Library Next: Seven Action Steps for Reinvention

Drawing on her 40 years of experience working in libraries, Murray-Rust (now retired) proposes seven steps that libraries can take to anticipate their and their users’ needs before they arise. She urges librarians to be their institutions’ own champions instead of passively waiting for opportunities to innovate or connect with their communities, and she recommends looking beyond libraries for inspiration. This short book is well organized; chapters devoted to each of the action steps end with a “Shift Your Approach” table describing how things are typically done in libraries and how they could be done differently, plus a list of activities to try (e.g., “Share your curiosity about the future with your colleagues”). Most of the examples relate to academic libraries, but many can be generalized to other types of libraries and knowledge organizations.