DAILY MUSING : LIBRARIANS - OUR TRUE NORTH

Let us not kid ourselves. If we want to be impactful to the society (community) which is the biggest stakeholders that can help to change the public perception of us, then we need to understand whether our existence has been focusing towards them?. This is about society culture change and transformation. To me the most important stakeholders and who are our front-facing colleagues ranked by importance are;

RANK	STAKEHOLDER	RESPONSIBLE LIBRARY	REMARK
1	The community - urban or rural	Perpustakaan Desa	Questions. 1. Have we been giving enough attention to their strategic direction? 2. Have we equip those managing these PDs with proper skills and competencies 3. Are they the right people?
2	The community - urban or rural	Perpustakaan Awam	Questions: Apart from the same questions as for the PDs, additionally 1. Most of our strategic activities have been geared toward children. Why? It is not wrong but the more strategic target group are the parents who can build a sustainable ecosystem for their children
3	School children	Perpustakaan Sekolah	Questions 1. Why are still arguing who should run the school libraries 2. Why would not us combine our efforts and help the school libraries? This is where the change that we need to do the most. To change their perception. This is because we missed the boat at PDs and Perpustakaan Awam
4	Students of Institutes of Higher Learning	Perpustakaan Akademik	Question. The users are captured market yet we are not that successful in making them life long readers if not learners. In fact, most only appreciate the library as a place for them to do their course work. Even that there are those shying away. Why? They should be our spokespersons but go out into the market to become policymakers or heading corporate Malaysia and do not support us as much as they should be. Worse they see us as not important.
5	Policymakers	Perpustakaan Negara, Perbadanan Perpustakaan Awam Negeri, Perpustakaan Khusus Gunasama	Question. We have done a lot in trying to convince this group of people. It is a ‘hit or miss’ for us. In general, apart from our intangible value and the notion that we are creating value there is a limited alignment to the outcome of our stakeholders be it economy, productivity, innovation and mitigating social problems. We still have sleepless nights and could not directly contribute to minimise sleepless nights of our stakeholders
6	Business drivers	Perpustakaan Khusus (Syarikat)	The reality we are shrinking in this sector and we need to really transform ourselves and continuously creating values to the organisation.

The moral of the story even if we can improve the belief and perception at the end of this value chain (at level 5 &6) we will still fail or had to continuously 'fire-fighting' if we do not plug the dirty water flowing from the source (1 & 2 maybe 3 as well). We should do more at/with/for Perpustakaan Desa and Perpustakaan Awam. Maybe Perpustakaan Sekolah as well.