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In the face of rapid change and an ever-widening constellation of challenges, it’s crucial for library leaders to pull back to the question of “why?” Plotting a sustainable way forward depends upon recommitting ourselves to our underlying values, such as customer service and community-building, while fostering the improvements that change makes possible. With passion, patience, and fortitude, libraries can stride confidently into the future. In this book, noted speakers and consultants Bignoli and Stara speak directly to library directors, managers, administrators, and technology staff, offering concrete guidance on setting or resetting strategic priorities. Taking an interconnected and specific approach to planning for and strengthening the library environment as a whole, their book

• discusses why libraries should embrace change as a fundamental part of library life; 
• explores how to harness rapid change to provide more responsive, user-centered library service;
• addresses the ways in which libraries straddle the physical and the digital, in areas such as service provision and collections, illuminating how they overlap and can be improved using similar philosophies;
• presents both a comprehensive overview of library technologies as well as related team and change management advice, all grounded in user experience principles;
• shows how the concepts of sustainability and flexibility apply to physical space planning and design, from furniture selection and arrangement to infrastructure; and
• provides sound guidance on project management, problem solving, preparing for future challenges, personal reflection and self-care, and other leadership topics.

Honored with many accolades, including a starred review in Library Journal, the first edition of this book demonstrated the power and flexibility of “rightsizing,” an approach that applies a scalable, rule-based strategy to help academic libraries balance stewardship of spaces and the collection. In the five years since Ward’s first edition, the shared print infrastructure has grown in leaps and bounds, as has coordination among programs. With this revision, Miller addresses new options as well as the increasing urgency to protect at-risk titles as you reduce your physical collection. Readers will feel confident rightsizing their institution’s own collections with this book’s expert guidance on

• the concept of rightsizing, a strategic and largely automated approach that uses continuous assessment to identify the no- and low-use materials in the collection, and its five core elements;
• crafting a rightsizing plan, from developing withdrawal criteria and creating discard lists to managing workflow and disposing of withdrawn materials, using a project-management focus; 
• moving toward a “facilitated collection” with a mix of local, external, and collaborative services;
• six discussion areas for decisions on participating in a shared print program;
• factors in choosing a collection decision support tool;
• relationships with stakeholders;
• how to handle print resources after your library licenses perpetual access rights to the electronic equivalent; and
• future directions for rightsizing