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New Workforce Transformation Story: Possible Library Futures

image © Tom Sharlot

ARL’s Transforming Research Libraries (TRL) Steering Committee has published the third entry in its monthly column, Workforce Transformation Stories. Sheila Grant Johnson, dean of libraries at Oklahoma State University (OSU), contributed the August essay, “Possible Library Futures.”

In this piece, Johnson shares the impetus, process, and substance of an energetic library-wide experience she created called the OSU Library Future Series. The series includes on-site learning opportunities and facilitated group discussions to build awareness of strategic developments in research libraries and create readiness for implementation of organizational changes.

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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