Imagine a library service with no buildings, we’re living there now. An interview with Matt Finch in the time of Coronavirus

I’ve enjoyed reading the work of, and chatting online with, Matt Finch for some time now. He’s a thinker, and facilitator, for organisations thinking about the future and the library sector is lucky that he has a strong interested in in it. So, after reading post after post of Matt asking those in the sector about the future, I thought it would be worth asking the man himself. And, what better time than when the certainties of pretty much everyone have been shaken by a global pandemic?

Matt Finch

(1) What changes have you seen in libraries during this crisis?

“COVID-19 is above all an accelerant of certain trends and developments. We’ve seen a massive move to online, inevitably – things that seemed impossible for libraries to achieve in the digital space are now happening.

It’s a healthy reminder that a library is not its building, nor solely its physical collections; the library is a service, and the building only its most evident tool. Closing the building need not close the library. I thought John Overholt put it well: “There is nothing at all contradictory about believing libraries are essential to a healthy democratic society and believing that physical access to library collections is not essential in the midst of a deadly pandemic.”

“a library is not its building, nor solely its physical collections; the library is a service, and the building only its most evident tool.”

In Spain last year, as a thought experiment for some very brilliant and forward-thinking public librarians at Laboratorios Bibliotecarios, we asked them to envision a far-future library service with no buildings. To me that seemed almost entirely unimaginable, which is precisely why we explored it.

In such a world, the librarians would be assigned a budget, and the mission of identifying and meeting community needs around knowledge, information, and culture, but they could not expect to achieve this by having people walk through the doors of their own venue. They had to explore partnerships, offsite services, new ways to connect. At the time it seemed fanciful. Now we are living precisely that future.

Inevitably, forces with particular agendas will use the crisis as an opportunity to advance their take on things. Library tech suppliers will say “You need to buy our particular tech to be ready for the New Normal”; some people may argue, foolishly, that the physical venue is no longer needed; and probably someone will say that the pandemic demonstrates that libraries should have been focussing on the book all along.”

(2) Any particular libraries doing it really well?

Responses vary, but many libraries have moved quickly to protect staff and users, to shift as many useful offers as they can online, and to address their communities’ changing needs when it comes to knowledge, information, and culture. I know you’ve already circulated some of the writing about libraries responding to COVID-19, such as pieces by Justin Hoenke, Christian Lauersen, Jane Cowell. A recent piece in Library Journal did a good job, too, in refocussing us away from “feelgood” pandemic stories to the challenges being faced by library workers.

“where do PLN readers feel the right balance lies?”

I have a question for you, too: in terms of public library staff helping out with other branches of local government, where do PLN readers feel the right balance lies? The lesson of the Christchurch earthquakes was that libraries, stretching their remit to meet a crisis, can do an enormous amount of good for the community they serve and for other branches of council. For example, I think the reliably excellent Rachael Rivera and her team at Auckland have done a great job supporting the council by redeploying staff to make welfare calls, checking in on elderly New Zealanders who are going through the pandemic alone.

The bricks and glass of Christchurch Library, before the physical side was demolished. By UnshakenCity – Flickr: Christchurch Central City Library, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16506634

But when I think of library staff being put onto other duties in extreme circumstances, I also sometimes picture the traffic wardens being co-opted to administer martial law in the old nuclear drama Threads. So a question, to which I don’t have the answer, is: where is the limit of what a public library professional should do, or be expected to do, in extremis? How do public libraries integrate into the wider strategies and operations of local government?

where is the limit of what a public library professional should do, or be expected to do, in extremis?

As for “doing it well”, I think the smartest libraries are thinking strategically not just about the crisis so far, or even the next few weeks or months, but over the really long term.

That starts with the economic consequences of the lockdown response, but beyond that lies a generation or more of turbulence and uncertainty across climate, politics, technology, finance, even the rhythms and routines of social life.

A picture taken from Pixabay found using the search-word “change”

The question to ask is not, “Which changes will definitely happen?” –  it’s too hard to win the soothsayer game – but “Which changes will challenge our assumptions most? Where are our blindspots? What might lie upstream from us?”

Libraries can be very responsive institutions: if a member of the public walks into a museum and asks to see something from a collection that’s not on display, they’re likely to be out of luck, whereas in my experience public librarians are, by and large, more flexible in responding to users’ requests across a range of surprising topics!

“The danger is that such responsiveness, elevated to the strategic level, is the antithesis of leadership; you’re letting someone else call the tune”

The danger is that such responsiveness, elevated to the strategic level, is the antithesis of leadership; you’re letting someone else call the tune, and that can be challenging when you need to take the initiative. Norway’s Martin Kristoffer Bråthen has impressed me with his concern for how public library services demonstrate their value if they come to be seen as a middleman in a world of digital content. I also talked a little about this with Christchurch’s Kat Moody in a US public library magazine.

(3) Do you see libraries getting “back to normal” over the next few years?

I think the crisis has highlighted that “normal” was always a fiction, and one that didn’t serve all of society equally well. Indeed, the whole notion of a “New Normal” might really be about our craving for a new comfort blanket, just as the old one is exposed for what it was. I suspect society is in for a prolonged season of turbulence and change, in which we increasingly come to understand and acknowledge the ongoing presence of uncertainty in our lives. It reminds me of Eleanor Murray‘s comment that resilient entities don’t bounce back, they bounce forward.

“resilient entities don’t bounce back, they bounce forward.”

Eleanor Murray

What would “back to normal” mean for libraries in 2020 anyway? Is normal the same in every nation, every city, every community? Was it normal for libraries to be “book jockeys”? Victims of austerity? Places of community connection? Spaces of safety and welcome for vulnerable communities? Supporters of digital literacy?

Was there a great deal of consensus around what a public library, and where it should be headed, is even prior to COVID-19? Some countries have more common ground on this issue than others.

“Having some broad agreement on who you are, where you’re headed, and why people should listen to you is going to be more vital than ever.”

This has been a critical issue in terms of advocacy and building bridges across internal and external relationships. Having some broad agreement on who you are, where you’re headed, and why people should listen to you is going to be more vital than ever. Even warring parties must learn to find common ground in the unwritten future.

(4) What things do you think have changed forever?

Well, forever is a very long time, but I think 2020 has battered the assumption that the future will reliably and predictably unfold on a trajectory we can model from past experience.

It has erased the safety – but also the stagnation – of being set in one’s ways, in one’s understanding of what the library institution does, and what the institution’s future might look like.

(5) What do you hope libraries will do in the best case scenario?

I’m wary of the phrases “best case scenario” and “worst case scenario” because the next question is always: best or worst for whom? Good scenarios depict rich and complex future contexts, as complicated as the world we presently live in, as dynamic as the history we’ve previously lived through. It’s like saying whether the dark timeline from Back to the Future 2 is a “worst case scenario”; from Biff’s perspective, it’s working out pretty well in the “evil 2015” which our heroes want to avert.

“I hope they recognise that part of what makes them so great is the dynamic of exploration led by the user, rather than instruction led by the educator.”

That said, my hope for libraries is that they continue to find new ways to connect the communities they serve with knowledge, information, and culture. I hope they recognise that part of what makes them so great is the dynamic of exploration led by the user, rather than instruction led by the educator. I hope that they find new ways to measure and communicate the difference they make to the communities they serve. I hope that previously marginalized voices and communities are heard and recognized, and supported in taking up positions of power and authority, so that libraries and librarianship are changed and transformed in long-overdue ways by those voices.

(6) What about the worst?

Allowing for my earlier caveat, what I’d say for “worst case scenario” is pretty much the same as the above, except you really need to be thinking even more strategically. That means an even greater effort to understand the contexts you’ll be facing and even more judicious bets on what will come to pass.

I was told by a senior local government manager facing significant cuts that she was still happy for her staff to innovate, but impact had to be demonstrable: “We have a smaller pile of coins, and you can put them wherever you like, as long as you can show me that doing so shifts the dial on something that matters to the people who fund us and the people we serve.”

There’s only a finite number of coins … and can you spot the pun?

My experience with institutions suggests that sometimes the most challenging circumstances force us to focus and to sharpen our strategy. We may not be able to do everything we want to, and some desired or even vital operations may be degraded, but under such conditions we have to target opportunities where we can make the most difference. A bit of recommended reading in this regard: Richard Rumelt’s pragmatic, jargon-free Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.

“will you recognise that duty of inclusion and institutional change as core to your work even in challenging times …?

It will also put library leaders’ good intentions and promises around diversity and inclusion to the test: will you recognise that duty of inclusion and institutional change as core to your work even in challenging times, or will you treat it as something to be cast aside in favour of “core business” if things get tough?

Having been in Australia during the marriage equality referendum, I think a lot about how libraries position themselves on such issues, the challenges of asserting your stance when you’re part of local government, and what it means to be not just “inclusive” but actively and sincerely anti-racist, anti-homophobic, etc.

The real question for librarians is, can you imagine the challenges that lie ahead, so you can maybe learn the lessons they’ll teach you before you have to suffer them in reality?

“The real question for librarians is, can you imagine the challenges that lie ahead”

My thanks to Matt Finch. Interview answers received and published 20 May 2020