Scenario. A regional public library system has been steadily automating — the reference desk is mostly an AI, acquisitions run through a recommendation engine, programming is templated from a national vendor. Elena, the deputy director, realizes she is two years from retirement and the three senior librarians who know what the system is for in her county — what a third-grade teacher really needs, how the immigrant parents in the east branch use it, what it meant when the strip-mall branch stayed open the summer the factory closed — will all be gone within five years. Nobody coming in is being trained into that understanding. She wants a sabbatical program that pays those three to spend a year working with the newer librarians, not on procedures, but on judgment — before the whole institution loses its memory.

Challenge: Design a sabbatical-and-rotation program that brings senior practitioners (or community members) back into direct, unautomated work for bounded periods, so the judgment that recognizes institutional drift is sustained as routine work is automated. Produce the eligibility rules, the funding model, and the mechanism that feeds what's learned back into operations.

Evaluation. A strong design keeps oversight judgment alive without making participation career-damaging or turning re-immersion into ceremonial busywork.