by Victoria Harriston, Washington DC Chapter

Innovation, always on my mind, sitting in traffic and yes even in my sleep. Why? Because I know that no matter what our Research Center is doing there’s always room for improvement, to be better than we are. Nothing earth-shattering here, just a few thoughts and musings on innovations that have given our Library/Research Center greater visibility from the top down, fostered increased demand for our expertise and services and kicked the value of our contributions to the organization up more than a couple of notches.

One of the best ways to keep your finger on the pulse of the organization and really get to know your stakeholders is to start a Liaison Program. No huge start-up effort and the rewards are a win-win for everyone. Know what’s going on within your organization, recognize and seize business opportunities.

Every librarian is a business entrepreneur. You’d be amazed how forming partnerships opens innovation doors. Partnership with our Staff Development Programs office gave us the financial support for our successful training program.

Advocate for your stakeholders. If your organization publishes reports organize public Forum events and invite internal staff contributors to speak. Spend time learning about programs or events within your organization to get the library involved. We regularly participate in our Graduate Fellows program. Showcase library value, publish an Impact Report (saved project staff 20 research hours, proposal research contributed to new project funding, citation analysis validated key report recommendations).

Gather those publisher backfile collections and create an Intellectual Heritage Vault. Innovation includes not reinventing the wheel (if you don’t have to!). Use publisher online tutorials for databases, use your Delicious guides as classroom instructor tools.

Victoria Harriston is Manager, at the George E. Brown, Jr. Research Center, National Academy of Sciences. Her 35 year career includes several management positions in special, corporate and academic libraries and serving for 2-years as Public Relations, News Bureau Manager for a telecommunications company.

by Helen Josephine, Silicon Valley Chapter, Science-Technology and Engineering Divisions

A report on the new “bookless engineering library” was included in “Morning Edition” on NPR in July 2010. After this report aired, library and literary blogs quickly began discussing the future and fate of libraries in the digital age—is it the wave of the future or the end of the world as we know it? We find that some of our student and faculty users prefer digital content to print, while others do not. The digital library is not the end of the book and print collections, but the beginning of something new and exciting.

After four years of planning, the new Engineering Library at Stanford University opened on August 9, 2010. The vision document for the new library, SEQ2 Library Vision: The Information Collaboratory informed not only the physical design of the new facility but the staffing, collection and service models as well. In addition to the challenge to replace the physical collection with digital content, three themes for the new library were called out in this document: high-touch human contact, mediation and subject expertise and mutability or continuous change and experimentation.
To achieve our goal of becoming a largely bookless library with access to all of the online resources required by one of the premier schools of Engineering in the world, the constant questions we asked of our vendors were—can we get it online?, can it be flexible?, can it be self-service? We anticipate that even more innovative information resources and devices will be available to us as we continue to evolve and experiment with new technologies, new services and new vendors.

One current experiment is our e-reader program, a combination of circulating e-readers and tethered e-readers (10 Kindle, 8 Sony Touch,1 Nook,1 iPad) with content selected by librarians. In addition to the content we have selected and purchased for the e-readers, we are also testing the ability to load and read content that we have licensed from e-book vendors that allow for unlimited content download. Student feedback on the project has been positive and the e-readers are always checked-out. The e-reader program is part of our mission to understand the information needs of the current and future students and to experiment with new technologies.

Our physical space is one-third the size of our former library, but the open floor plan of the new library and the foldable, stackable, moveable furniture allows multiple configurations within our 6,000 sq ft. space. Collaborative work areas for groups of 4 or more with tables pushed together, individual work at tables near the windows, as well as impromptu classroom seating for groups as large as 50 are all feasible. The technology in the library includes a 60”digital bulletin board for announcements of library events and information plus School of Engineering events and student projects, a rolling display cart housing a 60” monitor with touch capability, an information kiosk using a 23” touch screen computer for basic library information and a 3M RFID system for book self-check out and security.

When you define your library as a place for innovation and experimentation with information technology and digital content, the possible roles for librarians are limitless and the types of services offered are dynamic and ever-changing. This is a true definition of “future-ready.”

Helen Josephine is Head of the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Library (http://lib.stanford.edu/englib), part of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center at Stanford University.  She is a past-president of the Silicon Valley chapter of SLA and has been a member of SLA since 1999. She has also been active in many regional, state and national library groups, including the Arizona Online Users Group, California Academic and Research Libraries, and ALA.

by Kate W. Flewelling

A colleague recently dubbed me the “nomadic, geriatric librarian.”  At 32, I am hardly geriatric, but I do provide information support to those who treat our hospital’s oldest patients, and I leave my office (and the library) as often as possible.  I am mobile, and busy clinicians and students need me to be where they are.

At my institution, an academic medical center, the “ACE Team” (Acute Care for the Elderly) meets once a day in a hospital conference room (geriatrics patients can be on any service–cardiology, neurology, medicine–making bedside rounds impractical).  ACE Team members include an attending physician, a post-residency fellow, a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, a pharmacist and residents/medical students on two week geriatrics rotations.   As cases are presented, I listen for clinical information needs.  Often, attendees will have additional literature search requests or a request for “one good article on….” or “clinical practice guidelines for….”  If I think a question can be answered in less than five minutes, I look it up on the spot on an iPad (I have also used an iPod Touch).  Other questions are taken back to the library for prompt response.

Schedule permitting, I have been attending rounds twice a week since October 2010.  In that short time, I have been accepted wholeheartedly into the ACE Team, including being invited to the division’s holiday potluck.  I send welcome emails to residents and medical students as they start their rotation.  The welcome emails contain a link to a reading list on RefShare that I created in consultation with the team.  I have received questions from all members of the team and have had in-office consultations with a number of them.

While I feel like I am providing a valuable service, I am constantly learning myself.  Going to rounds is like visiting another country whose language I can read but am not yet fluent.  I have a much richer understanding of the context in which clinicians work and am able to hear in real time their thought process.  I am a better librarian to all my health sciences professional patrons as a result.  I have also gained invaluable life lessons on what kind of “old age” I want for myself and family members.

Some advice for those who would like to start rounding:

• Ask for a meeting with the department chair to discuss how the library might better serve the department and mention rounding as an option.
• Before the meeting, do some reading on the specialty and current issues.  Attend the department’s grand rounds a few times.
• Become an expert on point-of-care databases, especially those with mobile versions.
• Be as mobile as you can with available technology.
• Be prepared to explain what you are doing there and the services you provide.
• Listen, listen, listen.

Kate W. Flewelling is Coordinator of Instruction at the  Upstate Medical University Health Sciences Library, Syracuse, NY.  Her email address is flewellk@upstate.edu.

by Danielle Salomon, Southern California Chapter, Business & Finance Division

To be future-ready, we need to look at the way young people are using information.  If we examine the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the use of information by young people, it becomes clear that many of the existing standards in our field will be challenged.  For example, in Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media, author Carrie James tells the story of Daniel, a high-school senior who contributes to Wikipedia and uses one of his entries in a school paper:

After reading Daniel’s paper, his teacher calls him into her office and accuses him of plagiarism, noting that he used verbatim lines from Wikipedia without giving proper credit to the source.  Daniel replies that since he was a contributor to the Wikipedia article, his use does not constitute plagiarism…Above all, he asserts, the purpose of Wikipedia is to make knowledge available for widespread use.  It does not provide the names of article authors, and he will not be cited by others for his contributions.  In fact, authorship is irrelevant.[1]

The rise of collaborative authorship, distributed scholarship, and participatory communities is creating differences in the way young people think about authorship and ownership, and their expectations with respect to use and attribution. Some of the legal and ethical standards that apply to the use of information today are likely to change in the near future to reflect how users are participating in the new media landscape.  In the midst of this changing environment, information professionals need to take the lead in developing new standards, instead of focusing solely on enforcing existing standards.  Information professionals are uniquely qualified to shape the public policy debate on these issues, and craft policies that reflect how users use information, while still protecting core values such as access, equality, and intellectual freedom.  We need to work with younger generations of users to advocate for standards that foster education, support the advancement of scholarship, encourage innovation, and protect intellectual property.

Carrie James, Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media:  A Synthesis from the GoodPlay Project (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 2009), 45.

Danielle Salomon is an MLIS student in the UCLA Department of Information Studies. She is a soon-to-be, newly-minted information professional and a leader in the school.

by Steven A. Lastres, New York Chapter, Knowledge Management Division

Since the earliest days of libraries, librarians have served as knowledge managers. Whether they were maintaining the scrolls at the Library of Alexandria, creating the catalog for the House of Wisdom (a Ninth Century Islamic library), or assembling annotated links for the law firm intranet, law librarians have always been in the forefront of organizing information and adding value to it. Librarians have long excelled at getting information into the hands of the people who need it. The precise definition of knowledge management (KM) is an elusive one, but one pillar of KM practice holds that knowledge management “is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets.”¹

Steven Lastres

Becoming Business Managers

What has changed is that the librarian needs to wear a new hat–that of a business manager. The array of tools available to today’s librarian has driven that change. No longer restricted to offering only upon-request services, librarians can instead embrace a broader view of their professional role. They actively manage their organization’s information assets rather than passively respond to requests.

KM, as evolved from traditional librarianship, today means identifying business opportunities within our organization to help our users practice more efficiently and effectively. Librarians need to understand how our users work, not just anticipate what their information needs will be.

As librarians expand their professional roles, their efforts at KM must align with their organization’s business objectives. Librarians need to become business managers. If we take the business view, librarians are selling a product (knowledge and information) to a market (our users) that needs to be serviced effectively (the right product), efficiently (at the right time), and cost-effectively (at the right price). Figuring out how to improve upon that business model is what knowledge management is all about. When it comes to knowledge management, the emphasis should be on management.

Why do librarians make good knowledge managers? The answer may be that librarians tend to be more eager to adopt new ways of sharing information than our users. Librarians look at new technologies and services with a critical eye to understand how to meet current and emerging information needs. KM is not technology for technology’s sake. Instead, librarians focus on content and its seamless delivery. In many ways, they can decipher what our users need before our users even ask. (After all, that’s what reference interviews are for!) They know the resources, they know how the resources are delivered, and they know how to find the information that our users ask for.

In addition to their skills, when it comes to knowing the content available, most librarians fit well into the KM mold because of their technical sophistication. Today’s librarians are perfectly at home in the online world. And unlike the past, when any project that lived on a server was automatically the ward of the IT department, KM projects are now managed by librarians. Library staff members drive the selection of tools to deliver content, the adoption of interactive services such as wikis and blogs, and the promotion of KM applications such as work product retrieval. This is a major change in librarianship, in which librarians are innovators and technologists, as well as content managers. Most librarians bring considerable technical savvy to their professional work. Librarians, in short, should select the information resources that best fit the practices they support, but they also should be involved in selecting the best delivery platforms. That includes managing the graphic display of information on portal or intranet pages and creating a Web-based presentation that is easy to use and search.

As librarians adapt to a changing world, it’s a good idea to understand some of the changes they face, including these:

• Users expect to receive information faster than ever.
• Users expect to have no impediments to get the information they need.
• Users depend on knowledge managers to keep up with KM innovations and best practices.

As knowledge management becomes more ingrained in corporations and law firms, KM managers need to become experts in three specialized fields: librarianship, legal technology, and business management. Librarians need to understand the technical possibilities–not just the nuts and bolts of the software but also the realistic research needs of the lawyers.

Change is propelling librarians forward in a world where they must adapt to new ways of thinking about the information over which they are stewards. This changing world means new opportunities for librarians, as librarians redefine themselves as KM managers who create value for the firm by effectively managing the information for which they are professionally responsible.

¹ Megan Santosus & Jon Surmacz, “The ABCs of Knowledge Management”, CIO Magazine, 2001.

Steven A. Lastres is Director of Library and Knowledge Management at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. His e-mail address is salastres@debevoise.com.

by R. David Lankes, iSchool, Syracuse University

Why “what is the future of libraries” is a bad question, and a way to start an agenda.

Future Ready from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

R. David Lankes is an associate professor at the iSchool as well as director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS) which houses several high-profile research efforts, including the Educator’s Reference Desk and projects for NSF’s National Science Digital Library. Dr. Lankes co-founded the AskERIC project in 1992 and also founded the Virtual Reference Desk project and was the first fellow of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy.

by Kevin Carroll, Kevin Carroll Katalyst LLC

Think back to your childhood and to the years dominated by playtime, when there were endless hours to fill and the only agenda was to be captivated in the moment, to have fun. But playtime was also productive time, even if as kids we did not realize it. What we thought was entertaining was also instructive. Activities we called tea party, show-and-tell, kick-ball, finger-painting, hide-and-seek, daydreaming, and tag were also exercises in planning, strategy, design, decision-making, creativity, risk-taking, conflict resolution and teamwork.

In play we did not avoid obstacles, we looked for them by voluntarily challenging ourselves. We eagerly tackled insurmountable odds—height, speed, lack of money—to make our desires reality. Using imagination, we climbed Mt. Everest, competed in the Super Bowl, conquered the world or made a house out of a cardboard box. We voluntarily tested ourselves and accepted failure as part of the play. We ran, stumbled, and got up to run again. When we lost a game we simply started a new one. When something did not pan out as intended, we tapped into our seemingly endless supply of cleverness, resourcefulness and/or our creative agility to prototype or experiment with new solutions until we were satisfied. When faced with an enemy or new challenge—be it a competing team, a broken toy, or our friend playing a cop to our robber, an ogre to our princess—we figured out how to win, remedy the malfunction, or flee the imagined danger.

Far from frivolous time, our childhood play was constructive because it strengthened our resolve as well as our skills. Play gave us courage and instilled confidence. No doubt about it, the many forms of play—board games, sports, pretending, arts-and-crafts, writing, exploring, building—required us to invent, analyze, innovate, socialize, plan, communicate and problem solve. Play was serious business in our youth and play should continue to be serious business in our adult life.

Lifelong Play + Creative Confidence = Future Ready!

Kevin Carroll is the founder of Kevin Carroll Katalyst/LLC and the author of three highly successful books: Rules of the Red Rubber Ball, What’s Your Red Rubber Ball?! and The Red Rubber Ball at Work. As an author, speaker and agent for social change (a.k.a. the Katalyst), it is Kevin’s “job” to inspire businesses, organizations and individuals – from CEOs and employees of Fortune 500 companies to schoolchildren – to embrace their spirit of play and creativity to maximize their human potential and sustain more meaningful business and personal growth.

Pam Sandlian Smith, Library Director, Anythink Libraries, Thornton, CO

 “Gone is the time when companies could react quietly by just managing their assets.  Gone is the time when the success of the future was modeled on the past.  Disruption is a way of unearthing new opportunities.  It means being nonconformist, unorthodox, rebellious. It means always trying to change the rules.  It means believing that a company can transform its future through the sheer power of an idea.”   

Jean-Marie Dru, Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace

When the future is uncertain, to some people the safest thing is either to do nothing new, or simply accelerate strategies that worked in the past.  As marketing genius, Jean-Marie Dru notes, our future success cannot be modeled on the past.  To be future ready requires a willingness to rethink the rules, to be disruptive.  To be future ready requires a willingness to invent a future, hopefully one that works better than the present or the past.

Imagining our future at Anythink Libraries required a team of people who were willing to abandon library structures that were not working for our customers, or were not sustainable in a world of limited resources.  It required a collaboration of people who had infinite trust in each other’s abilities and perspectives.  It required a willingness to live with ambiguity as we were challenged to find the right answer, not the first answer, or the safe answer, but the answer that fit the criteria of a new paradigm. 

Instead of designing a library for books, we designed a library for idea people.  A place for people to connect, interact, discover, even play with information.  Playing with ideas, creating a place to think, discover and honor one’s inherent sense of creativity required a rethinking of our roles and responsibilities.  Our internal manifesto indicates a responsibility very different from merely organizing information:

You are not just an employee, volunteer or board member.  You do not merely catalog books, organize periodicals and manage resources.  You are the gateway into the mind of the idea people who come to our facilities to find or fuel a spark.

Part Wizard, Part Genius, Part Explorer

It is your calling to trespass into the unknown and come back with a concrete piece someone can hold onto, turn over, and use to fuel their mind and soul.

As Anythinkers, we are becoming future ready by exploring the responsibility of being part wizard, part genius, part explorer.