The 2 Most Important Things Libraries Should Focus on to Stay Relevant

I was reading over the essays I wrote as part of my ALA Leadership Institute application and realized some of them might make good blog posts. Here's one that asked me to write about what I thought was the most important thing libraries should focus on to stay relevant and to keep vibrant. What do you think we should be focusing on?

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Authors, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin separately but equally identified the two most important things that I think libraries need to focus on in order to stay relevant and to keep themselves vibrant community entities in the future: 1) selling and, 2) art.

I am not saying that libraries should convert themselves into art stores or that they should even incorporate gift shops that sell community art (although, that might not be a bad idea). What I am talking about is: 1) embracing and nurturing our roles as non-sales salesmen, 2) utilizing and developing our skills as connection artists in order to then, 3) combine the two to redefine ourselves as community connection specialists, and our libraries as connection incubators.

In his latest book, To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth aboutMoving Others, Daniel Pink talks about how sales is not just for used car dealers anymore. In fact, we are all in sales now. He conducted a study, during one part of which he asked the participants this question,

What percentage of your work involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value (attention, effort, time, money, etc.) for something you can offer?

The average response given by participants was 40%. If librarians were to stop and ask ourselves the same question, I suspect we would report a similar, if not larger, percentage. It seems to me that the very existence of our libraries relies heavily on community members giving up their time, effort, money and attention to patronize our services and resources, to serve on our boards, to make decisions that reinforce the importance libraries have within our communities. If we don’t continue to sell our community members on the idea that libraries are a valuable use of their monies then we will see them fade away, our budgets will get cut, and libraries will close. It is imperative that we embrace and nurture our inner salesman.

Consequently, in his latest book, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?, Seth Godin talks about how, “we are all artists now,” and how we’ve been out of the industrial economy for years and that we’re now in the connection economy  but yet, so many of us are too afraid to make art and we’re too afraid to connect. We’re too afraid to fly high because we might get burned but we don’t stop to consider the reverse: if we fly too low we’ll drown.

This is important advice for libraries to heed on two accounts. First, library professionals need to recognize the art that is within them and then to give themselves permission to make their art in whatever it is they do for their libraries, whether it is doing story-times for toddlers, archiving local history, or configuring Polaris. It is through the art we make that will help us develop connections with others but it involves embracing vulnerability. We as professionals need to practice being more vulnerable with ourselves, our colleagues, our board members, and our citizens. We need to tear down the walls we build up in order to let our authentic selves and everyone else shine through.

Second, library professionals are in perfect positions to help our citizens, our community members learn to recognize the art that is within them, too. We can provide programs and safe spaces for our patrons to learn how to discover and express their art and their authentic selves without judgment. In turn, this will foster shared vulnerability which will then create connections.

When we have a connection with someone it is much easier to sell to them, yes? It is so much easier that we might not even recognize it as selling. When we are comfortable being vulnerable and expressing ourselves with others then communication happens at a deeper level, one at which important questions get asked and answered or are tabled because we don’t know but it’s ok to not know; risks are taken; mistakes become more acceptable. Library professionals are skirting this arena, some already have dipped their toes into this and perhaps are even ankle- or knee-deep but we’re not at the level where it’s game-changing. Once we start seeing the paradigm shift, then we know we’re making real art, real connections, real vibrancy.