LIBER 2020 Session #1: Cultural Change

These are the slides from the LIBER 2020 Session Cultural Change.

Session Description:

Continuous technological developments in communication and transportation mean the world is more globalized and connected than ever before. Libraries cannot afford to lag behind. It is crucial to keep up with the developments and strengthen our foothold in the research communities. But how do we achieve this? How do we cope with cultural changes? How do we adapt and organise our institutions so that we can face this new and dynamic environment?

If these questions sound familiar to you, and you would like to know how others in the field have successfully tackled these issues, this session is relevant for you. Through three presentations, the theme of adapting our libraries, library collections and organisational strategies to the future will be addressed.

Gyöngyi Karácsony will emphasize the importance of a library’s organisational culture.  She believes that a strong, open culture is key and her presentation will elaborate on the forces shaping this culture, as well as introducing the Competing Values Framework (CVF), identifying and categorizing an institution’s culture. She will conclude by illustrating the differences between weak and strong cultures, and how these affect performance, innovation and engagement.

Next, Justine Louise Rush will present her findings on the transformative power of library collections at the University of Kent. She will stress the importance of reflecting our academic communities in these resources. At the University of Kent, they achieved this by mapping out Special Collections and Archives collections to facilitate their use in supporting research-led teaching practices, and by engaging their academic community to address the need for a diverse curricula. This enabled them to reflect a greater proportion of global knowledge, increasing the levels of trust and belonging across their increasingly diverse academic community.

Finally, Dr. Charlotte Wien and Dr. Bertil F Dorch will show how we can equip our modern libraries with a strategy to cope with a world of rapid change. They will introduce The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology system, intended for strategy development, and will share examples from the University Library of Southern Denmark. This system increases the participation of the entire staff in formulating a successful strategy. They will conclude with presenting their resulting new strategy.