by Lorri Zipperer, Rio Grande Chapter, Leadership & Management Division

Learning from failure is a key element of the systems thinker.¹

As my colleague and SLA Board member Sara Tompson and I have touted, systems thinking sensibilities illustrate an opportunity for librarians and the organizations they serve². To build onto the element of learning from failure that Edmondson³, Shumaker⁴ and others have stated it is important for an organization to learn, I’d like to suggest a new special librarian: the failure librarian.

Organizations need to have a strategy in place to learn from their mistakes. Whether the mistakes are one at a time – as in health care – or affect a huge customer base (i.e. Netflix) the understanding of how information, evidence and knowledge can be brought to bear to understand what happened is critical. This approach looks at evidence to inform direction, identify risks, strategize new approaches, and gain from employee/participant experiences to enrich the decision making process. Who better to help with that then the special librarian, as:

• We understand networking.
• We understand the value of information and how to find it.
• We understand what evidence will be most applicable where, when and for whom.
• We understand our leadership and what makes them tick.
• We understand how biases can affect decision making which enables us to seek to counteract them with good information and evidence⁵.
• We understand the boundaries and silos in our organizations and how to navigate them successfully to connect knowledge workers to enable innovation and problem solving.
• We understand that both explicit and tacit knowledge are important for decision making and seek to find both types of knowledge and respect the conduit no matter where it may exist in the organizational hierarchy.
• We understand that blame-free exploration into what went wrong is the only way to move improvement forward.
• We understand that mental models can both have negative and positive effects and seek to reveal those when they affect decision making and action amongst our staff, our peers and our management.
• We understand that a commitment to generating evidence-based solutions will enable them to be sustainable, efficient and effective.
• We understand we too can play a part in failure and seek to improve our own processes and behaviors to counteract those factors.

Or at least we should.

Our future has within its sights the potential as a positive force in many industries if we deeply understand these things and are ready to recognize failure as an opportunity to partner, innovate, and excel.

1. . The Fifth Discipline. New York, NY: Random House; 1990.
2. . “Systems thinking: a new avenue for involvement and growth.” Information Outlook. (December 2006): 16-20. (http://www.sla.org/io/2006/12/) Find Articles has posted the article as well http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_12_10/ai_n27098382/
3. . Strategies for learning from failure. Harvard Business Review. April 2011;89:48-55. Available at: http://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure/ar/1
4. . ‘Brilliant Mistakes’: Finding Opportunity in Failures. Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2869)
5. . Before you make that big decision… Harvard Business Review. June 2011;89:50-60, 137 Available at: http://hbr.org/2011/06/the-big-idea-before-you-make-that-big-decision/ar/1

Many thanks to my colleagues in the Rio Grande chapter who had a spirited conversation on the Edmondson article that contributed to the thinking that helped to generate this post, and Sara Tompson for editing the draft.

Lorri Zipperer, MA is a cybrarian and the principal at Zipperer Project Management in Albuquerque, NM. Lorri has been in the information field for over two decades, over half of which have been focused on health care. She was a founding staff member of the National Patient Safety Foundation and currently works with clients to provide patient safety information, knowledge sharing, project management and strategic development guidance.  She was recognized with a 2005 Institute for Safe Medication Practices “Cheers” award for her work with librarians, libraries and their involvement in patient safety and her expertise was highlighted in the June 2009 Medical Library Association policy on the role of librarians in patient safety.  Ms. Zipperer contributed chapters on knowledge sharing work for medical librarians and systems thinking as a strategic development approach to core library management publications in early 2011.  She is currently editing two books for Gower Publications, UK on knowledge management (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409438830) and knowledge evidence information sharing in patient safety (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409438571).

Howdy from the beautiful Rocky Mountains! The Rocky Mountain chapter of SLA is thrilled to contribute this week’s FutureReady365 posts. We are a small, diverse community of 150+ members spread across a four-state region (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota). We have a medley of posts from public school, government, higher education and independent professionals that we hope will prompt conversations, comments and thoughts on being future ready. Happy reading!

As the Colorado State Library public library consultant, I hear from library staff across the state – how can we reinvent ourselves as Anythink did in just a few years? Rangeview Library District and its Anythink libraries serve Adams County, Colo. Once the worst-funded library district in the state, Anythink has drastically reinvented itself with a new service philosophy, new spaces and a new challenger brand that has changed the perception of libraries in Adams County and beyond.

Over a cup of coffee with Anythink Director Pam Sandlian Smith, a concept was born. We sought to address the needs of libraries from Colorado and beyond that are interested in innovation, creativity and risk-taking, which led to R-Squared – The Risk & Reward Conference.

Is this a rehashing of what Anythink has done in order to achieve national recognition? Pam’s answer would be a definitive, “no!”  However, with a group of folks from Telluride on the Western Slope to Clearview on the Eastern Plains, a plan began to form that would highlight some of the philosophies and core values that have inspired Anythink’s reinvention.

With the help of the creative team from Ricochet Ideas and a committee of devoted individuals from across Colorado, we started work last February to define the conference. R-Squared is designed for professionals at all levels who are curious about creative thinking in libraries. The goal is for attendees to recognize their own creativity, analyze risk and reap its rewards, and become confident in creative problem solving to help establish libraries as leaders inspiring creative thinking in their communities. As Pam states, “It comes down to looking at our profession with a fresh perspective and having the courage to implement things differently. We have to be willing to take some risks to ensure our long-term survival.”

This conference is uniquely designed to encourage fun, creativity and risk in an unexpected format. What better place to do that than in Telluride, CO, one of the most beautiful and inspirational locations in Colorado. Time is built into the conference schedule for risk exercises and experience zones, and sessions allow for collaboration. The three-day conference deals with four main areas – culture, customer curiosity, abundant community and creative spaces. Creative experts and risk-takers from industries like hospitality, retail, marketing and technology will provide a fresh perspective and inspire innovation. As John Bellina, creative director for Ricochet Ideas says, “R-Squared is about embracing risk as a way to get ahead.”

To find out more about R-Squared – The Risk & Reward Conference, visit rsquaredconference.org, facebook/rsquaredconference, or follow us on Twitter @rsquaredconf.

Shelley Walchak is the Library Community Programs Senior Consultant at the Colorado State Library in the Department of Education. She assists public library administration with questions on planning, laws that affect libraries, advocacy, standards, board training, and special projects. Shelley has an MSLS from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI.

30 Years ago I graduated from Library School – and the future was in front of me…
By Stephen Abram, Toronto Chapter, Business & Finance, Information Technology, Leadership & Management Divisions

Part 2
In part one I listed nine things I wished that my 1980 self (the freshly minted MLS) knew when I graduated in order to be future ready. Here’s another ten philosophies that I believe would help most people be more future ready (and I hope happy) :

1. Prefer Action over Study.
   If you or your team is studying something to death – remember that death was not the original goal! Although information professionals have a great core competency in research and study, we must know when to fish or cut bait. Recognize that studying something too long is staying in your comfort zone instead of making progress. In our somewhat risk-averse culture, this can be particularly difficult. What needs to be learned and understood is that delay is as big a risk as poorly considered action. Pilots and good process reduce your risk (and provide learning opportunities too). You can iterate your way to the future. This philosophy is closely related to the one where an enterprise values its conservative culture and gradually declines due to its lack of adaptation to modern expectations or changing external conditions.
2. Get Out of Your Box!
   It is unlikely that you are the alpha user profile. Understand that. I know that as an older, experienced librarian I am pretty limited in my ability to really connect and empathize with the challenges faced by newbie library, web or database searchers. I am not saying that I can’t overcome this, but I have to be explicitly aware that my training, biases and experiences have forever changed me and my perceptions of the information world. Also, my experiences are an old part of a different world and may not be fully relevant to today’s valid experiences of new librarians and end users. It also means that when I am designing services for seniors, kids, teens, challenged communities, the differently-abled, or even other professions like lawyers or engineers, I have to keep in mind that I need to be aware and prioritize their needs and competencies over my own. I need to build on their strengths and not repair them based on my perceptions of their weaknesses! I find that it pays to remind myself that I am not trying to create products and services for mini-librarians and that this is a poor goal in the first place. I need to understand the user’s context and needs and not project my own biases on them. For instance, it is likely that the end-user doesn’t actually want ‘information’ but, more likely, wants to be informed, entertained, taught and/or transformed in some manner. Libraries are great environments for that.
3. You can’t step in the same river twice
   This is ancient Confucian wisdom. It means, in our context, that our knowledge of new information or technology developments means that we probably cannot easily see all of the potential pitfalls or even its great potential. I remember when AltaVista was first introduced and many colleagues said that this couldn’t be the future of searching. After all, it had no fields, no true Boolean, and it didn’t allow the use of set searching! How could this be the future of online searching? Then along came relevancy ranking driven by the search engine’s algorithm – again pooh-poohed by my colleagues (and me for a while). Now along comes Blekko and I hear the same refrain. This time I am not so sure. After all, Google Scholar is still an infant. Can you point to someone’s beautiful baby and criticize her as being a lousy accountant? Keep yourself open to the movement of the river – it’s always changing and the river is strong. In the battle of the river and the rock, the river wins. Just look deep into the Grand Canyon and see the power (and beauty) of steady progress. Today we must invent a future for libraries that exists in a world of users who are literally changed in their perception of information use and the role of technology. Spend time understanding the beauty and strengths of your own box and then take a break outside of it occasionally.
4. Have a Vision and Dream BIG!
   “How will you shape the future?” When you try to be future focused and ready you are making a choice – to shape the future not just be ready for it. Have the confidence to build the future with your ideas and energy. I have seen the power of vision in every workplace I have been employed in. When it is absent or lost the workplace is missing something and verges on a horrible environment. When a shared vision is present we have achieved great things. When the vision doesn’t have enough stretch in it, things seem mediocre. Think back to great work environments you’ve worked in or great leaders you’ve worked for and you’ll usually find there were some great and compelling visions at work there. And for those who don’t dream big and have a vision, they’re doomed to an endless series of the present. I hope they love the way things are.
5. Ask the Three Magic Questions:
   a)What keeps you awake at night?
   b)If you could solve only one problem at work, what would it be?
   c)If you could change one thing and one thing only, what would it be?I have discovered that these questions are truly magic. They start conversations with users rather than delivering simple answers. They’re open-ended instead of closed-ended, yes or no answer questions. They avoid assumption. Just set the context and ask away. I have used these questions with primary school kids, titans of industry like Bill Gates, librarians, IT managers and cabinet ministers. These questions work every time to delve deeply into our users’ needs and personal goals. When we are armed with that knowledge then our libraries are unstoppable.
6. Feedback is a Gift
   One of my closest and dearest friends taught me this when In was having trouble dealing with a round of public and negative feedback. She told me that, like that wedding gift from Aunt Sally, you can keep it, display it, return it, or hide it in the closet. It’s your personal choice. Don’t overvalue one piece of out-of-context feedback or let it loom out of perspective and balance. I have learned over my life that objections to my ideas are best handled two ways: listening more, or framing the objection as an opportunity for more information and education. Feedback is best digested in the aggregate rather than in small doses. Squeaky wheels are fine and need to be oiled. But if it’s the engine that needs attention, then that poorly oiled wheel is just a distraction. Feedback shouldn’t be cause for stomach-wrenching stress. You are in control of how it can be dealt with (good or constructive or bad) and need to hear and accept this gift from your stakeholders. Do you have feedback mechanisms in your life?
7. Sacrifice is the Magic Sauce of Setting Priorities
   Every person and organization has thousands of ideas that are worthy of consideration. No one can do them all. That’s the tough part. When you have 100 good ideas to choose from the critical skill isn’t choosing the best 5 but sacrificing 95. Learn the skill of temporary sacrifice. You can store your good ideas in an idea parking lot and bring them forward into the strategic planning process as projects are completed. If you don’t focus and choose to limit your energy to achieving success on those that will deliver the most value to your enterprise and users, then you are choosing mediocrity. Sacrificing ideas isn’t forever or a loss. Time was invented so everything doesn’t happen all at once. Give your ideas time to grow and gain acceptance.
8. Build for the Future and Embrace Ambiguity
   Too often projects that are planned for 18-36 months naively assume that things will stay the same technologically. Remember the lessons of the past where the things mutated quickly – DOS became Windows, diskettes became CD-ROMs, Netscape begat MSIE which begat Firefox, online dial-up became web broadband, etc. You can’t be certain of the future but you can’t wait for total stability either. That’s the ambiguity. Dealing with ambiguity is a key competency in change management and introducing innovation. Stability is a chimera. Only fossils are truly stable.
9. No Mistake is Ever Final
   One of my better bosses had this phrase framed in needlepoint on the wall of her office. We were part of a skunkworks that was tasked with re-technologizing a major corporation as well as introducing transformational cultural change into a huge publishing sector. No small task. Not only did we make many mistakes, but we learned from them. If we weren’t making mistakes we weren’t trying hard enough. Albeit, we tried to limit the exposure of our experiments, but like learning to ride a bike, if you’re not falling down, you’re just not learning well enough. Her sign “No mistake is ever final” encourages us to try just that little bit harder to achieve greatness because we knew we had her support. If you want to change things for the better, you have to be a change agent and that means you have to be more comfortable with making mistakes and dealing with them effectively – and learning all the time.
10. Have some Fun!
    We are often too serious. Our work is serious and our impact on our communities and the world is enormous! However, working creatively, trying new things and being innovative is fun. Take the time to recognize that and live your life to the fullest. Celebrate your successes and your team’s work. Champion your library’s achievements! Reward your colleagues when they succeed. Don’t ever get so heads-down that you can’t see the big picture. It’s a wonderful world.

Congratulations to Cindy Romaine, SLA, and the SLA board and network for actively seeking the future for over 100 years. I am more future ready for having been involved with SLA and learning from such a great group of colleagues.

Stephen Abram, MLS is a Past President of SLA and is Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets, for Gale Cengage Learning. He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the Canadian Library Association. In June 2003 he was awarded SLA’s John Cotton Dana Award and the AIIP Roger Summit Award in 2009. In 2011 he is Canada’s CLA Outstanding Librarian of the Year. He is the author of Out Front with Stephen Abram and Stephen’s Lighthouse blog. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@gmail.com.

By Stephen Abram, Toronto Chapter, Business & Finance, Information Technology, Leadership & Management Divisions

Part 1

And the future is still in front of me and always will be! Cindy Romaine asked me to write a guest post for this blog and I am honoured to do so. I believe that her future ready theme is right on. The only thing we need to prepare for is the future. The past is gone and the present disappears in the blink of an eye. By coincidence I’ve just passed my 30th anniversary of graduating from library school and it’s caused me to reflect. I tell myself that I probably have another 30 years left. So I’ve decided that I am still mid-career. What have I learned in the first half of my library life about preparing for the future that may be in any useful?
Listed below are some personal insights that I’ve learned and have found them personally meaningful over the years, so I pass them on to you here in the hope that it helps us all become more future ready. Honestly, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and it’s probably better to learn that way, but here goes:

1. Watch the Banana: When it comes to observing user behaviour and changing behaviours it is wise to remember the banana. I was once forced to watch primates for days as part of a bachelor level primatology course. We often watched them eat. Upon returning to class, the professor gave us all bananas and asked us to peel them like an ape. North Americans grab the banana by the stem and pull it open. This method crushes the top. The whole class proceeded to do it this way. He then showed a film of an ape peeling a banana. If we carefully observe chimpanzees and bananas we can see that they carefully pull the skin of a banana from the softer non-stem end and the white fruit is pristinely unwrapped as a thing of unbruised beauty. The lesson for us budding primatologists and ethnographers that I never forgot: Observe carefully. Don’t look for what you expect. When you’re looking for insights into human behaviour or the direction of the world, you’ll find it in what you don’t see at first.
2. Play with Vigor and Intent: Everyone who knows me knows that I am a huge proponent of play in the workplace. This isn’t just playing with all of the new technology toys and websites that are presenting us with opportunities on a daily basis. I love that as much as the next person. What I am also advocating is that we also include ensuring that fun and humour enter our work lives on a daily basis (or more) too. Secondly, focus is good but focusing too intently is not as great. You can see opportunity in new things when you play. When you research or investigate something for work alone with your workplace goggles on, sometimes you miss the biggest opportunities in the innovation. Occasional undirected play at work loosens the unconscious and frees the mind to explore new ideas. Successful people and work teams leave time for play – alone and together. Play is not frivolous but remains one of the most potent learning strategies there is. And, frankly, it makes it fun to go to work every day. Happy teams, having fun together, is, I believe, a predictor of workplace success, employee retention, and lifelong health. Do you make time to play? Relax. You will see more opportunities for a better future in a relaxed state than all of the moments of intense concentration combined. Are you laughing and giggling enough all day? Live intentionally.
3. Hang out with different people and people who are different than you: Lately, I’ve been thinking about the echo chamber that is librarianship. I worry that we are listening too much to each other and not enough to others. I am not advocating that we listen less to eachother but that we adjust the balance to include more voices. How do our real customers talk about their encounters with the new information technologies? If we talk about ‘e-books’ and they talk about ‘reading’ (see the difference?), are we framing the issues correctly? And, how diverse is the community of people you deal with? Are there enough non-librarians, non family members, in your circle? How about the wonderful demographic mosaic of gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, race, language and geography in your conversation zone? Is it diverse? Do you have personal experience with young librarians and young people or vice versa? Do you travel enough to challenging experiences and places? Don’t sit with friends all the time at events or conferences – you already know them! People from diverse backgrounds can approach issues, decisions and problems in different and still valid ways. If your peers are non-diverse, I believe that it affects the quality of your insights and decisions. Mix it up.
4. Avoid the Eeyores! Some people add no value to your life and you run the risk of damaging yourself by being around them too much. People who are negative or critical in the extreme, but devoid of critical thinking are negative influences in your life. I love being around people who bang away at ideas aggressively to make them better. They’re awesome. I am talking about avoiding people who are joyless. As the economy gets worse, there seem to be more of these negative folks. Critical thinking allows for seeing weaknesses in an idea or argument and working toward correcting or improving or disproving the thinking. People for whom criticism, devoid of a context to improve ideas, where snark and name calling rule the day, are best avoided when the time can be spent with others who focus on making the world of ideas a better place. If you’ve ever met a person who is a black hole and sucks all of the life and happiness out of the room and conversation, you know what I mean. Run towards the light! The future needs to be somewhere where you want to be, and some people just can’t make that voyage. They’re locked in the ambiguity of the present tense.
5. Fail and Fail Often, but Fail Safe: You’ll discover the future by trying to invent it yourself. There are two kinds of people – those who create the future and those who live in their own personal, endless Hell of the present. Make the choice to be an animator in life. The avoidance of risk is death to growth and adaptability. Take small and manageable risks in order to learn. You’re not learning to ski or skate unless you’re falling down. How many small risks of failure did you take today? It can be as simple as meeting someone you don’t know, trying a new website, changing your
   personal style of interaction or something even bigger like loading new software or temporarily changing a work process. Try to recall when you learned to ride a bicycle. Remember the failures and then the heart floating feeling of balance and movement? I remember when I first tried public speaking with some embarrassment but I got better over time with my supportive SLA network. The opportunities to try new things are endless and, yet, we seem to partake of them too rarely. Can you schedule a daily potential-risk-of-failure-event until it becomes a habit and part of your work life? Grow pearls when you discover an irritant. Start small, pilot and experiment. Nurture and incubate. You’ll be a better professional for it.
6. Listen to your Gut: Bio-feedback works. I have learned to listen to my gut and persevere when I don’t feel right about something. Not every technology is future ready. Many have severe shortcomings or run the risk of damaging the world of information, knowledge, learning and more. Some just aren’t ready for primetime or anyone other than the early adopters. My subconscious tells me things if only I’d listen to it. I am not saying that it is telling me in black and white to do or not do something. It is often telling me things that affect the direction and experience. My gut senses distrust faster than my mind. It tells me when something might be conflicting with my personal or professional values or morals. My gut tells me when I’m not quite ready. My gut tells me when I have lingered too long in a lovely past paradigm that is now failing me. Trust your gut.
7. Do and Try: It’s not enough to be just an observer. Participate in the world as it changes. Comment and learn. Share – write, blog, tweet, and have deep conversations. Experience comes from participation. The person watching the gold fish in the bowl does not understand the goldfish.
8. Encourage the Heart: One of the most delightful aspects of librarianship is our supportive networks. Also our workplaces tend to be clean and safe. We have a personal responsibility to take this gift and improve upon it. We have potentially thousands of interactions a month. With each interaction, with each moment of truth, we represent the best of what we have to offer to the world. We can make a huge difference in people’s lives. And, with our attitude we can encourage the heart. Wake up every day choosing to make a difference in your end users lives, and, for that matter, all of your co-workers, neighbours, and colleagues.

Watch for part two and 10 more!

Stephen Abram, MLS is a Past President of SLA and is Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets, for Gale Cengage Learning. He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the Canadian Library Association. In June 2003 he was awarded SLA’s John Cotton Dana Award and the AIIP Roger Summit Award in 2009. In 2011 he is Canada’s CLA Outstanding Librarian of the Year. He is the author of Out Front with Stephen Abram and Stephen’s Lighthouse blog. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@gmail.com.

By Janice C. Anderson, Texas Chapter and SLA 2011 Conference Advisory Council

You may or may not have recognized the grey-haired female on the top banner on the SLA 2011 Philadelphia Conference registration page a few weeks ago. Well…it was lil’ol’ me. I wasn’t even aware that I was photographed, let alone that my mug had made it to the website. When Cindy Romaine reached out to me and suggested that I was the ‘poster child for the Future Ready Conference’, I could not refuse to share my thoughts for the 365 Blog?

As a member of the 2011 Conference Planning Advisory Council I was immediately drawn to the ‘Future Ready’ theme that Cindy presented to us. In many ways I have been living in the future for most of my career as a librarian/information management professional turned entrepreneur and business owner. I have challenged myself to think broadly and creatively in how to apply the principles and practices of library and information sciences in the business environments of my customers. I have challenged my colleagues and co-workers to create and apply effective and relevant techniques for managing information assets, and in an environment of constant change and continuous learning, to deliver value and transfer knowledge to others.

My emphasis has always been on technology and daily activities to keep up with the rapidly changing regulatory environments and tools that our customers use and need to manage and access information assets.   That emphasis is critical to both the present and the future.   You might ask yourself what else a 60-something grandmother, aka ‘little librarian lady’, could say or do that would help her and others be ‘Future Ready’…maybe prepare for retirement and ultimate wind-down? Coming out of a deep economic recession with Medicare and Social Security in trouble, what can we Baby Boomers do to be ‘Future Ready’?  After all, we see the good times in the rear view mirror, right?

Not so much!  You see, from where I sit the future is now for information professionals; my success and that of many folks a third of my age depends not so much on what we know, or even what we can learn. The bright future for all of us is shaped by our thinking and being, by our ability and willingness to dream and adapt.  There’s no time for looking back or whining; it’s time to jump onto the court and grab the ball.

So then, what does ‘Future Ready’ look like to me? It looks like

• Eliminating self-imposed limits and worn out thinking that cause us to hesitate, avoid risk, and postpone getting started.
• Learning something new every single day, even if that learning is that we are not as smart as we once thought.
• Working hard to remove barriers that limit our abilities to access information, learn, grow and contribute in meaningful ways.
• Sitting on the edge of our seats, working to make a difference, expecting great things to happen, and then celebrating when they do!

Are you in the game?  Get the right uniform attitude on…we’re playing in Philly.  See you there!

Janice C. Anderson is founder and CEO of Access Sciences Corporation, a 26 year-old information management consulting and technology practice. She serves on the 2011 SLA Conference Planning Advisory Council.

by Aaron Tay

“Always in motion, the future is” — Yoda, Jedi Master

QR codes are 2D barcodes that can be scanned by phones to provide a link between the digital and the physical world. A typical example would be to scan a QR code with your smartphone and be brought immediately to a relevant instructional video. With mobile becoming increasingly common and the possibility of QR code adoption going mainstream, any future ready library or librarian should be prepared to adopt this technology to serve their community.

As such, recently a co-worker asked me whether we should consider going into QR codes given that there is intense interest about QR codes in the library community (I summarized some ideas here). More importantly a recent Mobio report suggests QR codes usage has increased by 1200 percent suggesting that possibly a tipping point is approaching for usage. With powerful companies like Google seemingly throwing their support behind QR codes , it seems to be a good time for libraries to explore them.

How then do we take the following recent piece of news? That Google is ending support for QR codes in Google Places? Does this spell the end for QR codes?

With Google adding NFC (near field communications) to their Android phones and persistent rumors that Apple is doing so for their line of iPhones (but not iPhone 5 it seems), it seems that QR codes could be a short lived piece of technology that is destined to be replaced by the far more efficient and capable built-in NFC scanners built-into future smartphones. Not everyone agrees of course since the number of phones supporting QR codes will always exceed NFC equipped phones in the near term.

So should libraries go ahead and spend time and effort trying to promote QR codes? Or should we adopt a wait and see attitude? In general, dilemmas of this nature aren’t new and are constantly faced by libraries that are “future aware” and aim to be future ready.

One example: Consider the situation a year ago, where it was clear that Facebook would eventually weigh in with location based check-ins which they eventually did with Facebook Places. Being aware of this, libraries were faced with the dilemma, should we support FourSquare knowing that Facebook Places is just around the corner and may perhaps crush the opposition? Or even further back MySpace versus Facebook.

by Aaron Tay

I don’t have any pat answers, whether a library chooses to support cutting edge technologies is a function of their risk appetite, available resources, strategic focus etc.

I would add, however, while the exact implementation of technology may change, the trend itself is often pretty clear. While QR codes may or may not catch on, no one doubts the fundamental idea of creating a quick link between physical objects out in the real word and digital objects will pay off. Similarly, FourSquare may or may not survive (though NYPL seems to be doing great on it) but the idea of adding location based data is definitely sound.

No one can reliably predict the future, but that’s the price of being future ready: you make your bets and see how it turns out. Maybe you might decide to hold off on QR codes, or maybe you might decide to try since it requires no investment of money. Whatever you do keep thinking of how the future might be which will have you well posed to take advantage of any sudden shifts in environment.

Aaron Tay works as an academic librarian at the National University of Singapore. He was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for 2011. He blogs at http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/.

by Sarah Glassmeyer, Kentucky Chapter, Academic & Legal Divisions

Summertime is approaching which means many of us are daydreaming about summer vacation locales.   After a Northwest Indiana winter, I’m craving somewhere warm.  Sunny.  Not snow covered. Maybe I could go to the ocean?  Yes, sitting on a beach with an adult beverage (preferably served in a hollowed out piece of fruit) sounds like just the thing I need.

I have a confession, though:  I’m terrified of going into the ocean.  Like many people in my generation, I saw the movie “Jaws” at an impressionable age and ever since I have been convinced that going into the ocean would equal, if not certain death, then at least the loss of a limb or two.  So I stick to dry land.  Maybe I’ll wade in a little, but no deeper than “still visible feet” depth.

Funny thing about the movie “Jaws”…everyone talks about how scary the shark was, but if you re-watch it, I bet you’ll be surprised to see how little the shark is actually in the movie. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t fully appear until the 81 minute mark (in a 124 minute movie.)  Part of this was due to budgetary constraints on the production, but part of this was for classic Hitchcockian movie suspense reasons.

Alfred Hitchcock knew that the unknown was far more disturbing and scary than the known.  He explained it like this (paraphrasing): Four men are sitting at a table playing poker.  Unbeknownst to the audience, a bomb is placed under a table and it explodes.  That is surprise.   In another scenario, the audience sees that the bomb is under the table but it does not explode.  They don’t know when and if it ever will – and most of the time it doesn’t.  That is suspense.  Surprise is over in fifteen seconds.  Suspense can torture an audience for hours and, as the case with me and the ocean, radically alter one’s worldview.

So what does this have to do with information professionals?

How much do you change your life because you’re afraid of what might happen?  Maybe you don’t speak up in a meeting and share your great idea because you’re not sure if it’s stupid or not.  Or maybe you don’t want to change a procedure in your library because you’re worried that patrons will be upset.   Or maybe you don’t apply for a new job or run for an organizational office or otherwise try something new and different because..something might go wrong.  Who knows what it might be but it’s something!

I think to be future ready we need to stop worrying about the “what ifs” and “somethings.”  We all have our bombs under the table.  Stop waiting and worrying about when or if they’re ever going to go off.  You may be missing out on something great – personally, professionally or organizationally – because of it.

Sarah Glassmeyer is the Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian and an Assistant Professor of Law at Valparaiso University School of Law.  She blogs about the intersection of libraries, law and technology at http://sarahglassmeyer.com.

by Cindy Hill , Multiple Chapters and Divisions

Some of my best memories of elementary school are of playground time, before, during and after class. My friends and I would race to the jungle gym, running to our favorite spot, the parallel bar, where we would spend wonderful hours (at least it felt like hours) hanging from bent knees and then start spinning around and around. When we found the just perfect moment, we would let go, flying up into the air and then landing as far away as momentum and our bodies would take us. While I’m pretty sure we knew we could get hurt (we landed on tan bark, not rubber mats) we also were fearless, physically agile and willing to take risks.

One aspect of being Future Ready is to take that youthful fearlessness and incorporate it into our work environment, especially when we are considering starting something new or changing an existing service. Too often it’s difficult to start something new for many reasons. Often there’s the fear of failure, lack of resources, concern about being able to provide the service to everyone, or not enough funding. Considering a new service or providing a new resource, but not sure how it will be received? One way to test its viability is to launch it as a pilot using the 3Ss + 1S more model, rather than a full-scale entity. You won’t find this model in any management or text book as a former executive VP at Sun Microsystems created it. The 3Ss + 1S more model stands for:

• Start small
• Be highly successful
• Make it scalable
• And keep statistics (aka metrics)

Start small: Create the big vision and then break it into smaller components. One way to start small is to limit the new service or resource to a specific group. Can it be introduced to a particular segment of your audience rather than the entire organization? By choosing a group that wants or needs the new service or resource, you are already working with a receptive audience, one that will give useful and constructive advice and observations and will be willing to work out any kinks with you. Which group would benefit most from being a “first adopter”? Would they then be your advocates and supporters?

Be highly successful: Plan for success by defining what success looks like. Is success having a specific group use it and want it to continue? Does success mean that the technology is working seamlessly? Or is success having the new resource embedded into the daily workflow of your users? By defining success before the initiative is launched, you will know when you have reached it.

Make it scalable: A highly successful initiative is one that can grow to meet the demands of potential users. Is there enough staff, funding, technological support and/or support from your internal or external partners as the demand expands? Is there a plan to acquire the needed resources in order to scale?

Keep statistics: Statistics should be both quantifiable and qualitative. How many people are using the new service or resource? How are they using it? What value is it adding to their productivity? What stories are they telling you about its value? Metrics provide the foundation for building a rationale to continue or scale the initiative.

With limited budgets, staff and resources, it’s often daunting to take a risk in changing a process, launching a new service, or introducing a new resource. Think back to your childhood days of playing, experimenting with new techniques, and being fearless and then bring those agile aspects into your daily life. As Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media and innovator recommends, “Try fast, fail fast, keep trying and never give up.”

Cindy Hill is the manager of the Research Library at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She’s a past president of SLA and is currently chairing the 2012 Conference Planning Council. She is a newly selected Commissioner for the Los Altos Public Library and is a part-time faculty member at San Jose State University.  Cindy can be reached at cindyvhill@yahoo.com, tweets @cindyhill and can be found on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/cindyvhill. She’s currently working on her latest 3S + 1S initiative.