The Business of Libraries (it isn’t what you’re thinking)

circa 1941, photo taken from The Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria.

Where are all the ads for libraries?

I wrote this in my journal upon overhearing it at this morning’s workshop. It’s day 1 of the ALIA National Conference 2024 and I’m in Adelaide attending a workshop hosted by the wonderful Kyleigh Langrick, a highly skilled librarian with an MBA and over 20 years’ experience in the library sector. Prefaced with talking points that will no doubt become the recurrent themes of this year’s conference, we explored three simple yet effective tools libraries can borrow from the business world to build effective and successful strategies to overcome the challenging times we find ourselves in.

Libraryland is in crisis

The rate of technological change has increased exponentially, and many of the ‘future-focused’ tech solutions we’re only just starting to implement are already redundant. Budget constraints are worsening, with many of us competing for the same (and now smaller) pools of grant funding. The pandemic highlighted and worsened some of the social issues our frontline workers are handling, and in some cases, they’re getting burnt out and leaving the industry for better (safer) conditions. As leaders, we are overwhelmed by balancing all of these pressures on top of managing our own health and wellbeing, but thankfully, we have thinkers like…