"Does the non-dynamic library have a future?"

Yesterday I did a scan presentation for the New Jersey Library Association in a preconference called "Information Services in the Larger Context."

This was an excellent audience, full of questions, comments, and well-considered opinion. But one question stopped me in my tracks. One public library director explained his frustration in seeing the slow pace of change in libraries, and asked, "Does the non-dynamic library have a future?"

After some hemming and hawing, sort of like Elmer Fudd attempting to speak Aramaic, I finally said, "Maybe not." How's that for forceful opinion leadership?

During the rest of the program, the ride back to Newark Airport, and the flight home, I had time to think about this. It seems to me that libraries have a responsibility, not just an opportunity, to change.

Determining the nature of that change, though, is a combination of marketing and leadership. The type of marketing I'm referring to here is not about sales, but rather it's about knowing your clients thoroughly, what they need and want. Pat Wagner of Pattern Research led the group through some excellent exercises in this direction as the other part of the preconference, and she made some important points about how a library director can start to understand their communities more effectively.

But it's not just about giving people what they want. Leadership is about creating a vision that you can share with the board, with elected officials and business people, with the library's clients, and most of all, with the library staff. (One of our side discussions during this meeting was about the importance of not blaming the staff for not being willing to change. If the leaders cannot explain the change and provide a reason for it, the problem lies not with the staff, but with their leaders.)

Also, the clients can't know everything about what libraries could offer---they only know what they've experienced. Library leaders need to have contagious enthusiasm, not only for what the library is today but for what it can be tomorrow and beyond. And then they need to spread that contagion far and wide.

If we could do this, we wouldn't have to worry about non-dynamic libraries!