Round Table of the International Association of Metropolitan City Libraries (INTAMEL)

1998 Budapest Conference

Metropolitan Ervin Szabo Library, Budapest
30 August - 4 September 1998

The Conference enjoyed the best attendance for many years and, thanks to support from the Soros Foundation, there was a large and very welcome contingent of librarians from non-member cities in Eastern Central Europe: Banska Bystrica, Braila, Brasov, Chisinau, Cracow, Ljubljana, Minsk, Moscow, Riga, Rijeka, Vilnius and Warsaw. Chisinau and Moscow have now joined INTAMEL, and other membership requests are in the pipeline.

Major themes included:

• opportunities for expansion of INTAMEL activity in Eastern Central Europe;
• developments in the Hungarian library and information and cultural sectors following the social, political and economic changes of recent years;
• current developments in Budapest public libraries, including the reconstruction and enlargement of the Central Library;
• case studies of organisational change in the library systems of several large cities.

Members continued to look for ways of carving out more formal time at the annual Conference to share and learn from each others' "knowhow" and practical experience; so the session devoted to organisational change in the city libraries of Cracow, Hannover, Houston, Rotterdam and St. Louis was particularly welcomed. At future Conferences, INTAMEL members want to have even more time for presentations and dialogue on such vital issues as managing change, staff development, service programmes, technology, the political environment, downsizing, and raising income. Another strong dimension of the Conference were the visits to other libraries including the Central European University library, the National Library, examples of the Budapest branch libraries development programme, and the state-of-the-art (1996) City and County Library of Kecskemét.

Conference Papers

Jacek Wojciechowski outlined a view from Cracow, and other East European cities, where basic issues relating to municipal public libraries needed to be settled, eg.

• they must still be versatile and universal, they needed specialist staff and services, and they had a big role in information provision;
• branch libraries were needed, but some could be replaced by mobiles;
• a library system should have a single computer network, and support services should be centralised;
• training, continuing professional education, marketing and promotion programmes were essential;
• standards of service and users' needs should be researched;
• they should collaborate with other libraries.

Jeno Kiss noted how libraries in Eastern Central Europe had "transformed themselves from a socialist educational institution into a public library in the real sense of the word". He cited the example of Budapest whose strategic plan (1990) envisaged changes which would determine future development:

• collections and services developed not according to abstract ideals but to users' needs;
• rebuilding and expanding services;
• mix of free and fee-based services;
• fewer but better branch libraries;
• centralised support services, with devolved line management;
• integrated automated system.

Dan Wilson (St. Louis County) described a system which had been highly successful over 50 years. But many important tasks were not being done, eg. program co-ordination, proactive training, and strategic planning. "In an era of rapid technical, social, and political change . . . organizations cannot remain static, they must evolve. Planned growth can minimize the aspects of change that are unsettling to members of the organization." Dan described the beginnings of a change process, including proposals for a new staff structure to empower a team of senior managers to make and carry out decisions. The next chapter of the case study required a shared vision: "Vision is not mine; it is ours", was his message to staff.

Barbara Gubbin, Houston, addressed staffing and customer service and listed some of the challenges:

• establishing a culture of change and adaptability;
• managing staff whose values had led to a re-think on how organisations operated;
• enhancing employee communication with "conversation";
• enabling staff to be more effective as decision-makers.

Customers were changing, too: their expectations of service were more demanding, the physical library was required to be as accessible as online services, and the public library might be the only place where immigrant and minority communities could learn how to access information now available only electronically.
To serve customers better, libraries needed a clear sense of purpose, constant training, leadership skills at all levels, empowerment to make decisions, a "knowledge management structure", and the ability to work in cross-functional teams, both within the organisation and in partnerships with community organisations. The public library should be like a chameleon which "constantly adapts itself to its environment".

Frans Meijer echoed many themes highlighted by other speakers as he explained the governing principles of a new structure in Rotterdam and the diagnosis that had preceded it.