The Library Rebooted

Here's some food for thought from an article in strategy+business entitled "The Library Rebooted."

Seven Imperatives for Library Leadership

1. Rethink the operating model. Many of the old assumptions about running a library are outmoded and need to be set aside.
2. Understand and respond to user needs. Libraries should develop advanced capabilities to build aggregated profiles of users, or what retailers call customer segmentation analysis.
3. Embrace the concept of continuous improvement. Approach the innovation challenge with an entrepreneurial mind-set: test, measure, refine.
4. Forge a digital identity. Clearly, there is no way that libraries could transform themselves into leading-edge Internet organizations, such as Google, even if they wanted to. But some experimentation is in order.
5. Connect with stakeholders in ways pure Internet companies cannot. What libraries can do, on the community library side, is take advantage of their local strength, and, on the research library side, share their service-oriented expertise in new ways and through new channels.
6. Expand the metrics. As they refine their mission, libraries will also have to change how they measure success.
7. Be courageous. The environment in which libraries operate has certainly shifted, and the challenge for those running them is to figure out the evolutionary path they should follow.