ABSTRACT
“Libraries are people, services, and stuff,” declared Joe Janes, Associate Dean for Academics of University of Washington’s Information School, at the 2020 Vision: Idaho Libraries Future Conference. He’s right; in library budgets, personnel and information resources are the primary expenditures. Library budgets are constrained by funding commitments to serial subscriptions and personnel costs. Discretionary spending available is then considered fair game to be used to develop our services, leaving us to choose among our programs such as instruction, interlibrary loan, and what to emphasize in cataloging priorities. One way we translate this spending into service is through the development of our human resource capacity. Through ongoing education and training, a library creates and develops its attitudes and values about service. This is a means of reinvigorating a library’s organizational culture, building upon existing values and assumptions and clarifying a vision of service.
