This post is one in a series documenting findings from the RLP Leadership Roundtable discussions. It is co-authored by Rebecca Bryant and Chela Weber.
Leading people and programs can be especially challenging during times of uncertainty and change. As many libraries grapple with budget constraints, staffing changes, and resource limitations, the OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP) created space for leaders to share challenges and offer strategies for effective change management, communications, and staff leadership. In this blog post, we share the challenges identified by library leaders and highlight the collective insights and actionable strategies they offered to help peers navigate today’s shifting landscape.
The RLP convened two of its established leadership networks—the Research Support and the Archives and Special Collections Leadership Roundtables—in discussions about the challenges and opportunities of leading through uncertainty. Participants explored four key questions:
- What is the most challenging aspect of your work in a leadership role today?
- What’s been your approach to sunsetting or pivoting work on services, projects, or other activities, especially when those decisions are unpopular? Do you have underlying principles that guide your decision making? How do you balance short- and long-term priorities?
- How do you effectively and transparently communicate during challenging times? How do you share enough without sharing too much? Do you have tools for supporting staff morale during extended periods of staff uncertainty?
- We all dealt with the major crisis of the pandemic and the uncertainty it brought, some in leadership roles while others have come into leadership since. What have you learned from this or other past crises that you can apply now? What are you learning about leadership from observing senior leadership at your institution? Has anyone done anything that inspires you or lifts your own morale?
Fifty individuals from 43 RLP institutions across five countries participated in our roundtable discussions (see the end of this post for a list of participating institutions). Over the course of eight 90-minute discussions, participants identified leadership challenges that transcend national boundaries, though specific contexts vary. Common themes emerged around financial constraints, communication challenges, and the need for adaptive leadership strategies.
Below, we outline the current pressures participants reported and their strategies for leading through this current moment of uncertainty. The practical ideas and strategic approaches shared by participants may serve as inspiration for other library leaders looking to chart their futures.
Budgetary and staffing pressures
Our discussions revealed a group of library and archival leaders grappling with a complex combination of uncertainty and resource constraints while working to maintain service excellence and remain a critical resource for their community.
Budget constraints and uncertainty. Roundtable participants described severe budget constraints as their most immediate challenge, with reports of libraries facing cuts ranging from 5% to 33% for fiscal year 2026. One participant described their institution as already in a perilous condition following years of declining enrollment and budget recissions, and others described the precarity of state budgets. Another participant expressed concerns about how reductions to indirect costs with further impact library funding, prompting efforts to prepare campus faculty for potential library cuts. There is much uncertainty about when, and if, budgets will stabilize.
Staffing pressures compound these challenges. Hiring freezes and budget constraints force many institutions to operate with significantly reduced staff. One leader whose department lost one-third of their personnel in the last two years cannot rebuild due to hiring restrictions. Another institution self-imposed a hiring freeze to avoid future position cuts.
Operational impacts. Resource constraints create cascading effects throughout library operations. Staff are taking on additional responsibilities, and several libraries reported reorganization efforts to address reduced capacity. Participants reported that many of their direct reports feel stressed or overwhelmed, impacting both morale and productivity.
But these challenges libraries are facing are not without hope, as participants described numerous ways that they are planning and innovating amid uncertainty, adapting operations, communicating effectively, and strengthening collaboration and teamwork.
Strategic approaches to managing uncertainty and change
Facing budget and staffing uncertainties, leaders described strategic approaches that leverage creative problem-solving to focus on core services, scenario planning, and strategic prioritization of new initiatives. They looked to professional values and institutional priorities to guide their decision-making.
Planning strategies
Scenario planning. Participants’ institutions are conducting budget exercises to identify and prioritize the maintenance of core services in anticipation of deep cuts. Some included staff in documenting potential responses to different funding levels, facilitating better-informed decision making. Several emphasized the need to take a library-wide view of cuts due to significant cross-departmental impacts.
Defining and identifying services. Informed decision-making requires understanding the depth and breadth of library activities. One institution created a comprehensive “service catalog” through a collaborative process to identify all services, including legacy offerings and those duplicated across departments. This approach reveals the true scope of services the library was offering and serves as a “game changer” for the organization, supporting the library as it undergoes a significant restructuring to refocus services. Some institutions are working to clearly define what constitutes a “core service,” though this presents challenges as disagreement emerges about priorities.
Finding opportunity in uncertainty
Crisis as opportunity. Some participants view recent challenges—including the pandemic and staffing changes—as opportunities for positive change. These circumstances can serve as a catalyst for workflow reconceptualization, service prioritization, and improved institutional alignment, with one participant quoting the often-repeated, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
A focus on sustainability in service standards. Participants described how they are adjusting to austerity, with one library describing how their approach emphasizes sustainability over perfection.
Strategic sunsetting of services. Several institutions are examining services to discontinue, which can be challenging because staff are deeply invested in their work. Examples include ending conservation work on circulating collections following staff departures, sunsetting an under-resourced research information management system, and reallocating a data visualization position to geospatial support to fill strategic campus gaps.
Boundaries and organizational support. Participants emphasized the need to ensure that service reduction decisions are supported and documented throughout the organizational hierarchy, offering frontline staff the agency to set boundaries with users.
Effective communication strategies
Communicating with and supporting staff is particularly challenging during times of uncertainty. One participant explained, “One of the biggest challenges that I’ve been dealing with is helping my team identify what information is valid and reliable, and what is just fear and filling in a lack of information with anxiety,” and some participants reported that they struggled to balance transparency with discretion.
Participants offered several successful strategies for communication and trust building:
- Be explicit about information gaps. Honesty and admitting to not knowing something are important for building trust with staff members. One participant stated: “I’ve tried to be clear with people about what I don’t know and whether I expect to be able to know it at any time in the near future.”
- Build trust with transparency and context. Helping staff understand decision-making processes even when outcomes remain uncertain can help them “feel grounded in the way that conversations around some tough decisions are happening.” Even when information is incomplete, effective leaders are finding ways to provide context and framing. One participant described appreciating communications that unpacked “what the overall budget landscape looks like and the values” underpinning the evolving decision-making.
- Convene regular open forums. One participant described how staff at their library appreciate opportunities to ask questions, with an option to ask anonymously. Their library hosts forums that are “open conversations once a month . . . where you can ask anything you want.”
Strengthening morale through recognition and connection
Extended periods of uncertainty and diminishing resources can impact staff morale and productivity. Participants described seeking ways to re-engage teams and improve performance, but they also noted the challenges of motivating teams to be solutions-oriented. Participants shared insights and tactics they are using to build morale by engaging teams in meaningful work and providing authentic support:
Acknowledge fear and uncertainty. With staff feeling anxiety amid uncertainty and change, several participants described the need for leaders to extend compassion and convey to staff that “it’s okay to not be okay.”
Connect to core purpose. It’s important to maintain a connection to the core mission despite challenges. External engagement seems particularly motivating. One leader noted: “When you’re with other people who are excited about your material, it gets you excited again” about the work.
Emphasize institutional strategic alignment. Similarly, one participant described how close library alignment with institutional priorities grounds the library’s purpose and emphasized the importance of helping their team make these connections. “We’re really very connected to the goals of the university, and so as the university announces things, we’re really in step with them. It feels very good.”
Adjust work expectations to match staffing realities. Leaders are actively helping staff adjust expectations to match current realities by identifying what can be paused and working on realistic individual goal planning. In our discussions, we heard how the identity-driven nature of archives and special collection work can make it particularly challenging for staff to reduce their efforts, making support in determining where they can scale back particularly necessary.
Foster solutions-oriented thinking. Leaders offered strategies to encourage solutions-oriented thinking among their teams, which has the potential to improve morale for their teams and themselves.
- Identify things you can’t fix. One participant helps staff identify “gravity problems”—like gravity, these issues are not going to change and shouldn’t consume energy. Instead, they urge a focus on problems that can be meaningfully addressed.
- Promote collaborative work. Several leaders promote projects that allow staff to support each other rather than relying heavily on supervisory relationships. Through collaboration, “they see each other’s work, they are interdependent, and they can support each other more.”
- Convene solution-focused meetings. Many use staff meetings to address roadblocks and encourage team members to “come with proposed solutions” rather than just problems.
Offer recognition to boost morale. To buoy morale, many libraries have implemented regular recognition practices:
- “60-second shout-outs” start meetings positively by allowing quick recognition of valued work.
- “Shout-out cards” let staff publicly recognize the work of others on cards posted in the staff break room.
- Celebrating achievements like publications, awards, promotions, and personal accomplishments at regular library meetings.
- Community events or “engagement days” convene staff members for team building and wellness activities. One institution recently hosted a kitten adoption event.
- Campus award nominations leverage institutional HR staff awards programs. Through regular nominations and wins, one library has fostered a positive culture of appreciation.
Recognize that good boundaries make good managers. Leaders also acknowledged that managing through uncertainty while supporting staff can impact their own morale. Participants shared the importance of maintaining personal boundaries while supporting staff, to maintain their own energy. Practical approaches to addressing this include being explicit about limitations and connecting staff with appropriate resources through human resources and other institutional offerings.
The impact of these recognition efforts creates a culture of support and collegiality: “It’s been gratifying to see how supportive people are of each other, and this kind of peer support is meaningful to a lot of people, not just the person getting the shout out.”
Peer networks provide valued support
Participants in all eight RLP roundtable discussions emphasized the immense value of peer networks among leaders. These peer connections offer leaders both practical resources and emotional support. Participants described:
- Peer networks and leadership cohorts. Participants shared many examples of both formal and informal “uplifting and valuable” communities of practice that offer supportive environments for leaders to collectively address challenges and provide mutual support. These include quarterly happy hours and peer mentoring groups.
- University connections. HR-organized meetups for department chairs across campus create supportive communities and raise institutional awareness of shared challenges.
- RLP leadership roundtables. Transnational, multi-institutional RLP leadership roundtables bring together library leaders facing similar circumstances, providing a venue for information sharing on topics that matter, helping libraries innovate and evolve more rapidly. One participant noted, “I’m so happy for this group and . . . it’s really nice to be here.”
Looking ahead
Leaders manage competing demands daily: maintaining staff morale while ensuring productivity and institutional alignment, being transparent about challenges while maintaining hope, and advocating for both employees and researchers during difficult times.
These RLP Leadership Roundtable discussions accentuated that effective leadership during challenging times requires both strategic operational thinking and genuine care for people. Success is not necessarily dependent on having all the answers, but flows from communicating clearly, making decisions transparently, supporting staff through uncertainty, and adapting operations while maintaining focus on the core mission.
The strategies and insights shared by RLP affiliates offer support and resources for peers navigating similar challenges. The resilience and creativity demonstrated by our participants offers hope that our institutions may emerge from this challenging period as stronger, more agile organizations.
Roundtable participants
For the special collections roundtable in May 2025, 25 participants from 25 institutions attended:
| Clemson University | National Library of New Zealand | Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin) |
| Cleveland Museum of Art | Smithsonian Libraries and Archives | University of Toronto |
| Cornell University | The New School | University of Utah |
| Emory University | University of Calgary | University of Washington |
| George Washington University | University of Arizona | University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) |
| Haverford College | University of Delaware | Vanderbilt University |
| Monash University | University of Kansas | Virginia Tech |
| Montana State University | University of Miami | |
| National Library of Australia | University of Pittsburgh |
For the research support roundtable in June 2025, 25 individuals participated from 23 RLP institutions:
| Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory | Stony Brook University | University of Maryland |
| Institute for Advanced Study | Syracuse University | University of Sydney |
| Monash University | Tufts University | University of Tennessee, Knoxville |
| New York University | University of Arizona | University of Texas at Austin |
| Ohio State University | University of California, Irvine | University of Toronto |
| Penn State University | University of California, San Diego | University of Waterloo |
| Rutgers University | University of Delaware | Utrecht University |
| Smithsonian Libraries & Archives | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
AI Nota Bene: The co-authors leveraged AI in the writing of these blog posts. AI was used to identify key themes from notes and discussion transcripts, which was useful for developing the blog outline and some suggested quotes. We found AI useful for suggesting subheadings and more concise language. Nevertheless, we did the majority of the writing ourselves.
Rebecca Bryant, PhD, previously worked as a university administrator and as community director at ORCID. Today she applies that experience in her role as Senior Program Officer with the OCLC Research Library Partnership, conducting research and developing programming to support 21st century libraries and their parent institutions.