Introduction

Change. The world is changing. This is not new. The human race has evolved and our societies continue to evolve and change over time, adapting to new circumstances, technologies and cultures at a rapid pace. The methods for dealing with that change in the 21st century are increasingly failing, as the people in our organizations are failing to connect their practice with the needs and vision of libraries for the future. The ways in which we operate and the structure of our work are holding back the development of libraries and the necessary change. Stephen Denning describes the need for change and how to make change happen in our emerging world:

By introducing agile principles throughout our library organizations we are moving towards an organizational culture that can deal with change and engage and develop the services that our users love or didn't know they needed but love when they find them.

A new organization

In the spring of 2013 an organizational overhaul of Chalmers Library was announced. During the following year interviews with staff, engagement with other libraries and literature reviews commenced, leading to a new organizational structure with three departments and three crossfunctional teams focused on library operations and processes (Figure 6.1).

The Scholarly Communication department focuses on library services for storing, analysing, visualizing and communicating research inform ation. It also hosts a cross-functional team working with library instruction and the information literacy programme at Chalmers.