I found this recently, so thought I'd share the slides from this online talk that I did for QUT's Information Studies Group (@qutisg) in mid-2012. There are no speaker's notes, but most of the ideas presented are pretty self-explanatory.
Thanks to Chris Gaul for his design work on these slides.
I gave this presentation yesterday at CCA Educause 2011 in Sydney. We are still designing and planning, so his isn't about the result, it is more about how we are getting there. From the abstract:
The game has changed. It is no longer just about text or about us (as librarians) and how we see the world being organised or classified. To some extent we need to catch up with students and assist them, the same applies to researchers and academics though in other ways. We can only do this if we understand them, know what they want and know how they’d like us to help. We also need to understand the new landscape and environment ourselves and my guess is that most in the library and educational world do not.
In this presentation I’d like to discuss some of the elements I see as necessary in a more inclusive, participatory approach to planning our future library. I hope to illustrate an approach that isn’t just about the technologies we will use, but also the way we select them and how we will deploy them. I will cover the following points as I illustrate that approach:
We need to learn (again) how to be active, creative, innovative and inclusive contributors in order to fully understand and utilise fully some of the new technologies we are deploying. Most cannot fully be understood by observation alone nor by reading about them in books. We also need to re-learn how to see possibilities, not problems and to be brave enough to have a go. Any form of innovation has almost been sidelined by an obsession with risk management that has become risk avoidance at all costs.
We need to learn how to take responsibility for our own future and do things for ourselves, not wait for a consultant to design a matrix to contract out the risk, experience, learning, responsibility and activity. Nor should we simply wait for our masters or government to invest in our future. Yes, there are hard decisions to make, but if we were really pressed by an emergency or disaster such decisions about what really matters and what doesn’t would be made efficiently and quickly, so why not try to do it without that imperative? Do we really need adversity to inspire action?
We must also understand the power and benefits of randomness and chaos. Freedom from yesterday’s policy barriers, useless governance structures, risk aversion, committee bureaucracy; and freedom to explore new ways and new methods is vital. Creative innovation is almost completely ruled out and its sharp edges are dulled by a comprehensive and bureaucratic set of rules, procedures, guidelines and policies covering everything we might do. We should not rule out the unknown so completely because we fear it. Sometimes the unknown contains the answers.
Liaison needs to be extended both within our own communities and networks and also outside our communities because there is a great deal we can build on. There are valuable partnerships to be made from that liaison and external collaboration. Not all the answers and inspiration will come from within or the familiar.
Can we crowd-source and co-design better ideas, services and solutions to some of our challenges and even provide much-needed infrastructure more effectively using social media technology? Has anyone really tried? We must understand the power and influence of communities and living networks and how connections are best made and facilitated within these.
Do we listen to what our users are saying and how can we do that better these days? Can we set up convenient, intuitive and more engaging ways for users to communicate with us (e.g. encouraging conversations instead of complaints through the use of Wallwisher feedback software). When our users or students express interest in academic services like libraries, do we listen and respond accordingly, i.e. seriously consider taking up their ideas and making them real (examples here include our work with Designining Out Crime students, taking up student ideas for the Augmented Campus, regular displays of student art and design work in the Library, and our Digi-stories competition).
We are not modelling our future library on someone else’s blue-print. Some major technologies that we will incorporate in it (i.e. ASRS & RFID) will allow us to deliver different services and to provide new spaces within the library itself. They will also require us to incorporate enhanced search and discovery tools online and students are already indicating what else they’d like to see in that respect on portable platforms. Our solution is evolving “organically” from within and from our research, the UTS community and our networks. It has grown and changed as a result of some “experimentation” and play, even over the last 12 months. It is also being combined with encouragement from senior managers to explore the use of new web and mobile technologies and shared attitudinal change from within including a more inclusive, trusting, motivated and less hierarchical approach to strategic planning. In that respect I will discuss how are we giving library staff at UTS more autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Today a work colleague sent me something that pointed to some research by our (UTS) Institute for Sustainable Futures on Green Travel Planning. They are looking for support and potential participants for projects they are developing: one on car-sharing in multi-residential developments and the other is a course on travel planning for professionals engaged in planning relevant new developments for 2011.
They say the initiative to plan travel for workplaces can result in substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and reduced traffic congestion for workplaces like university campuses, industrial parks, hospitals, office precincts and multi-residential developments. That, however, doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to do something along the same lines in smaller institutions like libraries. We should certainly incorporate a green travel plan as a design consideration for our Library of the Future which is in its very early planning stages. Maybe we could also make a realistic contribution now just by setting an example for others to follow.
Perhaps it is too late in an existing institution to incorporate much that involves substantial investment in facilities or even additional construction, but there might be other steps we can take that could make a realistic, if small scale contribution. We could for example:
raise awareness among our staff and encourage the use of alternative forms of transport that are more environmentally friendly (public transport, cycling and walking where feasible);
encourage and perhaps facilitate car sharing or pooling arrangements;
lobby for cycling or public transport subsidies instead of salary packaging for cars;
improve and encourage the use of end-of-trip cycling and running amenities like showers and lockers;
seek funds and/or equipment to improve video or online-conferencing facilities in our workplaces (vice long-distance air travel);
arrange bike maintenance classes for staff and provide basic shared repair facilities at work;
look more closely at flexible work arrangements that encourage working from home where appropriate or travel during non-peak periods;
highlight and profile those of our colleagues who make the effort to use more sustainable forms of transport as examples for others to follow;
run and celebrate regular voluntary Car Free days; and
try some schemes that offer incentives to car poolers, bikers, runners, walkers or public transport users.
The implementation of some sustainability initiatives in our library is now on our strategic plan for the coming year after it was suggested by staff at our planning days. Maybe working up our own Green Travel Plan is a good start. What are you doing in your workplace?
The image is one of my bikes in my office at work.
I made a few flippant and some serious observations about VALA 2010 on Twitter over the last week or so. Well, OK then, quite a lot really. I'll try and be less flippant and a little bit deeper in this post. Promise. Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the huge effort put in by all of those involved in putting this conference together. It really is an immense task and far too much to arrange for anyone wanting to keep their original hair colour. We should all be grateful to those who volunteered their time and energy to make the conference run so well. From a content perspective, I think it had something for everyone and I know that the Program Committee made every formal and informal effort to consult with people about who to ask to give keynotes. I was also aware that people like David Feighan (the Program Chair) made an effort to encourage people to take some risks with what they said and to present it in an entertaining way. His opening address and welcome featuring the short video by Abbey the Digiberal Native was a brilliant example for us to follow. (If only David was wearing a tie.) So, I came away satisfied that the conference pushed the buttons I wanted to have pushed:
stimulating content and ideas that challenged some of my views or reminded me of reality (from RFID to networked books);
the opportunity to swap ideas with colleagues from all over Australasia (& beyond!);
the chance to let others know what we are up to;
the opportunity to have some fun (away) with some of my colleagues and some new friends;
stimulus to write a paper and prepare a presentation on a topic of some importance to us;
connecting with old colleagues;
watching and listening to some up-and-coming rock stars of the library world who are so passionate and enthusiastic about what they do; and
sometimes I just needed a laugh (thanks to many of my Twitter friends and especially John Garraway from the University of Auckland who has a real gift for timing and delivery).
I don't think the real value, in terms of connections, content, conversations and encouragement, that such conferences give to their attendees can be discounted.
So, to some brief observations from my perspective:
SUSTAINABILITY: I was pretty surprised that this issue did not come up much apart from our (UTS) presentation. It is a major priority for us and was one of the main conference themes at Educause09.
TWITTER: It provided a very valuable back-channel for this conference and I think that, like Educause09 in Denver, if you didn't at least lurk, you missed a vital and really useful dimension of VALA2010. As @flexnib tweeted: "all of us are smarter than any of us". In a way, it provided a cloud for the crowd.
CLOUD COMPUTING: This issue emerged and was debated in several sessions, but again, I was surprised that it didn't feature on as many agendas as it might have.
ROCK STARS: I am glad that some new young Australian library "rock stars" are starting to emerge. I'm thinking of people like Paul Hagon, Kat Clancy and our own Sophie McDonald to name just a few of them. They need to be encouraged as examples for others to follow. Their essential role in connecting us to our clients or just the broader public cannot be underestimated.
FROM LITTLE THINGS . . . : One thing that disappointed me was hearing, I think from a panellist, that what some public and state libraries are doing in digitising their own historical collections and other popular and/or rare collection material is insignificant or really doesn't matter much. Well, I'm sorry, but it does. It matters big time. As Paul Kelly said "From little things, big things grow". It is an important start and if our public institutions don't make a start then someone else will start pulling the rug from under us. We should be encouraging any digitisation of cultural materials, not just endlessly debating which metadata schema to use or how to moderate user-created data, should we ever decide to allow it. What NLA is doing with Trove, what the Australian War Memorial has done with war diariesand more recently C.E.W. Bean's First World war records and what the State libraries and some public libraries are doing to provide online access to and digital preservation of our cultural and historical heritage is very important and a great example for others to follow. If we were really a clever nation, by now we'd have a national cultural digitisation strategy.
Peter is seeing no fire in our collective bellies and not enough passion coming from librarians about our own future.He puts forward an interesting action plan calling for librarians to be less passive and far more proactive on issues such as Copyright in academic publishing, open everything (publishing & data), community collaboration and action, and taking more steps to make the library a growing and addictive organism.
In this talk he delivers a pretty good 12 point action plan that most of us working in academic libraries should at least consider very seriously. The whole video is well worth watching, but I know most people won't bother so here again is my summary of the key points along with a few of my own comments thrown in for good measure.
Before introducing his action plan he mentions a few other interesting ideas:
He grounds his presentation by referring to Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science, although he dislikes the term "user" preferring "reader".
Copyright as we know it must be destroyed for the sake of academic publishing and in order to facilitate the sharing of knowledge (as distinct from the business of making money from restricting the sharing of knowledge). He claims by example that Copyright is currently preventing the sharing of knowledge that could help to save the planet and that we as librarians should be agitating, displaying our "raw anger" and protesting for legislative change.
He laments the situation in academic publishing where academics create works for free, but are expected to pay in order to see the work of their colleagues. It is a situation that must be changed.
The 12 Point Plan (in no particular order): 1. We should act as citizen librarians towards a common or shared goal. (See some examples below of communities collaborating towards shared goals.) 2. Post all academic output publicly: ignore Copyright. For this, we need to display our passion and one of probably has to volunteer to go to gaol. I like this one, but I can't be the one going to gaol. Sorry. (Beth & Belinda: step forward please. Don't worry, I'll look after the shop.) 3. Text mine everything. Currently this isn't allowed by the publishers who own nearly everything. It stops researchers trying to find stuff. As he says: "when violating a publisher's terms of use, you are guilty until proven innocent". 4. Put 2nd year students in charge of developing educational technology resources. They use it all the time and will know whether to go mobile or to use Xbox or Play Station. There is some truth in this. 5. Actively participate in obtaining science grants. Because scientists find it all too repetitious and cumbersome. They need our help. 6. Actively participate in the scientific publishing process. Again, they need our help. Maybe we can help them to publish their work more openly and also to facilitate better management of their IP. 7. Close the science library and move it all to the departments. He says this is a no-brainer. (We don't have a science library at UTS.) 8. Handover all purchasing to national Rottweiler publishing officers. Apparently they deal with the publishers centrally in Brazil. We could not do it in Australia. Getting any form of agreement with so many egos and so much self-interest in the room would prove far too complicated. Besides, we have less important issues to worry about. It is actually something we should at least try to do, very seriously. It may well be one of the big issues on this list, along with taking action on Copyright and open access publishing where we really could have a very beneficial effect and demonstrate our worth. 9. Set up a new type of university press. The traditional presses have all been failures. We have been handed an opportunity with the Internet, but our presses have been less innovative than other publishers. I think we are taking steps in this direction now and UTSePress is a good example, publishing journals, books and conference proceedings online. 10. We should develop our own metrics system. Publishers manipulate the metrics system in order to get us to buy what they think we want. 11. We should publicly campaign for openness. He gave a few examples like the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Rights Group. We should be actively involved. 12. We should make the library an addictive "game". He used the example of building "reputation points" through involvement and participation in something like stackoverflow.com After a while it becomes a bit addictive, like ebay. We should be asking ourselves "what can we do to change the world and keep the library a growing organism"? His list seems like a decent start, even if it is a tad biased towards science. He wound up his presentation with a few examples of the contributions made by online communities, including: Galaxy Zoo where 150,000 members world-wide have assisted professional astronomers to classify over one million galaxies; and OpenStreetMap, a free editable map of the world that is up-to-date within minutes thanks to the contributions made by over 250,000 members. One of the most important pleas he makes is for the democratisation of knowledge. This should be possible on the web. For it to happen, democratisation must win over commoditisation for commercial purposes (i.e. the protection of business empires). I am surprised that there has not been more debate about his address.
In various roles I’ve been employing people for the last 20 years. This has mostly been via some really dull public service processes that are designed to do the following:
frighten the life out of prospective job applicants (or bore them to death);
waste as much time and paper as possible;
encourage the hopeless to apply and even protest decisions in the interests of fairness; and
generate unproductive work for people with nothing better to do.
In most cases applicants need to be assessed in terms of a too-long list of badly written selection criteria. I know that everyone is going to say that this is really my own fault, but usually it is easier and quicker to just leave what is already there alone because the process of re-writing them adds another year to a very long process depending on what language is currently in vogue with the HR crowd. But really, in my experience the selection criteria don't matter anyway. There are several things that do matter and they are the things that make you want to hire someone if you are lucky enough to get someone who has all or most of these traits applying. So, for what they are worth, here they are:
A decent tertiary or other relevant qualification (which in most cases just indicates an ability to learn)
An ability to communicate in various ways – writing, online and in person
A real or genuine and engaging personality
An obvious enthusiasm or passion for whatever field it is you want to work in
Some original ideas and a creative spirit
Some evidence of the application of your skills
Regardless of the long lists of selection criteria we all have to deal with in interviews, in my experience, those are the real things I’ve looked for when hiring people and when you find someone with all of those traits, you throw the selection criteria out of the window.
