Libraries of the Future

Overview

Futures thinking is a way of addressing specific challenges such as those that libraries face today (eg what role do libraries have in the changing academic landscape?). It is a way of systematically dealing with uncertainty to prepare long-term decisions.

For any futures project, the time horizon is very important when determining the methodological framework. Shorter-term horizons (more action-oriented studies) are useful where the environment is developing very quickly and the futures study needs to guide decision-making. Longer time horizons (more visionary studies) are useful to take account of longer term and major changes, and to develop joint visions across different groups of stakeholders.

As the brief for this study is to consider radical change, we are looking at the longer time horizon (~2050) which is at least one generation of the library ahead in terms of buildings, infrastructure, staff etc. Developing a joint vision for the long-term future will lead to a shared sense of commitment in the community, and will complement the short-term strategic planning commonly done by organisations.

Methodological framework

Futures studies draw on a wide variety of formal, established methods that can be applied and combined in different ways to consider the future in a structured way. There are typically three phases to a futures study:

• Diagnosis (understanding where we are)
• Prognosis (understanding what could happen)
• Prescription (understanding what should be done)

This project is focussing on diagnosis and prognosis. Whilst we will touch on prescription, the project sponsors will take this work forward so that they can concentrate on what should be done both jointly, and for their own organisation and members.

The main futures methods we are using in this project is scenario building. This will be complemented with horizon scanning, SWOT and PEST analyses as background activities. Scenarios are stories of possible  futures - they describe an end-state and how you might get there from today (the storyline). They are NOT predictions. Scenarios help decision-makers step outside of current and short-term problems, stimulate straegic thinking, and  provide insight into opportunities, risks and consequences of decisions. Informally, they also provide a forum for interaction between a wide range of interested stakeholders who may not commonly come together.

There are many possible ways of building scenarios, but we have based our approach on that outlined in "Scenario Planning" by Gill Ringland (a member of our project team), and the six steps outlined by For-Learn (a 6th Framework Programme project of the European Commission). This approach involves direct participation from key decision-makers and stakeholders in the Higher Education community (VCs, PVCs, funders, Research Councils, library directors, IT directors, academics, service providers, publishers etc).

Scenario building

The focal issue is the academic "library" of 2050 - or, in actual terms, the information services, content and infrastructure needed in 2050 to meet the needs of the users (researchers, teachers and learners).

The first step is to consider the broad global influences (eg demographics, globalisation, mobility, values, energy, new technologies) and how they impact UK Higher Education (HE). For example, what will the population of the UK be in 2050 and how will this affect UK HE?

The high impact/high uncertainty influences ("drivers") are the basis for identifying the axes along which the scenarios for UK HE are constructed. For example, one hypothetical axis for a scenario might be "public attitude towards privacy". We will choose 2-3 axes which, when combined, will result in 4-8 scenario spaces. Of these scenarios, only 3-4 will be taken forward. The scenarios chosen for UK HE must be interesting for libraries. They must also be plausible, consistent, different, challenging and be useful for decision-making.

The chosen scenarios will then be named, each end-state will be described, and a narrative of how events might unfold between now and 2050 will be developed. The scenarios will describe what UK HE looks like in 2050 (eg number of HE institutions, students etc) what the information needs of users are in these scenarios, and the services, infrastructure and content that need to be provided within this framework to meet user needs.

The published scenarios will be a basis for the sector to plan for libraries of the future. Buy-in to the scenarios, together with an undersanding of the benefits of futures studies and an appreciation of their limitations (scenarios will not write strategies for you!) will enable organisations to be more adaptive and responsive to significant change.

Key dates

This is an 18 month project, starting in September 2009 and concluding in April 2011. Two large workshops (~60 selected senior decision-makers) are being held in February 2010 and March 2010 to explore the global drivers for UK HE, identify the scenario axes, and build the 3-4 outline scenarios. The detail of the scenarios will be fleshed out at a series of smaller, subject-specific workshops in Summer 2010. The final scenarios will be drafted in Autumn 2010, and the project will conclude with a final major workshop in Spring 2011 to apply the scenarios back to strategic planning. The project outputs will be promoted and disseminated to the sector after completion of the project, and the project sponsors will continue with the work. 

Further reading

Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future (Gill Ringland)
UK Foresight
UK Foresight: Scenario planning
FOR-LEARN