Reflecting on the Future of Academic and Public Libraries

Post date: May 20, 2013 5:46:05 PM

Hernon, Peter, and Joseph R. Matthews. Reflecting on the future of academic and public libraries. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2013. Print.

What I’ve gathered from this novel is that Public Libraries are important to society, and society knows this, but they are not at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts. There are surveys in this novel, particularly in chapter 7, which talk about people loving how the library provides resources free of charge for both sides of arguments, but they don’t realize that the library needs better funding. Only 1/3 of people think of the library when they think of tax-supported services. The library is not relevant in everyone’s forethoughts, but as a collective whole the library is thought of as very useful to a society. This needs to change in order for libraries to be able to stay alive in the future and to be able to provide all of the services that are and will be required.

The main problem is that the library is thought of as a business or a building rather than as a service. The Public Library Association has a planning process that started in the 1970s, but it does not use scenarios in the process. By using scenarios, the library might be able to tell what to do better during budget shortages, what would happen if the staff or hours were reduced, or for larger libraries if certain branches were closed for a few days a week (or even permanently in some cases). Scenarios could really help the library to make a better use of their budgets according to this novel, and they should be used in order to balance the Four Ps (the four key factors of the library): the people the library serves, the programs/activities/services, the partners that the library joins with for projects or services, and the actual physical building.

A few libraries have tried this in workshops and have had great success, which leads Hernon and Matthews to determine that it would be a very effective tool to implement in the near future. I agree that strategic planning is usually the best way to figure out how the future will unfold. It is a basic business strategy that has worked in several situations over the past because it is so versatile. If the library can predict the many, many ways that reactions can happen to a change of program, then the library system would be able to anticipate how to best serve the public in the upcoming years.