25% OFF when you use code CiL2025 in the message section of the contact form.
The Future of Libraries
“The library of 2035 will surely face its storms, threats, and crises; however, libraries and librarians who commit to innovation, stay ahead of emerging technologies, and strongly advocate their value will stand strong and tall with roots well-grounded as an essential community resource for learning, communicating, playing, and working.“
Dr. Sandy Hirsh, Library 2035: Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries
Meet Dan at the Computers in Libraries conference in March 2025. Ask Dan about a discount code!
Read Dan’s latest Computer’s In Libraries article here.
Prepare Your Library for Tomorrow’s Challenges
Dr. Sandy Hirsh is right. Libraries do have a rich future, but that future requires good strategy and strong storytelling.
In an era of rapid technological change and shifting community needs, how can your library stay relevant and impactful? Scenario planning is the key to navigating an uncertain future.
Why scenario planning matters for the future of libraries
- Anticipate Change: Explore potential futures and prepare for various outcomes.
- Make Informed Decisions: Align your strategies with emerging trends and patron needs.
- Optimize Resources: Allocate budget and staff more effectively by planning ahead.
- Foster Innovation: Inspire creative thinking about new services and programs.
- Build Resilience: Develop flexible plans to thrive in any scenario.
- Tell A Better Story: Use scenarios to expand the strategic narrative and demonstrate the capability to anticipate change and navigate uncertainty.
Our future of libraries scenario planning workshops help libraries:
- Identify key drivers shaping the future of information services.
- Craft detailed, plausible scenarios of potential futures.
- Develop robust strategies that work across multiple scenarios.
- Engage stakeholders in collaborative visioning exercises.
Don’t let the future take you by surprise. Empower your library to adapt and excel in a changing world.
Schedule a consultation to learn how Serious Insights scenario planning workshops can transform your library’s future.
About Our Future of Libraries Workshops
Agile Thinking Workshops.
Prepare for innovation workshops by giving your teams the mental models they need to engage with scenario planning effectively. Our workshops help make agile thinking a core competency.
The Agile Thinking Workshop Agenda
- An Introduction to Scenario Planning.
- Why scenarios matter to you.
- Confronting your assumptions.
- Putting a name on uncertainty.
- Explore what scenario planning can mean to your work.
- Becoming Agile: your personal plan for agile thinking.
Innovation Workshops
Apply your new agile thinking skills to your library strategy. Serious Insights intensive Innovation Workshops wind tunnel ideas against a robust set of plausible futures that build off our future of work scenarios, customized to your context.
The Innovation Workshop Process
- Define the problem, roadmap or ideas you want to explore.
- Expand the uncertainty list to include uncertainties related to the problem domain. (Serious Insights conducts research and documents the new uncertainties.)
- Day 1 workshop: Assign uncertainty values and incorporate the new uncertainties into the narratives, develop emergent personas and capture the implications for each scenario.
- Day 2 workshop: Conduct a competing needs exercise, describe key challenges and opportunities, overview of innovation, innovative approaches brainstorming, value proposition development, and list of strategic options.
Engage Serious Insights Today!
Fill out this form, and we will contact you to customize workshops to help your organization become a dynamic, future-ready hub for learning and community engagement.
Put your discount code into the messages box along with anything else that will help prepare us for the call.
We look forward to talking with you soon.
“I am told by HR professionals all the time that agile thinking is a major goal for professional development. They also tell me that scenario planning is the best way they’ve seen to make agile thinking real.”
– Daniel W. Rasmus/Principal Analyst, Serious Insights