Challenges

CAVAL carried out a training needs survey in 2006 among libraries in Australia and S.E. Asia. One of the questions asked respondents to list the top three challenges libraries face through to 2010. There were 328 respondents (this number is not broken down by job position of respondent). CAVAL analyzed the responses and came up with this list, ordered by number of respondents mentioning that issue (the number is given in brackets):
New and emerging technologies impacting libraries, focusing on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 applications such as blogs, wikis and podcasts (44)
Managing budgets and seeking new funding sources for libraries (44)
Marketing and promoting libraries and information services (32)
Workforce and succession planning (30)
Managing e-resources (22)
Demonstrating the value, relevance and return on investment of libraries (20)
Library design and space planning – making the most of what we have (14)
Copyright compliance (12)
Google! – specifically, staying one step ahead of clients (11)
Information and digital literacy (11)
Outsourcing library services (11)
Understanding users’ needs – needs analysis (11)
Digital rights management (10)
Institutional repositories – linked in several responses to changes in scholarly publishing (10).
I wonder if the much the same list would be produced in other areas of the world? Or what sort of variation there would be if one segmented it by some categorization of staff?
This work was presented by Richard Sayers, the Training Manager at CAVAL, at the Dinosaur or Phoenix conference in Hong Kong.