Location

Expo Center

Session Number

8

Keywords

academic libraries, digital services, innovation, transformation, reorganization, co-leadership

Description

This paper presents a vision for supporting the growth and development of innovative digital services in research libraries. While libraries have been undergoing digital transformation for decades, we have seen a flowering of new digital services in recent years, from research support services related to data and digital publishing to learning support services that seek to make our pedagogy more accessible, engaging, and suited to the needs of 21st-century learners. The question of how best to support these services structurally within an organization remains an open one, however, and there is little consistency in how this is accomplished across different institutions. Our model seeks to foreground the importance of people and relationships, uniting the people in these new roles in a single division in order to cultivate an organizational culture that supports innovation and risk-taking. These qualities are not always present in more traditional library divisions, but they are essential to the goal of developing new, future-facing library services in a way that enables library employees to feel supported and empowered in their work. Our model also embraces co-leadership as a boon for inclusivity, creativity, and innovation. Co-leadership provides a platform for a larger number of individuals to assume leadership roles and an opportunity to reimagine how our library organizations could operate more equitably and inclusively, in line with anti-racist practices.

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Jun 15th, 10:30 AM Jun 15th, 11:45 AM

Rethinking Organizational Structures to Support Digital Innovation

Expo Center

This paper presents a vision for supporting the growth and development of innovative digital services in research libraries. While libraries have been undergoing digital transformation for decades, we have seen a flowering of new digital services in recent years, from research support services related to data and digital publishing to learning support services that seek to make our pedagogy more accessible, engaging, and suited to the needs of 21st-century learners. The question of how best to support these services structurally within an organization remains an open one, however, and there is little consistency in how this is accomplished across different institutions. Our model seeks to foreground the importance of people and relationships, uniting the people in these new roles in a single division in order to cultivate an organizational culture that supports innovation and risk-taking. These qualities are not always present in more traditional library divisions, but they are essential to the goal of developing new, future-facing library services in a way that enables library employees to feel supported and empowered in their work. Our model also embraces co-leadership as a boon for inclusivity, creativity, and innovation. Co-leadership provides a platform for a larger number of individuals to assume leadership roles and an opportunity to reimagine how our library organizations could operate more equitably and inclusively, in line with anti-racist practices.