously, acknowledge when they are right, and “include their concerns (and possible remedies) in future discussions” so that you avoid creating additional barriers to success by seeming to steamroll or disregard your colleagues’ contributions (Morris, 2020, para. 6).

“Don’t mistake disagreement for personal rejection”

Remember that “someone rejecting your idea probably isn’t meant as a personal attack,” in fact, a strong negative reaction to your proposal is more likely based in the person’s own fear than in any feelings they have about you (Morris, 2020, para. 8). So don’t react in an offended way even if people strongly challenge your idea.

“Expect (and invite) resistance”

Talking through your colleagues’ concerns about your proposal is part of “helping them learn to accept change” (Morris, 2020, para. 10). Even people who have an immediate negative reaction to your proposal may come to see its merits if you give them the chance to talk through the pros and cons. This is another good reason not to try to silence dissent when you propose something new.

“Respect the past, but don’t get stuck there”

Although your new idea may be inspired by what you notice isn’t working in current procedures, be careful not to heedlessly criticize existing solutions when you explain the merits of your proposal. Your colleagues are likely to have a lot invested in the reasons that the current procedures were created in the first place. It is possible, even likely, that existing procedures were the result of earlier careful consideration of patron or community needs similar to what you are trying to accomplish now. Criticizing them without recognizing that they were almost certainly a good idea at the time will hurt your credibility because it may seem to your colleagues that you do not understand and share the goals that informed their previous decision (Morris, 2020, para. 11). If co-workers do not think you share their goals, then it will be harder to convince them that they will experience any benefits if they implement your proposal. Failing to make it clear that your proposal is grounded in the goals and values that you share with your colleagues could create an us-versus-them dynamic that is hard to reverse.

“Stay positive”

This step is similar to the one above. When you describe your proposal, “use the language of abundance instead of the language of deficit” (Morris, 2020, para. 12). This means talking about the strengths of the organization and the staff that will make the proposal a success, explaining how the proposal addresses a concern that your colleagues already share by building on existing opportunities, and generating a feeling of hopefulness about the proposal.

These eight strategies will help you to anticipate and work around the pitfalls that can make proposing new ideas challenging.

Examples

You can also draw inspiration from the library workers who participated in interviews for this textbook and shared examples of the proposals that they successfully stewarded through the long process of review and implementation:

Lora Diaz, the LMT III at Mission Hill High School, shared how important patience, humility, and focus are when carrying out a new proposal:

If I want something changed in here, I will bring that to my leadership and we’ll discuss it. At the end of the day though, it is up to them whether or not stuff happens. And then once we get stuff rolling, let’s say that they agree with me, they want to move forward with it… Well, I’m still trying to get these [broken security gates] out of here […] One of the first things I did when I came in[to this position] was I submitted a request to get [the gates] removed and had to go through this whole process and go to the District [Office]. The District has to sign off, they have to approve it. So three years later, this is where we’re at [points to the security gates that are still there]. But at the same time, with getting [the un-needed] shelves removed, as soon as my principal had agreed to it and got it approved—and I think helped it along—[the shelves] were out. Just gone over one of the breaks. So it’s really just where you fall on the priority list of leadership and what’s going on there.

My original boss hired me on to make changes like this, specifically, and was very open about that. Like, ‘I hired you because you see the library differently than previous people have,’ which is something more of a collaborative space and less of a very quiet self-study space. So, I have music, we have games, we’re trying to get games in here. So when your vision of the library and leadership’s vision match-up, things happen. When those conflict, then I usually say to people, ‘At the end of the day, it’s not my library, it’s my principal’s library.’ Because at the end of the day, they’re in charge of all of the schools. So that can be frustrating. That can be a point where you’re maybe not so sure that you want to be working in schools, because you’re not going to have the kind of autonomy that it appears that you have. Because you’re doing a little bit of everything [as an LMT III], right? Like, I’m the only director, I’m doing this, I’m doing that. But still, whoever is downstairs is in charge and is, at the end of the day, going to be making those big decisions. So [my role is] kind of advising them about what to do with the space and having my own expertise behind it. And that’s pretty much where that ends and hopefully they match with me.

In order to stay motivated and focused, Lora described,

taking a lot from what I learned in the [Palomar Library & Information Tech] program and just trying to change what I can. [For example], when I came in we were still charging kids like nickeling and diming them for every late day that they didn’t turn in a book that they didn’t want to check out in the first place. You know? It was just frustrating to walk in and kind of be like, ‘Okay, everything here is kind of stuck in the past. Let’s upgrade it all.’

As Lora explained, getting the chance to propose a change can take time because,

it can be hard [getting a] meeting with the principal, directly. So my first step has always been to go to my direct supervisor. And we did a walkthrough. She took time out of her day to schedule the whole thing. And so we walked around and we talked about like, ‘What would we do with this space if these [shelves] weren’t here? The books on here, tell me more.’ Basically, I was telling her the technical stuff, like I run reports and all of these books have never been checked out. There’s a bunch of reasons why it’s okay to get rid of this material and not replace it. Because a lot of the stuff kids use these days are on [the laptops], not actual encyclopedias and things. So it was really kind of making sure we were on the same page and letting her know, ‘I am comfortable removing all of these shelves and here’s why.’ And just advising [the assistant principal] as to how we should go forward with this removal [of shelves after weeding], like in stages or all at once or whatever. So it took me about a year to go through all of it. It didn’t happen overnight, that’s for sure. [The un-needed shelves] finally got pulled over the summer last year. I honestly don’t know where it would be if my admin weren’t in the same mindset for the library. I’ve seen, there’s been some conflicts in my other jobs where admin’s idea of the library and the library techs are very much clashing. I’ve been very lucky to have pretty progressive work here. I kind of went into it ready to fight, but I didn’t have to so much, which was really nice.

Lora’s experiences demonstrate that library workers with like-minded supervisors can accomplish great things by keeping proposals focused on improving the library’s value for patrons.

Danielle Davis, the Lead Library Programming Technician at Patrick J. Carney, U.S. Marine Corps Camp Pendleton Library, also described how she made the case for two significant improvements, one in the types of programs that the library can offer and the other in the safety and comfort of library patrons during the summer months. Danielle explained,

We have kits for kids aged five to 12 to check out, take home and do crafts that help them explore different ideas and figures and the history of cultures. And so for the longest time we, I’ve gone through now five different library directors and our most recent one is the only one that’s been willing to put in the work to argue for why we needed a Pride month kit. And that took a lot of time and a lot of research. And I helped—at the time the current library director was our children’s librarian—I helped her do the research for that and figure out how [to explain to upper management] why it was so crucial. And I found primary sources that were specific to the military. And I feel like knowing your stakeholder when you’re making those types of arguments or to prove why identities need to be represented within your spaces, works really in your favor when you cater [the evidence] to your audience.

To help improve the safety and comfort of patrons, Danielle also described,

when I first started working here, we had a 90 degree library. We had no air conditioning during the summer. It was sweltering, it was hot. Children were hot and sweating. Patrons were hot and sweating. Staff were hot and sweating. Constantly being exposed to really intense temperatures really lessened morale within the library landscape. And I took it upon myself to research how libraries are cooling stations. And then I drafted a letter and an argument with data and also testimony from patrons to leadership, who exists within another building on base. And then I met with them and convinced them to install the necessary equipment to create the library as a cooling station for our community.

Danielle succeeded with these proposals because they were clear, detailed, and used evidence that was meaningful to her audience of decision-makers.

And when you feel deeply passionate about finding solutions to a problem that transcends your own library, you can pursue that passion and become a leader with expertise that other library workers can rely on when they are making a case for changes at their own library. For example, Octavio Hernandez, Library Specialist II at North Central University, is pursuing his law degree to become an advocate for free-er access to information because,

copyright is terrible. Students not being able to access the latest research because of publisher greed…it’s sad. It’s really tough and difficult that the publishers pay the authors and it’s hard to imagine an incentive for an author to have without the publisher front or money. So knowing that that’s the economic model that we have makes it so the copyright really hinders the learning of not just our students, but the entire society. So when I tell a student that we don’t own a book and that I can only request a certain chapter, 10% of a book [because of library policy], that hinders their learning. And if it’s something they’re passionate about, it’s really sad that because we don’t have it in the budget or because they can’t pay for it, we can’t pay for it, that a student who could potentially take that field and make it bigger and better… Like that’s how academia should work [so that people can follow their passion]. But because of our economic model, copyright, digital rights management…it’s really backwards and sad that we’re dealing with it in this day and age. So I want to study copyright and that aspect of law when I have a chance to pick elective classes or write papers, and focus on that aspect of the library because I heard this term copy left and I definitely consider myself copy left, and I want to know how to legally or maybe work within the gray areas of the law to be able to get as much to students as you possibly can without blatantly doing something against the law to keep money away from publishers and authors. I think because the library that I work in is very explicit about the student being our first major priority, I feel like that can extend to putting publishers and authors as a lower priority.

For Octavio, his commitment to getting students connected to the information they need is driving him to seek solutions beyond his own library.

Conclusion

You are part of the future of libraries. You will be the welcoming presence that keeps people coming to the library. You will be the empathetic engineer of innovations that strengthen the library’s ability to make people’s lives better. As R. David Lankes encourages us,

we must go beyond access to existing knowledge; we must foster new knowledge. Information literacy and reading, but also making, growing, and, perhaps most importantly, advocacy. The ability for a person or a group to take agency and seek change. If all we do is teach people to read, and the state has limited what reading is available, then we have failed. If we build beautiful buildings full of makerspaces, collections, gardens, lectures, and storytelling, but do not prepare our communities to question and quest for justice, then we have built amusement parks for the mind meant to distract and pacify, not educate. (Lankes, 2022, slide 30)

Take pride in the commitment you have made to a profession that is constantly striving to rise to the high standards we have set for ourselves on behalf of our communities. Celebrate the successes your library has already achieved but also look for the next opportunity to increase justice and provide what your community needs to make itself resilient and creative.

References

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