Hot Topics Katherine Palmer January 2004

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Hot TopicsKatherine PalmerJanuary 2004
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Session overview

• Trends
• Innovative leadership
• Evaluating ideas
• Practical tips for getting there
• Wrap up
• Interactive format including a group activity

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Demographic trends

• Increasing numbers of seniors and youth
• Rural to urban and visa versa
• Workplace demographics Generation X and
  Generation Y, Boom Echo, traditionalists and
  Millennials

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City of Toronto population
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Business trends

• Knowledge workers as defined in business sector
• Competition is just a click away
• Stress on innovation
• Organic management, de-layering, collaborative
  groups
• Impact of technology

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Technology trends

• Personal digital assistants
• Visual display search engines
• Online Publishing- Net Library and the like
• Instant messaging
• Broadband Services- increasing need for more
  bandwidth
• Wireless Networking
• See also Library Futures Quarterly, October 4,
  2001

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Library Trends

• Value as public institution in decline
• Budgets not keeping up with costs, looming
  infrastructure costs
• Big box bookstore continues to have an impact
• Fewer reference inquiries, circulation leveling
  off
• Impact of technology
• Collaboration and partnership

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What do we do with all this information

• Summary of trends
• demographics
• business
• library

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Evaluating ideas

• What could this idea be worth? Will it work?
• What are the chances that it will work, more or
  less?

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Innovative leaders

• Fostering creativity
• Continuous improvement
• Learning about change- non-user

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Practical tips for getting there

• Make a decision
• Change is not equated with success but comes
  through process of moving forward
• What is your slogan?
• Customer service
• Go outside the box outside of library literature

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Remember this!

• Inuit saying A long time ago in the future
• It has been suggested that the best way to
  predict the future is to create it.
• Walter Pitman