Scenario building Creating and considering stories about equally plausible futures

Scenario building considerations  What are the givens?  Hawai‘i will continue to have children that need an education  Old, deteriorating buildings will continue to need work  What are the uncertainties?  Change to smaller school boards?  Larger or smaller student population?  “Education governor” who actually funds education?

Organizing Divide into groups according to information institution type:  Public library  Academic library  School library  Special (including knowledge management officer for corporation)

Forces to consider (1)  Social forces — e.g. changing demographics  Technology — e.g. information retrieval software, virtual reference, e-books, etc.  Economics — downward or upward economy (U.S. and local)

Forces to consider (2)  Politics — laws relating to libraries, support for libraries and other information institutions, concern for national security  Environment — e.g. cost of paper affected by growing pressure to restrict logging practices, global warming

Questions  What will my library or other information institution look like ten years from now?  What will my role be in that library?

Create 2 or 3 scenarios  Pool knowledge of group  Effect of varied directions for factors examined  Include worst-case scenario  Be sure to include yourselves in your narratives—What will you be doing in this story?

Planning  Don't bet future on single scenario  Make decisions that will be sound for a variety of plausible futures  How will we influence our stories?