The Perks and Challenges of Drawing Maps and Walking at the Same Time

Editor's Notes

• #3: Embrace change and make it work in favour of the needs of the university The library services should be an integrated part of the system of scholarly communications
• #4: The digitization changes the fundament of scholarly communication. During the last ten years the means of communication have changed profoundly among students and researchers. If the library do not adjust, we will be redundant. The change can even be fruitful if we embrace it: We have focused on how the library could meet the digitization with a infrastructure that facilitate Open science, for example: Even if the digital publishing have come with rising subscription costs within the traditional publishing paradigm, new possibilities have also arrived through for example lowered costs by Print on Demand, cheaper methods for marketing and dissemination, Open access policies and thereby opened up for a new publishing paradigm run by the researchers themselves (w support from for example libraries), ).
• #5: Given the ambition of the University management of Stockholm University to encourage a closer relationship between the administration and the faculty, the special position of the library was abunden. In steps the library has been integrated into the administration. Its dedicated board was removed and strategic questions were moved to the advisory board of the vice chancelor. The last change mentioned, have resulted in: A closer relationship to the university management as well as our users A more adequate context for dialouge and input to various decisions of change and development A closer relationship to other sections of the university involved in support of scholarly communication
• #6: The different changes on the outside and on the inside of the university have of course affected our thinking and perception of the vision and mission of the library. At one point we dropped our effort to visualize our organisation in order to shift our focus towards ”the bigger picture”. We then ended up in this image/map of how we perceive the role of library in a quickly changing medialandscape. Old stuff below: At Stockholm University Library we see ourselves as a facilitator when connecting the University and the rest of the world, and we built our strategy on this principle. We see our organization as this circle containing two arrows, which shows two directions of information flow. The top arrow in the image on the screen symbolise our task to provide information sources and tools for both beginner level and experienced academics, with a digital focus. This is what many associate with the traditional type of library services, which is acquiring and lending out materials for students and researchers. Of this we will speak very little today. The lower arrow refers to our efforts to support communication from the University to the world, and Stockholm University Press is one of these initiatives (we also provide production support for PhD students when publishing their dissertation, advice about best practices for academic publishing in general, and Open Access specifically. More about this later… For this we have created an infrastructure of people, information and task on different levels, to ensure that our actions are always connected with the rest of the University. So, what does the University strategy say? © Illustration by: Stockholm University Library. CC-BY 4.0
• #7: The aim is to provide researcher and students with what they need regardless of where it could be found. A shift of focus from our own catalouge to the needs of our users This aim has led to a change of strategy for acquisition and a shift to e as standard/default
• #8: Open Access publishing include the services delivered by Stockholm University Press, a dissertation support as well as assistance regarding informally reviewed publishing. Our research data project is in an exploratory phase including national and international collaboration. The initiative taken by the library in these areas has resulted in an official assignment from the University management to take a lead in exploring an coordinating all efforts at the university regarding the transition towards open science. We have also invested in legal competence specialized in copy right due to increasing needs of advice in OA-publishing and Text and Data Mining
• #9: The only thing that has remained unchanged at the library is our budget. We have even been able to hand back some money. The budget has been the same for several years at the same time as acqisition costs, rents and salaries have been rising. In practice that even means that we have a shrinking inflow of money. Instead of asking for more money we have focused on other ways of coping, in the sense of reorganizing. As we have started to do new things we have also stopped doing other things.
• #10: Investment in communications In order to enhance the dialouge with our users. The image most users had about the library was no longer adequate. We then also needed to verbalize to ourselves, what the library is now, what the library might be in future. As well as why and for whom? Clear vision, purpose and goal Outside in perspective in better balance with our inside out perspective Try out in small pilots instead of long discussions, drawing the map and walking at the same time. Short and quick cycles in order to be able to adjust direction when needed 4. From instructing leadership to an encouragement of independent decision making, stimulationg our co workers to internalize the leadership in order to be more independent. The leader points out the direction but leave to coworker to solve HOW the work is to be done. 5. Not replacing empty posts and creating new ones 6. Adjust our premises for the benefit of our students and on behalf of single rooms to employees
• #11: What we have done could be described as catalyzing change of work place culture. We wanted to move from a hieracical organization to a flat one. With that followed: 1. To make understandable and logical why we wanted to change stuff that has been working well for a long time? 2. The general interests of the library/university is not always in line with the interests of the individual coworker/researcher (f ex some of the changes have given a totally new workingssituation for some of our librarians) 3. It is about a paradigm shift = mutual understanding from the perspectives from different paradigms is not possible, instead the road is paved with misunderstandings and potential conflicts
• #14: 1.The change of balance has benefited a userdriven perspective 2. We feel rather secure in that what we do is needed and appreciated 3. Been in a position to experiment with infrastructure and open source