Introduction
The age of access in which we live today has left us with diminished power to define our future—without significant support from allies outside our organizations. [1] Libraries must be resilient organizations that have the strength to sustain themselves as partners in the learning and scholarly enterprises. Among other things, this means paying attention to the critical importance of the human side as an essential feature of coping with our challenges. As has been argued before:
The management literature to which we so often look for guidance fundamentally emphasizes the role of managers and leadership. As important as… these are, …the external challenges to academic libraries are so great that to achieve great success in meeting them means the intelligence, energy and commitment of all staff must be mobilized to find our way. In effect, every staff member must, in some measure, become a manager and a leader—and the organization must treat them as though they have a brain in their head. I am not suggesting a lock-step mentality or a monolithic organizational vision is desirable—or, for that matter, achievable. I am suggesting that there is afoot in academic libraries what may be called an 'organizational development movement' that has as its goal the creation of the 'learning organization.' In my view, this is an encouraging sign that we have recognized the only way to be successful in the current environment. [2]
There are many strategies that are part of this movement. At the very least, this means that those of us who work in the University of Maryland Libraries must cope with the very real fact that the kind of work we do today is unlikely to be what we will be doing in the future. We must embrace the notion that part of the job is to chan ...