Funding and resourcing, technology, staffing, community needs and expectations—the pace of change library leaders now need to navigate and lead their organizations through is nothing short of breathtaking. Trends that took years to evolve now demand responses and strategic planning within months, or even days. Grounding those choices in rigorous, in-depth research remains essential.
At the same time, library decision-makers benefit from collective wisdom and insights shared among peers. Knowing how others are responding to similar pressures can help leaders calibrate their strategies and avoid reinventing the wheel. When those insights are confined to personal or regional networks, the limited perspective can restrict leaders’ views of how priorities and decisions are shifting.
OCLC Research leadership insights: Real-time insight for real-world decisions
This tension between the need for deeply researched guidance and the demand for timely, real-world insight creates a gap for the field. Library leaders need to understand not only which frameworks and models exist for long-term decision-making that are supported by our traditional research efforts, but also how their peers are responding to rapidly changing conditions right now.
To help fill this gap, OCLC Research is expanding its approach to gathering and sharing knowledge with a new series of pulse surveys focused on library leadership priorities. These quick, timely surveys aim to gather information on the decisions library leaders are making on a variety of critical topics shaping the future of librarianship.
A complementary approach to longstanding research practices
These short surveys are designed to capture high-level snapshots of the decisions library leaders make in the moment on subjects critical to the field, such as community engagement tactics and the use and implementation of new technologies, including AI. They are intentionally brief, both to respect leaders’ time and to enable us to respond quickly to emerging issues.
This approach does not replace the in-depth, foundational research OCLC Research is known for. Rather, it adds another dimension to it.
Our long-form research projects will continue to provide thoughtful frameworks, deep analysis, and foundational guidance for operational decision-making and long-term innovation. Leadership insights surveys complement that work by:
- Broadening the range of topics we can address, especially those that are evolving quickly
- Expanding the pool of voices contributing insight, drawing from library leaders across regions and library types
- Capturing change as it happens, and tracking how priorities and decisions shift over time
Together, these approaches create a more layered understanding of the field, combining depth with immediacy.
Powered by OCLC’s global membership network
The value of these leadership insights depends on scale. OCLC is uniquely positioned to engage a broad, global network of libraries and library leaders representing diverse viewpoints. This allows us not only to collect perspectives from beyond individual professional networks but also to share results with the field quickly and widely.
The outcomes will be intentionally concise: scannable, easy-to-digest summaries that surface patterns, contrasts, and emerging directions. Think of them as snapshots—ephemeral by design—that help illuminate how decisions are being made today, while also building a record of how those decisions evolve over time.
What this means for library leaders
For library leadership, this new format offers another way to stay oriented in a fast-moving environment:
- Insight into how peers are prioritizing and responding to shared challenges
- Timely information that can inform near-term decisions
- A broader field-level perspective that complements local experience
By adding pulse surveys to our toolkit, OCLC Research is expanding the breadth and increasing the pace of the insights we provide, while remaining grounded in the thoughtful, evidence-based work that has long supported libraries’ strategic and operational decision-making.
We see this as one more way to help library leaders make sense of complexity, learn from one another, and move forward with confidence. Our first pulse survey, focused on AI innovation & culture in libraries, will be fielded with US library leaders in early March 2026.
Subscribe to Hanging Together, the blog of OCLC Research, for updates on the survey series and to follow our latest work.
Constance Malpas is Executive Director, Research and Programming. She joined OCLC in 2006, first working with the Research Library Partnership and later as a Research Scientist and Strategic Intelligence Manager. Constance is the author/co-author of multiple OCLC Research publications on library collections and services, collaboration, and the evolving higher education landscape.
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