Listen close you hear what I'm about

So, let's talk about strategic planning.

via GIPHY

If you work in a library or you belong to a professional association, you may have been caught up in the tidal wave of strategic planning. And from the outside, it may look like all talk and no action. Or it may look like a bunch of talk that impedes action. At least, that's the sense that I get from the unhappy rumblings about the idea of strategic plannings that I've heard from within librarianship. There is a sense, I think that engaging in a strategic planning process has the capacity to take us away from the ever-changing circumstances that we encounter as library workers.

And I suppose, I can appreciate the idea that underlies this sentiment. As library workers, we don't want to lose sight of the communities we serve and the circumstances that can change rapidly within those communities. We should aspire to respond quickly and thoughtfully to those circumstances and the needs they surface for the community. And we should not reduce our communities, those circumstances, or those needs to talking points in a written strategic plan.

But having said that, I think that strategic plans are unbelievably important for libraries and our professional associations because they give leaders at every level the opportunity to define what they organization is going to be about for a given period of time. The strategic planning process allows organizations to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It gives organizations the opportunity to reassess their values. And when all of that is done, organizations decide on a direction for a given period of time and decide how resources will be allocated in service of that vision. What I think is so important about strategic planning in libraries and in our professional associations is that it gives us a compass for individual library workers and association volunteers to orient our work. Each individual project and program can be evaluated using the strategic plan as a lens. And projects and programs carried out within different parts of an organization that are in service of the same strategic plan seem more alike than different. An organization's strategic plan is something that unifies all parts of an organization that seem disparate.

But as much as I can appreciate the desire to be responsive and nimble, this feeling that we need to eschew strategic planning is short sighted. First, I think that not having a strategic plan means that your organization isn't all rowing in the same direction. Sure, if you have a solid organization culture you may be operating with the same values. But the programs and projects carried out within different parts of the organization may be in service of the mission of those parts and carried out to serve their own ends rather than to serve the strategic direction of the organization as a whole. Second, I don't think that operating under a strategic plan makes an organization inherently less nimble. Library workers can still respond to the changing circumstances within their communities and reflect the changing needs of the community back to its members. That doesn't change because you have a certain strategic direction. It just means that the projects and programs library workers choose to implement to meet a community's needs will work within a certain framework or construct. I also think it's worth stating explicitly that your organization's strategic plan should be community-centered at the outset as to avoid this false tension between working within a strategic direction framework and serving your community.

In the end, I think it's more important than ever that libraries and our professional associations take the time to figure out what we're about. We need to be clear about our strengths weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We need to be clear about the values that drive our work. And we need to be intentional about how the resources needed to meet our established strategic directions are allocated. Doing all of this work doesn't mutually exclude the capacity for libraries and our professional associations to be nimble and responsive. In fact, I would (and hopefully have) argued that one is directly related, and intrinsically linked, to the other.

Stay positive,
Erin

The time to rise had been engaged

I am always a little bit cheered when someone outside of the metadata creation universe champions a metadata or metadata-adjacent cause. A lot of what I write about is about the value of well-formed metadata in the larger library ecosystem--especially as it relates to a user's ability to discover things in a digital environment.

So given my soapbox feelings about well-formed metadata and its role in discovery, I was interested to Chris Bourg's blog post about the role of serendipity in the research process and browsing in the online environment. I was even more interested to know that Chris gave this talk to members of the IviesPlus group as part of IviesPlus Discovery Day, because I feel like those are the people and institutions with the resources to really dig into these issues.

The part of Chris' blog post that really caught my attention was this:

What we are hearing are scholars who want us to build tools, or facilitate the building or deployment of tools, that will allow them to see connections to their work and their teaching and their interests that they cannot see now. They want to discover articles and books and data and images and maps and primary sources and teaching objects and people on the fringes of their own areas of focus, but that are otherwise kind of in their blindspots. They want to make happy & unexpected discoveries; and they want it not to be by accident, but to be because the library has provided the tools, the data, and the metadata to make it so.

What I appreciate about this statement is the acknowledgement of the fact that creating this kind of world, this kind of future, requires well-formed metadata. Researchers want to be able to discover the things they didn't know that they wanted to discover and I believe that library would love to make that experience available to users. But, as Chris points out, that requires a different set of tools than are currently available to users. It also requires a commitment to understanding what metadata those tools require to provide the kind of experience that users want and, once those needs are assessed, the commitment to developing that kind of metadata.

Creating the descriptive and subject access to library materials that will facilitate the kind of user experience Chris describes is costly. Yes, metadata from other parts of the supply chain can (and should) be used. And yes, linking to authoritative source outside of the current authority ecosystem will help cut down one cost. But at some point, libraries will have to take on the task of creating and remediating metadata in order to make it useable by the tools that are necessary to facilitate true, serendipitous discovery. And that creation and remediation is timely in terms of time and in terms of personpower.

I am grateful that Chris put forth this vision for the future of discovery. And I'm doubly grateful that metadata was mentioned in the same breath with tools and data. It isn't enough for metadata creators to talk ceaselessly about the value of well-formed metadata in the discovery process. We need for administrators to talk about it, too. I am inspired by the ideas that Chris put forth in the talk that lead to the blog post. And I hope that we, as metadata creators, have the resources we need to create the well-formed metadata that will lead to those ideas becoming reality.

Stay positive,
Erin

Personal Vision

When I got my first professional job, my number one joy was that I wasn't going to have to move again for a while. After a lot of changes, I was so excited to settle in to a place and build a space of comfort. That was my goal at the job, as well: figure out what I'm doing and do it.

I think that's a goal we all have in our positions: to figure out what we're doing and do it, and do it well if we're lucky.  It is easy to make that the end goal. After I know this I will know it, done done let's go hiking this weekend. For me it happened so fast out of library school that I hardly noticed how I wasn't thinking hard about the long-term, strategic consequences of my decisions or about the my field generally or librarianship widely.

I think of library work (we do here at Constructive Summer) as highly responsive service based work. The trick comes where there is a lot of daily work, where sometimes we confuse the responsiveness of our actions to the responsiveness of our ideas. We can think that because we've figured out our jobs and are good at them that we're operating at our peaks. Really what we need to do when we've got it figured out is to look forward.

Looking forward in our fields and in our profession has to start with having a vision for yourself. From yourself. We're all too happy to react to other ideas, suggestions, theories or whatever, but if we don't have a real idea of what our position is all of our reactions are basically worthless reflexes without substance. If you're just reacting, you're just reacting. When you have a reasoned position that you're coming from you can have a real discussion, one that can result in your own mind being changed, one that can result in moving your workplace and our profession forward.

So how do you have a vision? The first step is to take care of the basics, yes knowing the job and being good at the job are important. It's okay to focus on that where necessary. We need to read up on the literature and keep an eye on what's happening (a particular recent failing of mine). We need to allow ourselves the time to step back and think about issues when they arise to see what kind of strategic importance they might have.

If you can't manage the time in your day to day, take a week and jot down all of the issues you run into broadly, and pick one to consider on your commute. What have I worked on this week? ebooks, streaming media, budget, weeding, format migrations in AV, next drive I take, I'm going to think about what I really think about streaming media. Where is it going in our library, where is it going generally, what might change in the next five years, what kind of things do I wish were different, what do we need to do today and what do we need to do to get ready for the future?  That's the kind of thinking that will make it easy to have an in depth conversation with someone about the future of our collection, way more than a recitation of just what I've come across in my work.

It's also important to have a good long think about what YOU want to be doing. When I first heard someone tell me this, I was in the midst of being so happy about not moving, 26 and in my first professional job and I was not ready to hear it. Now I know it is important. I refer you to Erin's recent post for a little bit more. There isn't need to make a five year strategic plan (as I was instructed to do), but sit and think (or run around and think) about what is in store for you.

In building to strategic planning we're on step two: Personal Vision
Step One was Introverts and Introspection, assessing our natures.

keep rockin'
Rachel

Introverts and Introspection

One of the first things that Erin and I connected over was "introverts and leadership." As we move along in our explorations here at Constructive Summer, the ways that we (us introverts) want to make change is all about relationships and caring about people, about dreaming big and making a path to get there. Introverts and introversion have become a real popular topic recently, and there is a lot of research that I haven't read on the subject of introverts and leadership, and relationships, etc etc etc.

That all puts me in mind of personality tests as management tools. When the myriad of different personality tests are administered as some sort of management tactic or team building effort, the real goal of such an effort isn't so much to have people reflect on themselves. The real goal (which I have not ever seen fully implemented) is to provide a framework for understanding ourselves in relation to our coworkers. The goal is to facilitate a discussion of our work dynamics.

Attention to others is, for me, the foundation of what exhausts me about being around other people. I spend a great deal of energy trying to figure out where people are coming from, what their likely moves are, that I am truly understanding what they are saying, and so forth. Additionally, I spend a lot of energy considering the interactions I have had specifically, in addition to just generally doing a great deal of reflection, which I will discuss later.

I don't think that being introverted is the root of what I feel I am good at, but I do think that my introversion is deeply connected with the way I am in the world and the practices that do make me good at what I do. I'd love to hear from you (especially extroverts) if you have the same experience. The tools that make me good at what I do, the ones that make me a good leader and effective professional are: attention to detail with an ability to scope out to a systems view; the ability, desire and openness to understand other perspectives and the assumptions underlying those views; and the sum of the two -- an attention to how I and the messages I am sending will be received by different audiences.

It seems all very Machiavellian when I lay it out like that, and maybe it is. For me, operating in a social world has always been about trying to figure out the rules and, because I operate fueled entirely by the approval of others, follow them very carefully for the advancement of my chosen causes. I don't think I'm all that different from a lot of people. Which all goes to say the kind of reflection that management may try to get at through team building personality tests may already be baked in to how many library employees operate. Tapping into that may be more efficient than trying to recreate it from scratch.

The kind of understanding we build when we reflect on ourselves and our relationships with our work colleagues is the first building block of a successful............. strategic plan. Tune in next week for building block number two!


Keep Rockin'
Rachel