R2 Consulting was founded in 2000 by partners Rick Lugg and Ruth Fischer, after a combined 28 years at YBP Library Services. For the past nine years, R2 has focused on analysis of selection-to-access workflows in academic libraries. Almost inevitably, these projects lead to scrutiny of service priorities, user expectations, and organizational structures. R2's overriding professional interest is to help libraries adapt and compete effectively at Web scale.
R2 is a flexible and independent company that works well with all participants in the academic library market. Since 2000, R2 has developed a solid reputation for delivering direct, insightful, and actionable analysis that helps organizations improve performance and adapt to the changing information environment. In addition to workflow analysis, R2 offers strategic planning, organizational redesign, and onsite change management. For vendors, R2 provides product design and introduction, customized market research, focus group facilitation, and environmental scanning.
R2 Credo
- R2 believes in libraries and their missions
- R2 believes that libraries can and must do their work more effectively
- R2 believes that libraries need to reinvent themselves to compete at Web scale
- R2 believes that libraries must strike a balance between their historical role and their evolving role
- R2 believes that libraries must find new capacity from within their existing resources
- R2 believes that libraries must shift staff efforts from print to digital, and from common to unique materials
- R2 believes that libraries exist to bring value to their host institutions and their users
- R2 believes that every library is different, and must be managed accordingly
- R2 believes that every library can improve its performance
- R2 believes that our techniques can help many libraries
- R2 believes in libraries and their missions
Rick Lugg, Partner
Rick is a native of New Hampshire, whose official motto "Live Free or Die" and unofficial secondary motto "Common Sense for All" have shaped his worldview. He holds an MLS from Simmons College, and has more than 25 years' experience working with libraries and vendors. When not living in hotels, Rick and Ruth reside in Contoocook, NH. Their children Emily and Lincoln are midway through the tuition-paying years, which has only heightened R2's interest in contributing to cost-effectiveness in higher education.
Ruth graduated from Earlham College with a B.A in American Frontier History and holds a Masters in Education from Penn State. Prior to her involvement with libraries in 1990, Ruth worked as a teacher and administrator in a highly regarded independent school in New Hampshire. Workflow analysis in more than eighty academic libraries has inspired her to focus more than ever on organizational redesign and operational management. 
Sally graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in Philosophy. Prior to moving to New Hampshire in 1998, she was a director of college counseling, an English teacher and upper school team leader at a Connecticut independent school, manager of the box office at Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts, and held positions in small school and business libraries, as well as in the Department of Education at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. For eight years, she was a customer service bibliographer and team leader at YBP Library Services. Sally joined R2 consulting in 2006. She lives in Warner, NH.