Danger and opportunities

Citation

Mitchell, E. and Watstein, B. (2009), "Danger and opportunities", Reference Services Review, Vol. 37 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rsr.2009.24037aaa.001

Danger and opportunities

Article Type: Editorial From: Reference Services Review, Volume 37, Issue 1

In these belt-tightening times, great uncertainty and concern are commonplace. Local, state, and national budget problems are likely to remain unresolved for some time to come. Funding provided to municipalities, institutions, systems, or consortia is not likely to improve, or even remain the same as last year. Other sources of institutional financial support – be they returns on endowment investments or student tuition payments – are similarly uncertain. We can anticipate many conversations on our campuses, our communities, and in our libraries about proposed trade-offs that may compromise institutional quality, access and affordability – all central to our missions. Few of our libraries will escape significant impacts.

For those of us in public services the challenges are obvious. We must identify strategic priorities in order to avoid indiscriminate across-the-board service and program cuts.

We need to work diligently to minimize the detrimental effects of reactive and non-strategic budget cuts on our users, our carefully honed programs and services, and on the long term strength of our institutions. How do we build and maintain support and capacity for new service initiatives that are essential to maintaining our value to our communities? By engaging in service planning activities we may proactively and energetically mitigate the impact of broad cuts. While not all our service decisions will be without controversy, broad participation in service assessment and planning will help insure that we have surfaced as many perspectives and suggestions as possible.

We can begin by pushing up our sleeves:

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  Conduct service reviews of current strategic or operations plans.

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  Reaffirm and recommit to service priorities.

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  Reconceptualize existing services and programs and identify new ones based on changing user needs, standards, and emerging best practices elsewhere.

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  Reallocate resources from low-impact activities to support new ones.

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  Create practices which embed assessment into public service operations and planning, to ensure that data drives decision making.

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  Provide opportunities for public services staff to grow and develop new skills; include cross training and reassignments to prepare them for new or different roles within or beyond your organization.

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  Provide ongoing staff training and development, including workshops on change management to support public services staff through the transformations.

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  Seek staff and community input on efficiencies and to surface creative ideas for arrangements to maintain core services.

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  Those of us in public services in academic libraries should identify opportunities for co-investment with academic and administrative units across our colleges and universities; those of us in public libraries may seek community partners. This strategy can provide mutual benefit and enable innovative approaches to collections, services and spaces.

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  Develop a capacity to compete for foundation and federal grants to support innovative service-related projects.

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  Expand efforts to secure gifts-in-kind, including computer hardware and software, and furniture for the various library programs and facilities.

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  Develop and advance entrepreneurial business programs that would leverage assets like space, content, technology and expertise, and bring new sources of revenue.

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  Question the most obvious approaches: drastic cuts in hours and service underscore the severity of the problem but may punish patrons unfairly.

As we write, the Free Library of Philadelphia is being threatened with the permanent closure of eleven branch libraries. Many of these are in low income neighborhoods where the public schools do not have libraries. Four are historically significant libraries started by Andrew Carnegie. The Free Library of Philadelphia is also being threatened with the elimination of 71 staff positions, and a reduction of $1.6 million in the collections budget. While hard times force difficult decisions, the role that libraries play in supporting an educated, thoughtful, and productive society cannot be overestimated. Is there an opportunity to cut with a scalpel rather than a hatchet, to identify efficiencies that will recognize and continue to support the key and core functions that libraries can serve when jobs, savings, educational access and other elements central to our communities are in crisis?

Eleanor Mitchell, Sarah Barbara Watstein