Beyond Good Intentions: Developing and Operationalizing Values in the Structure of Digital Library Programs

Defining values for an organizational unit has become a standard practice for creating and supporting successful teams across sectors in business, government, and nonprofits. Given the centrality of professional values for librarians and archivists, this practice is particularly salient for work in library and archives organizations. At the same time, implicit values in technology sector organizations have been widely criticized for leading to staff burnout and contributing to increased precarity and harm to employees. This presents a significant challenge for digital library organizations that often straddle aspects of start-up and information technology organizational culture and library and archives culture. This case study presents the development of a set of values for the newly created Digital Content Management (DCM) section at the Library of Congress. The authors provide general context and background on this effort, then describe the approach to collaboratively developing shared values and the resulting work to refine how those values are operationalized in ongoing work activities and processes. This case study also aims to provide useful information to others working in digital library programs to support this same kind of reflective praxis.