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(slide #2)
Both Sides Now: The “Something Lost” and
“Something Gained” in Museum, Library, and
Archives Collaboration.”
By
Dr. Steven L. Olsen
Managing Director
Church History Department
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints1
Author’s contact information:
50 E. North Temple, 2EW
Salt Lake City, UT 84150
801-240-4648
olsensl@ldschurch.org
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A New Way of Being Professional:
Integrating Libraries, Archives, and Museums
The winds of change seem ever to alter the landscape of library, archive, and
museum professions and drive them to explore new horizons. One such influence became
somewhat of a trade wind in 1996 when the federal government created the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS) by combining the Institute of Library Services and
the Institute of Museum Services.2 The current programming of IMLS encourages a
broad-based rapprochement among these traditionally distinct professions.3 Because of
this and other stimuli, museums and libraries throughout North America have engaged
one another at multiple points along a continuum ranging from occasional consultation to
regular collaboration and even functional integration.4 Adding legitimacy to this
initiative, in 2002 the national service organizations representing museums, libraries, and
archives formally recognized a Committee on Archives, Libraries, and Museums
(identified by the intriguing acronym CALM) to encourage interested institutions to
examine this new way of working and being.5
The Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints encountered this collaborative trade wind in 2003. Before this date, the department
consisted of three separate institutions: (slide #3) Church Library, Church Archives and
Museum of Church History and Art. Although they were nominally part of the same
administrative unit, they operated largely independently of one another, with separate
administrations, staffs, budgets, historical collections, policies, and programs. In 2003, I
became Associate Managing Director, with the charge to redesign the department in
accordance with the Church’s 21st century needs. To this end I assembled a study team
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and inaugurated a process of institutional analysis. Several challenging conclusions
resulted.
1. (slide #4) Audiences. The study team discovered that some in our department felt
that serving a public audience of whatever make-up was not, and should not be, *
among the department’s top priorities. Those who did acknowledge the value of
serving an external audience held quite different notions of * which audience
segments ought to be considered primary. In addition, the department generally
saw the library, archives, and museum as destinations, with little need to reach out
to audiences that may not or could not come to Church headquarters.6 The team
also discovered that the public influence of these institutions was not expanding
and * diversifying as rapidly as the local Utah population or as the worldwide
LDS membership.
2. (slide #5) Collections. Even though these three institutions fiercely defended
traditional collections-based distinctions (* libraries collect publications, *
archives collect corporate records and manuscripts, * and museums collect art and
artifacts), these distinctions had become considerably blurred over years of
practice.7 The team also found that the public neither understood nor cared for
these traditional distinctions. Rather, visitors’ interest in learning about the
Mormon past often transcended these boundaries, which seemed artificial, even
arcane. In addition, changes in collections media associated with the Information
Age further challenged the necessity, even the advisability, of preserving the
traditional collections-based distinctions of libraries, archives, and museums.
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3. (slide #6) Information Technology. The team concluded that if Church history
was to become relevant to a worldwide LDS audience, the department would have
to * use the communications tools and networks of the Information Age to
establish and * maintain an international presence. In order to do so, the library,
archives, and museum would have to collaborate more closely with one another
and with the Church’s increasingly * worldwide network of organizations and
systems.
In short, the team guiding this change initiative became painfully aware that the
traditional distinctions of library, archives, and museums were preventing them from
serving an increasingly diverse and technologically sophisticated worldwide audience.
(slide #7) Institutional Change. To help define a more promising future, the study
team hired a nationally-recognized consultant and submitted to a rigorous re-engineering
process. We adopted a four-step model for change, which committed us to (1) * define
institutional Purpose in order to (2) * identify essential Work so that we could (3) *
determine Organizational Structure and Operations which would help us (4) * identify
needed Resources. This model recognizes that a Purpose statement answers “why” the
institution exists;8 the definition of essential Work clarifies “what” the institution does;
and the Organization, Operation, and Resources statements determine “how,” “by
whom,” and “with what” the institution accomplishes its work. Without the explicit
discipline of this model and the expertise and objectivity of an outside consultant, the
team could have easily lost focus, rigor, and momentum in negotiating the complex and
often treacherous pathways of institutional change. While acknowledging that the formal
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dimensions of our institutions’ future would be daunting, we recognized that re-aligning
its cultural dimensions would be equally challenging.
1. Defining Purpose. Recognizing that changing our culture would be more
challenging than changing our organization, we faced first the easier path of addressing
the department’s formal needs. However easy we anticipated this task would be, defining
the “why” of the organization proved to be very difficult. Although the Church History
Department had had a purpose statement, it emphasized more of its “what” than its
“why.” (slide #8) The exercise of crafting a meaningful purpose statement, which took
several months, helped to nurture a cross-functional identity of our staff more effectively
than anything else we had ever attempted. Although we have not yet achieved complete
staff consensus on all details of the new purpose statement, we feel that complete
harmony on every matter is neither necessary nor advisable if we are to maintain
momentum and focus in our change initiative. We recognize that the process of defining
institutional identity is best undertaken in more frequent, iterative steps than by a process
so infrequent and extensive that it becomes traumatic to the staff and to the institution
itself.
2. * Determining Work. The next step in the re-engineering process was to derive
our essential work from the purpose statement. While we recognized that collections
needed to remain central to our department’s work, collections alone could not
effectively comprehend our institution’s new value proposition. For example, we
acknowledged that understanding our audiences needed to be core to the department’s
strategic planning, not merely an adjunct of product development. Likewise, we
recognized that our future success depended greatly on our being able to deliver value to
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audiences who would never visit Salt Lake City. We also became aware that our desire to
represent the entire history of the LDS Church, particularly its contemporary dimensions,
meant that we had to develop a sustainable international presence and that we could not
do so working in the degree of relative isolation to which we had been accustomed.
More extensive discussions among staff and leaders around these and related
issues determined that the essential work of the library, museum, and archives included:
understanding audience needs, developing diverse historical assets, preserving permanent
collections, and providing customer services. In order to accomplish this core work, we
recognized that the library, archives, and museum had to work in concert with one
another and the Church’s emerging worldwide operations.
3. Driving Organization. * Our consultant taught us that the formal organization
of an institution is the most explicit statement of its essential work. Aligning
organizational structure with essential work enables an institution most effectively to
deliver its core value. Therefore, rather than preserve the traditional but outmoded
distinctions of library, museum, and archives, we reorganized the department according
to its essential work: audience needs, collections and research, preservation, and customer
services. Although few members of the study team had initially imagined that we would
propose such a drastic organizational solution, we recognize that it was a logical, even
compelling outcome of our study.
The work of the library, archives and museum is now accomplished crossfunctionally and collaboratively. When it comes to collections development, for example,
archivists and librarians must learn the skills of curators and registrars, who must do
likewise. Educators must be as mindful of public programming in the library as in the
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museum and for on-line as well as in-house patrons. We feel strongly that if the diverse
professionals in our department cannot understand and work with one another, they
cannot effectively engage the general public, with whom they share much less
professional commitment and technical understanding.
4. Identify Resources. * In this new cross-functional environment, we see that plans
involving staffs, budgets, projects, facilities, collections, and schedules need to be more
strategic, rigorous, and transparent than ever before. We also see better how work
processes can be clarified and simplified in order to streamline, automate, or outsource
certain steps and to eliminate others. Thus we can focus scarce professional expertise on
our most critical and unique operations.
5. Audience. * In this new configuration, the Church History Department is better
able to deliver essential value to an increasingly large and diversified audience of Latterday Saints worldwide. The two central features in our future department-wide strategy
are Purpose and Audience. That is why one is the foundation of our structure and the
other is the roof. Working effectively together, these central features serve as the crucial
structural and integrating members of the organization, using this building analogy. As
we move forward, the success of our operations will depend upon our aligning to our
purpose and serving our public as much as on our professional expertise and historical
resources.
Conclusion. The Church History Department is not far enough into this new way
of being to demonstrate conclusively its value. However, preliminary indications suggest
that its long-term benefits will far outweigh the costs. Increased efficiency, greater
accountability, and improved productivity in our operations, coupled with higher
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visibility with stakeholders and respect from core customers have encouraged department
administration to continue on this path and many of our staff members to suspend their
initial disbelief. However, some staff members have resisted this radical change, and a
few have chosen to terminate employment. Understanding that cultural transitions like
this take several years, we are determined to continue pressing forward, endeavoring to
improve our communication processes and convey a clear vision to our staff. Many now
recognize that our R/evolution has freed us from traditional practices that no longer
worked, allowed us to improve service to our audience, and has begun to create a more
agile staff.
These changes will not diminish our commitment to the collecting professions.
For example, our revised operations still conform to the standards of the American
Library Association, Society of American Archivists, and American Association of
Museums.9 These professions themselves are experiencing seismic pressures to change,
from internal and external sources. Their success in the 21st century will depend to a great
extent on how they address these pressures.
In its reorganization, the Church History Department did not eliminate the (slide
#9) library, archives and museum as bricks-and-mortar facilities.10 In fact, the new
250,000 square foot state-of-the-art Church History Library will open to the public in
2009. These historical facilities continue to be places where much of our work takes
place, but they no longer determine the scope of its influence. Seeing ourselves as a
provider of essential services more than a controller of critical assets, we find our work to
be more expansive, demanding, and significant than ever before, and we regularly
discover new partners for pursuing these ambitious opportunities.
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Integrating libraries, museums and archives is not a “silver bullet” for the
challenges facing all collecting institutions in the 21st century. While this solution is not
likely to be relevant to a wide range of professional institutions, it may be attractive to
those whose audiences are diffuse, whose collections are diverse, whose public programs
are more subject-specific than content-specific, and whose mission complements that of
an associated library, archives and/or museum. On the other hand, the general principles
of organizational design apply to all institutions, large and small, public and private,
religious and secular. Regarding the future of the Church History Department, we feel
particularly committed to this course because it is a direct reflection of our essential
work, which is aligned with our core purpose and the needs of our key audiences.
“Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” “LDS Church,” “Latter-day Saints,” “the Church,”
“Mormon,” and “Mormonism” are used interchangeably in this essay.
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2
Museum and Library Services Act of 1996, see Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
website, www.imls.gov .
3
IMLS Publications: Charting the Landscape, Mapping new Paths: Museums, Libraries, and K-12
Learning (2005), Analysis of Library & Museum partnerships (1998).
4
IMLS Publications: National Medal for Museum and Library Service (2007).
History of the ALA-SAA-AAM Joint Committee – CALM (Committee on Archives, Libraries, and
Museums) www.aam-us.org .
5
Annual attendance in 2007 for public venues at LDS Church headquarters include: Temple Square –
2,258,617, Family History Library – 567,395, Conference Center – 279,000, Family Search Center –
113,255, Museum of Church History and Art - 209,261, Beehive House, a restored historic site – 85,331,
Church History Library and Church Archives - 12,168.
6
Gurian, Elaine Heumann, [“What is the Object of this Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the many
meanings of Objects in Museums,” Daedalus, 128:3 (1999), pp. 163-183] challenges traditional definitions
of “artifact” and “museum object” as being narrow and outmoded. Similar challenges could be extended to
“document,” “publication,” and other traditional collections categories.
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8
See Gail Anderson, Museum Mission Statements: Building a Distinct Identity, (Washington, DC:
American Association of Museums, 1998).
9
See official publications of AAM (Aviso, Museum), ALA (American Libraries), and SAA (Archival
Outlook, American Archivist).
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In 2009, a new 250,000 square foot LDS Church History Library will open to the public about a block
away from MCH in downtown Salt Lake City. See details at www.newsroom.lds.org