Critical Strategies for Implementing and Managing Organizational Change–March 28th

Libraries are all too familiar with the critical importance of undergoing fundamental change, including effectively responding to rapidly evolving technologies, greater external competition, fiscal instability, and/or shifting functional needs among library patrons. In order to react strategically and proactively to these developments, libraries must be agile, flexible, and adaptable.

Join LILRC on Monday, March 28, 2011 from 9:30AM-3:30PM at the Brentwood Public Library for a day-long workshop which provides a framework for facilitating, enabling, and sustaining organizational change.  In addition to an introduction to organizational change theory, an applied approach to understanding and managing change will be taken. Participants will work in large and small groups with the end goal of designing an action plan for implementing a change scenario.

Emphasis will be placed on:

• Examining one’s own reaction to change
• Cultivating an awareness of others reactions to change through a study of the various behavioral stages that people experience in light of organizational change
• Identifying key stakeholders and change agents within one’s organization
• Developing effective tools, including the necessary communication skills to enable staff to understand, accept, and embrace change
• Designing a metric for charting the progress of change

PRESENTED BY:

Deb Schmidle
Director
Research and Learning Services Olin/Uris Libraries, Cornell University

CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION FORM*

*Registration fee includes morning coffee and lunch

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Beyond Merely Surviving: How Libraries Remain Relevant in Changing Times

On May 29, Dr. Rush Miller, Hillman University Librarian and Director of the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, gave a very informative and engaging presentation to a group of library directors and librarians.  He provided helpful advice on what kind of change would be needed to cope with the changing environment and how that change might be accomplished.

He emphasizes that libraries need to make not incremental but fundamental and transformative change in order to survive and thrive.  “Transformative change sets an organization on the road to remaining a vital player in whatever scene lies just beyond the horizon,” he said.  In terms of library services, he mentioned “user-oriented services must be replaced by user-designed services” and libraries should position themselves as knowledge provider.

Dr. Miller also talked about leadership, organizational assessment and development, staff development, collaboration and outreach development.  You can read more about these topics and case studies in the book which Dr. Miller co-authored “Beyond Survival: Managing Academic Libraries in Transition.”

Although he uses the examples of how changes have been managed at a large university library system setting, other types of libraries or smaller sizes of libraries can relate the information to their organization.