Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Libraries and Gaming

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In yesterday’s New York Times there was an article on gaming and the elderly.  It seems that video gaming among this particular population is trending up.  In fact, “older users not only play video games more often than their younger counterparts but also spend more time playing per session.”  The article also found that individuals 50 and older “accounted for more than 40 percent of total time spent” and that “women spent 35 percent longer” than men.

Older gamers are getting into gaming because it is good exercise – both intellectually and physically.  Casual games provide them with a way of keeping their minds engaged and active. The more physical games like the WII can provide them with a way of getting physical exercise.

The article mentions that research on the impact of gaming on diseases like dementia is sparse.   However, the latest research in neurobiology is coming to the conclusion that our brains are not as “hard wired” as we previously suspected.  (See Marc Presnky’s article on digital natives)  Until recently we were taught that external stimulation had relatively little affect on the structures of the brain.  Researchers are now finding that this simply is incorrect.   In fact, gaming seems to have had a profound impact on our brains.  Prensky suggests that we now think differently as a result of the introduction of technology into our daily lives.

What does this have to do with designing better libraries?  Well, quite a bit!  All educators – including librarians – need to develop an understanding that technology has had a profound impact on how we act AND how we think.  We need to develop systems that reflect how learners learn today. Libraries and library systems have traditionally taken a very linear and very text-based approach to accessing resources.  This approach, it turns out, may actually be detrimental to the educational process.

The first rule of education is engagement.  Games are by their very nature engaging.  As a result, our users are turning up in these environments more and more often.  They are there and we need to be there as well.  So, my post is a question really….what is the library community doing about getting into gaming in significant ways?  Who are the leaders in this area and what are they doing to make library resources and services more accessible through game environments?

Articles, Creativity & Innovation, Uncategorized

Finding Your Innovation Orientation

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Understanding creativity and innovation is one area of concern for librarians, but so too is figuring out how to foster an environment conducive to producing innovations. The latter issue is the subject of an article entitled, Developing an Innovation Orientation in Financial Services Organisations by Dr. Christopher Brooke Dobni. This paper offers an innovation model for financial services firms, and one that I suspect can be applied successfully to libraries with some modifications given the relatively close relationship between the two areas of professional service.

According to Dobni, innovation is important because it allows companies to create substantive customer value within a highly competitive environment. In fact, he asserts that innovative organizations wield innovation to take advantage of opportunities when they arise and outpace their competitors in the process. Dobni writes that innovative organizations share 4 common characteristics:

  1. Employees recognize that innovation is a group effort
  2. The organizational cultures are marked by creativity, excitement, and desire to succeed.
  3. Competition drives companies to learn and do more.
  4. Organizations purposely weave innovation into their daily operations.

If you don’t recognize these characteristics in your own library, you’re not alone. Dobni cites research that finds that many organizations want to be innovative, but very few report that they have achieved that status.

Dobni’s innovation model has 3 main components: 1. Context – What management does to support innovation; 2. Culture – Employees’ collective thoughts and actions; and 3. Execution – Making innovation happen. Each component has sub-parts, but for simplicity’s sake, I will outline the major points from each category.

Context

Organizations must be willing and able to make substantial, fundamental changes to their cultures and operations. Without a commitment to do so from the top down, innovation has little chance of taking root. In fact, Dobni states the organizations may have to change up to half of their current processes to promote innovation. Furthermore, organizations have to be able to grab hold of emergent opportunities and be on the lookout for those opportunities at all times. Doing so is extremely difficult to achieve since a company is, in effect, allocating resources for actions that have yet to be defined, which entails a great deal of risk. Finally, organizations must be learning organizations. Organizations must provide educational opportunities, including education about innovation, for employees and also learn from employees.

Culture

In order to achieve and maintain an innovative organization, all employees must participate, not just a few “creative-types.” Also, employees who share common goals should generate and share useful information with one another, such as information about competitors and customers. Lastly, employees should be prompted to seek opportunities by exploring previously un-explored areas. Dobni refers to this criteria as “cluster enactment,” whereby employees study relevant business clusters (emerging technology, the industry, competitors, etc.) and are encouraged to go beyond those clusters or into new clusters.

Execution

This is where the rubber meets the road and where strategy is applied. One important element of execution is empowerment. Employees should feel empowered to make independent choices with the confidence that they have the capabilities to do so. Second, is risk-taking. As Dobni states, “[B]eing innovative involves a heightened risk propensity and it is inevitable that there will be false starts and failed attempts. The very essence of innovation is to get employees to think differently, to become adventurous, and to take managed risks…Tradition, however, is the crutch holding many organisations back” (175-176). Importantly, employees must be permitted to learn from failed attempts. Also important, successful, innovative organizations are those that can continually realign themselves with the competitive environment.

Granted, Dobni’s research pertains to an industry outside of our own, but I certainly detected commonalities between the two and believe it’s not unreasonable to adopt some of these ideas. What’s perhaps most striking to me in this article is the relationship between innovation and competition. In this piece, competition is something to be embraced to advance one’s own organization. We cannot always predict how the competitive environment will shape up, however, and so it is imperative that libraries allow themselves some latitude in terms for their short- and long-term plans. Perhaps more important than reaching Goal X is creating a culture that is responsive to the environment it’s part of and has the tools to respond appropriately in order to create real value for patrons. Librarians, as I see it, should make it a point to seek out competition even before it finds us, which will help make us sharper and more relevant to our user communities.

Please share your thoughts on this piece if you have an opportunity to read it.

Design Thinking, Uncategorized

If Design Thinking Can Change Management Education…

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…then it certainly has the potential to change practices in librarianship. There is a rapid increase in the number of business practitioners exploring how to integrate design thinking into their work, products and services. Quite a few articles in the business literature have documented how a variety of companies are exploring the competitive advantages of design, and how others are making empathic design a critical part of their new product development process. Perhaps the influence of design thinking is no where more significant than in business education. In addition to the advent of design departments and centers for design studies, business educators are incorporating design thinking into their individual courses.

I recently came across a good article that can give you a better sense of how business school leaders are working to integrate design thinking into their curriculums. The authors are David Dunne and Roger Martin, and the article is titled “Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education.” You can find it online in EBSCO Business Premier. It was published in Academy of Managment Learning and Education (V.5 N.4) 2006, p.512. I like the succinct definition of design thinking on the first page of the article. “Design thinking is approaching management problems as designers approach design.” But how do designers approach problems, and can librarians attack their problems and challenges with this approach. Like Tim Brown of IDEO, Roger Martin is a major force in the study of design thinking. As Dean of the Rotman School of Management he has written a number of articles about the value of design thinking.

So to better understand design thinking it helps to understand how designers think and work, and that is where this article can be most helpful. It points out how designers differ in the way they approach problems, particularly in situations where there are constraints. As Martin describes it, designers have the ability to solve “wicked problems” by using abductive logic that enables them to think about what might be, not just what should be or what is. In other words, designers bring a unique form of creativity and collaboration to problem solving. Martin also distinguishes “design thinking” from “design”. Design thinking is the mental process used to design objects, services or systems (all things librarians do), which is separate from the design of the end product.

I enjoy the challenge of reading about and working to better understanding design thinking, so I consider this article a great find. It will take a few more close readings to fully grasp its meaning. I have search alerts on variations of “design thinking” set up for Proquest and EBSCO business databases, which helps me to locate articles on this topic. Most weeks these searches come up mostly empty, but this week brought forward a good catch.

Creativity & Innovation, Uncategorized

Learn From The TED Conference

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Perhaps you saw some of the articles that appeared in the New York Times last week about the TED Conference. TED is now considered one of the world’s premier conferences for bringing together experts, pundits, and celebreties from three industries: Technology; Entertainment; and Design. TED is mostly about who is there and who is presenting. The latter is perhaps the primary reason for librarians to check out TED. If you want to see great presentations and learn from them, you must be exploring TED. Some TED facts:

   * Only 1,000 people can attend.
   * The presentation auditorium only holds 500 people. Everyone else watches in another room
   * A ticket costs $6,000 (there is already a waiting list for 2008).
   * Speakers are not paid (they do get a free ticket)

I’m not sure that many talks from the latest TED are available online yet. My suggestion is to check the Ted Talks site. There is an archive of talks there, and new ones are posted all the time. In the past I have found a number of good talks that relate to design issues (hence the “D” in TED). If I come across any particularly good ones I’ll be sure to share them here.

 

Uncategorized

Jeff Trzeciak – My first post

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I am a little behind my fellow contributors to this blog so this is simply an introduction to me and what I’ll be blogging about.

About me

I am currently the University Librarian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.   While I am in academia now I started my career (more than 20 years ago) in a public library and have worked over the years with special libraries, archives and museums.  For eight years I worked at Wayne State University in Detroit where they have an ALA-accredited MLS program.  My experience there gave me a glimpse into the changing nature of librarian education.

I have only been at McMaster since July but we have already made some significant changes.  We are going through a transformation process, which you can read about on my blog.

About my contributions

I am particularly interested in the application of new technologies within libraries.  Gaming (MMORPGs) and virtual worlds (Second Life) are of special interest to me.  Some of you may have seen my post “I want a gaming librarian” and may be interested in knowing that we are, in fact, hiring a gaming librarian.  This position will provide leadership in the development and implementation of innovative, highly engaging, habitable environments for teaching and learning.  Our forray into Second Life, where we now offer reference services, has been well received by the Hamilton community. How can these emerging and highly popular technologies be incorporated into libraries so that we can reach our users wherever they are?
I am also interested in new models for the organization.  I know there is some resistance to the “2.0” moniker but I’m going to use it anyway!  What is “leadership 2.0” or as one of my librarians recently asked what is “administration 2.0”?  Given the radical redefinition of library resources, services and facilities, how do we radically redefine our organizations as well?  What does that mean?  What will they look like?  More importantly, how do we redefine our organizations given the constraints of our parent organizations?  (universities, school districts, corporations, government agencies, boards, etc)

Finally, I will also, out of necessity, blog about changing space.  Our Science Engineering Library, a building straight out of the 70’s – left virtually unchanged since its construction – is on the university’s capital campaign for a $4 million dollar face lift.  What kind of space should it become?  How do we appeal to this generation of student?  What should it include?  What should be removed?  In particula, how do we strike a balance of “collections” (which are used less and less often) with “technology” and “collaboration space”?  This will be a major challenge for us over the next couple of years.

So, I will have a wide variety of topics to blog.  I’m looking forward to it – watch this space – it should be fun!

Design Thinking, Uncategorized

Is DBL Just A Fad

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Just as we were preparing to debut DBL I came across an article that suggests that we were too late arriving on the scene with our emphasis on design. “Beware the Backlash” appeared in Core77, and its main theme is that a backlash against design is on the rise. It seems that real designers are growing tired of the rest of the world using design themes to generate “useless stuff.” The author states that “design has lost its magic now that everyone has an opinion on it. It was clearly much more special when only a select group of designers swooned over the latest Apple product.” Is the world of design experiencing a bandwagon effect? Is it now just faddish to talk about the importance of design? And most importantly, is DBL just being superficial when we talk of the influence design can have on librarianship?

I prefer to think that design has not been “striped of much of its meaning” as the author contends it has. It is possible that design is being overused in the media which adds to the overexposure. So I’m not surprised that those who’ve been long-term design thinkers and practitioners might react by suggesting that those new to the concept are misusing it and are simply jumping on the bandwagon. Given that design principles and design thinking have seen little exploration in the world of librarianship, I think there is much room for the growth of this concept and the related practices in our profession. DBL is about more than just design hype. To my way of thinking, given that many of our libraries need to discover what’s broken and how design can help make things work better, there is much that we can explore and learn in the worlds of design thinking, instructional design, innovation and creativity.

Message From Blog Team, Uncategorized

An Introduction – Jill Stover

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Since becoming the Undergraduate Services Librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University, I’ve been fascinated by anything and everything service-related – developing and implementing services, evaluating them, promoting them – you name it. As a new professional, I had (and still have) lots of questions about how to provide our undergraduates with the best services possible. To find answers, I turned to the field of Business, and Marketing in particular. Through coursework, a hefty amount of reading, talking with professionals, and trial and error, I’m discovering many useful models and approaches that librarians would do well to adopt. I write about these findings in my blog, Library Marketing, and, to a lesser extent, on KnowThis.com. When Steven Bell approached me about participating in Designing Better Libraries, I eagerly accepted his offer because it presented an intriguing opportunity to view library services through a unique lens – design. Design as we’re thinking of it, much like Marketing, involves carefully constructing user experiences that are meaningful and useful. I’m excited to see where this project goes and to hear your comments and insights.

For my part, I’m going to focus much of my exploration on DBL on creativity and innovation. Innovation gets a lot of attention in the Business literature these days, as well as in other places. I plan to begin my participation in DBL by writing about what this literature has to say on the topic. In doing so, I hope to establish a foundation we can build on and begin to get a firm footing on what innovation is, its importance, and how we can foster innovation-friendly library environments and practices.

My next post will begin to address some of these questions by investigating what it means to be creative/innovative and why we should be talking about these issues in the context of designing better user experiences. I’ll then begin a series of literature reviews to get the discussion moving. From there, who knows. (Not knowing where exactly this will lead is part of the fun!) Also, don’t be surprised if Marketing topics pop up along the way.

I hope you’ll enjoy following this blog and sharing your own thoughts.

Thanks for reading!