“What We Do Every Day Is Impossible”: Managing Change by Developing a Knotworking Culture in an Academic Library

Change, transformation, the reassessment of services and professional capabilities are key concepts in the language of academic libraries today. We suggest that two intertwined rationales - technical development and the marketisation of the public sector along with a customer approach - are driving the change that is challenging academic libraries to rethink their work and services. In this article, we first discuss embedded librarianship and knotworking in libraries as participatory approaches to the arrangement of academic library work and services. Second, we presented the findings of the Knotworking project and its follow-up interviews and suggest knotworking as a method with which librarians can collaboratively analyse their own work and develop services with researchers and thus respond to changing working environments. Third, we discuss changes in the work identity of librarians.