Miguel Figueroa, ALA’s Center for the Future of Libraries
Leading, Current, Lagging information
Idaho Libraries Futures Camp

Figueroa calls back to:

  • Dr. Hemingway’s presentation yesterday, her vision of a more vibrant economic future & more bleak one for STEM in Idaho
  • robots
  • other presentation

He says he loves how one of the participants yesterday “librarianed” a presentation on storage yesterday by asking “how will we retrieve photos”?

Forecast isn’t a prediction, can just be one way of thinking about what may happen in the future

Forecasts are tool:

  • strengthen an organization for whatever does come to pass
  • prevent surprises
  • challenge existing assumptions
  • consolidate and prioritize
  • improve decision-making and strategy setting

He calls back to another participant discussing context of capitalism, critiquing how library work operates within it

Prioritize: do at every step of the process

  • we serve values, not trends
  • don’t be like the 2nd graders in his mom’s class, wanting to get off the bus at every stop; don’t get excited about every

{took photo of library values, will type them up later; ones missing from photo are: privacy and public discourse}

prioritize based on:

  • Professional values
  • Organizational mission
  • individual purpose

There are some libraries for whom literacy is the most fundamental, should be main lens. Other prioritize other

Act

signals for future are inbound change, but build future through outbound change, change that we create with others
this is true for every organization, institution, or profession, not just library work

Manageable action:

  • incremental adjustments (usually how libraries work, historically… American libraries slowly, gradually began collcting novels, then romance / genre fiction, etc)
  • New language, new connections; often have to pick up the language/ideas of our communities, then make connections that might not see
  • Collaborative ideation

Ryan Gravel: “If we shape our vision around only what seems possible today, we surrender our opportunity to structure a really great life for ourselves. Big changes and compelling visions require some leaps of faith.”

Figueora contextualizes the above quote as explaining how Atlanta’s downtown was underdeveloped when people of means & access moved away from downtown, with heavily racial aspects (that’s a clunky paraphrase on my part—Ryan)

How to make this happen?

  • Make room for discovery.
  • Make it a practice.
  • Connections make way for patterns to see where things are going.
  • Recognize that no one is an expert in everything. Pick the things you seek to be expert in and use your network to broaden expertise.
  • Ask people what they are interested in. He says that often people will come up after a talk and explain that they already knew what Figueroa is discussing, but no one every asked them based on their job title, usually low in the organizational hierarchy.

Newsletters he recommends:

  • Y Pulse - about millennial trends?
  • Education Dive
  • there are many others

Practices to adopt:

  • Make time to regularly share and talk about new ideas and trends with others
  • Integrate new ideas and trends into existing spaces, services, and partnerships
  • Track and follow new and developing ideas and trends as they relate to your library; follow other types of libraries, since their challenges & opportunities will likely be ones your library will face, in some form

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

“My vision is changing our how, more than seeing clearly our what. I see a how where we are all much more comfortable with change, and with our personal power to change conditions…. {another sentence I missed}”

  • adrienne maree brown

https://www.ala.org/libraryofthefuture
https://tinyletter.com/libraryofthefuture

Q & A #

Q1: How do you gauge when something is a fad rather than a trend?

A: I think the main thing is persistence. Also we often think that popular culture trends are “fads,” while what’s in literature or scholarly is more “trends.” We should challenge that sort of strong division between popular culture & serious culture. Fidget spinners weren’t just a fad, but a fad manifestation of a trend toward more participatory programming, can find underlying current that helps explain how it manifests in a particular fad. That’s better than just seeking a stark contrast between fad & trend.

Person2: Thanks Miguel for saying he’d have librarians’ backs by keeping tracks of things, person really appreciates his work.

A: It’s a challenge to keep up with that research & synthesize it. We can help provide evidence that can sway some community or board members who respect expertise.

Q3: Is there one trend you think libraries should be aware of right now?

A: I would be deeply concerned about competition & the privatization of public space. If we watch retailers, they’re moving toward “experiential retail,” since they can’t just be warehouses for things to be sold when competing with online sellers. For instance, Apple stores are highly experiential, design themselves as “Town Squares.” We in library work should be deeply concerned with this, because whether intentionally or not, they’re encroaching in the sorts of “Third Spaces” that are fulfilled by GLAM institutions (libraries, archies, mueseums, galleries). Apple encroaching on spaces, privatizing them, making them of interest to the people who can afford them. So we need to think about how we demonstrate the value of public space, especially public third spaces. Big difference between how private companies will treat third spaces and what they’ll be designed for and what library values will lead us to design third spaces for withour our communities.

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