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New Workforce Transformation Story: Adding Value beyond Discovery

image © Tom Sharlot

ARL’s Transforming Research Libraries (TRL) Steering Committee has published the second entry in its new monthly column, Workforce Transformation Stories. Tom Wall, university librarian at Boston College, wrote the July essay, “Adding Value beyond Discovery.”

In this piece, Wall considers the ways that scholarly communication and special collections “represent two sides of the same proverbial coin, and that coin in turn represents a large measure of how libraries can add value beyond discovery.” He argues that mainstreaming these areas can help us “understand and appreciate the synergistic beauty of all libraries can offer. We can be increasing nimble, less territorial, and continue to actually live and work in a learning environment.”

ARL’s TRL Steering Committee hopes this monthly column will enable library leaders to point to evidence of trends and general truths, and to support organizational change. Collectively we will build a shared understanding of what it means to work in a research library and what skills and competencies are required.

Potential topics might include:

  • How evolving pressures and priorities in higher education are changing library work
  • The library’s role in promoting new technologies
  • Techniques for the successful on-boarding and mentoring of new library staff
  • Unique staffing models through campus collaborations
  • Innovative ways to provide professional development opportunities
  • Effective annual evaluation and promotion review processes
  • Successful reorganizations and the resulting organizational synergies

If you are interested in contributing a story, contact Judy Ruttenberg at judy@arl.org.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for Workforce Transformation Stories.


The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

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