Rebuilding from the inside out – The State Library of South Australia’s Organisational Redevelopment Project

Margaret AllenAssociate Director – Resources and Information Management

State Library South Australia

The physical project – the ‘givens’

• More and better use of space for services and operations

• Upgrading of facilities – storage, staff and public areas

• High IT focus impacting on all aspects of library services and operations

• Opening up of existing heritage buildings

Organisation redevelopment project:To support the new building

• Fundamental redesign of the organisation, skills and focus

• Challenged our traditional view of service delivery and a reconsideration of assumptions about what customers actually want and need

The organisation redevelopment:‘Givens’ to support the new building

• High standard of customer service across the organisation

• Focus on storage and stacks management (therefore preservation) of our collections

• Opening up access to our collections through customer service, exhibitions, research

• Organisational collection development and resource description strategy

The organisation redevelopment

• Voluntary separation packages offered to 20% of staff

• Complete redesign of structure and individual positions

• All positions declared vacant and refilled

• Middle management by merit selection

• All other positions by nomination

• New graduate recruitment 10% of total FTE over 3 yrs

A new service model

• Single information desk with mix of skills

• Referral mechanism as required

• Roving reference and IT support

• Dress code to support the new physical service points

• Focus on training and public programs

Behind the scenes

• Collection specialists leverage the intellectual property in the collections

• Storage, stacks management, retrieval & preservation combined provide best practice approach to collection preservation

• Combined collection development across all formats

• Combined resource description across all formats

The State Library 1 year on:

• 1,000,000 visitors in 12 months – 66% increase

• 97.9% customer satisfaction rate

• Change in user demographic

• 50.4% under 29yrs compared to 27% in 2002

• 49% student use compared to 26% in 2002

• 53% visit at least once per week compared to 40%

The State Library 1 year on:

• Post Implementation Review process based on audit principles

• Uses feedback mechanisms and observation to identify what is occurring and potential improvements

• Some physical changes to information desk

• Identified service model and skill issues, particularly in IT support and roving reference positions

Did we achieve our objectives?

• IT skills for customer service staff critical and needs further development

• Review of competencies in some areas and possible reassignment of staff required

• Both physical and organisational ‘givens’ were largely achieved

Rebuilding from the inside out – The State Library of South Australia’s Organisational Redevelopment Project

Thank you

Questions?