Breaking Down Silo Walls: Successful Collaboration Across Library Departments

Authors

  • Meghan Kowalski The Catholic University of America

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5860/llm.v31i2.7202

Keywords:

management, leadership, collaboration, cooperation, communication, silos, organizational culture

Abstract

Library work has historically been organized into silos - public services, technical services, and administration. Shifting trends, technology, and staff changes, however, are necessitating that organizations adapt to the current needs of their users. Given these new requirements, the traditional library silos create unnecessary barriers to collaboration across departments. Silos must be broken down if libraries are to operate successfully in today’s information environment. This article discusses how to identify problems and resistance, the benefits to breaking down silos, and offers recommended methods for collaboration that help remove the silo mindset to create a holistic library mindset.

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Published

2017-01-13

How to Cite

Kowalski, M. (2017). Breaking Down Silo Walls: Successful Collaboration Across Library Departments. Library Leadership & Management, 31(2). https://doi.org/10.5860/llm.v31i2.7202

Issue

Vol. 31 No. 2 (2017)

Section

Features

License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.