August 2018 Topic

As a Library Director, what are the top 3 challenges that keep you awake at night?

Staff

• Repurposing Positions
  • Supporting user needs with a (limited) staff
  • Sustainable positions for the future of the library
  • Distributing workload across the library
  • Staffing – changes in staffing due to purpose and need of organization.
• Requesting & Justifying Value-Added Services by Adding New Staff
  • Administration is fine with status quo
• Locating and Retaining Talent
• Staff Burnout
• Resolving Conflict and Managing Difficult Conversations

Budget

• Unsustainability of Collections Pricing
  • Raising Costs of Existing Products
  • Break Up Packages
  • New Unaffordable Publisher Products
• Stagnating Budgets
• State Support for Higher Education - impacting budget and organizational support.
• Budgetary limitations due to low enrollment within the institution

Environment

• Creating/Sustaining a Positive Work Culture
• Space design
• Justifying Renovations for Value-Added Services
  • No resources to support renovation
• Weeding Collections to Repurpose Space for Users
  • Maintaining relevance when “traditional” space is no longer visible.

Other Restless Nights

• Keeping Up-to-Date
  • Technology Trends to Benefit Users
• Showing Library’s Relevance to Stakeholders
• Project Management Support
• Developing Programming that Interests Users
• Learn everything they need to learn to be successful.
• Merging with University Library System – New procedures
• Overall Capacity – Lots of interesting activities that increase new/other needs. Due to need, need new staff to support projects with expertise library is recognized for.