Try It And See What Happens
Image by peregrinari on Flickr
I’ve noticed in meetings, whether on committees or campus meetings or pretty much any type of meeting, a concern that comes up is uncertainty. How do we know that people will use this service? Will this initiative work? What if we fail? But people aren’t only worried about failure. They’re worried about success too. What if too many people come? What if too many people use this service and it is unsustainable? What if we have too much success?
But uncertainty is the nature of innovation. You can’t possibly know all the consequences of a particular service, initiative, project, etc. In addition, often the unintended consequences are some of the most fruitful. All the planning and studies in the world will never tell you exactly what is going to happen.
While it’s important to plan and anticipate challenges it can also be a hindrance to action. Endless surveys, needs assessments and studying of the situation can bring ideas to a standstill.
If the initiative is something small a good question to ask is “why don’t we try it and see what happens?” If the project is something larger some study is likely necessary, but don’t let it bog you down. Instead of doing everything right the first time make an effort to iterate. Put something out and then change it based on what happens. Host an event and improve on it the next time. Put up the site and alter it based on feedback. Start the new service and then change it after interacting with users.
Get rid of the idea of always getting it right the first time. Do it the first time and then do it better the second time.
Library Awesome!
David Lankes wrote an truly excellent post a few months back discussing the issue of some working librarians worrying that libraries are doomed, complaining, finding excuses, and saying “yeah, but…” when faced with change. He went on to talk about how librarians should somehow find ways to stop “worrying about their future, but instead go about creating it.” It was a really great post and touched on a lot of things I had been thinking about recently.
There can be a fair amount of negativity in librarianship. People worry about the future of libraries. I hear complaining about resistance to change.
These concerns are real and should be critically examined and addressed. There certainly are problems that we need to be solving and challenges that we are facing, but it is easy for all the positive, awesome stuff to get drowned out. It’s easy to get discouraged when all the messages that you are hearing are negative. But that’s not what I see, and I don’t want that to be what others always see.
I see and meet so many passionate, fun, engaged new librarians coming into the field. I hear about colleagues building libraries in Uganda. I read about library educators who are constantly coming up with creative ways to reach their students and teach them to think critically about information. I hear about libraries popping up as part of the communities at Occupy Wall Street and elsewhere. Awesomeness abounds in libraries and among librarians.
Consequently, I wanted there to be a fun way for people to regularly share and be aware of all the awesome that goes on in libraries. The things libraries and librarians do, and the things they allow their members to do are awesome. They promote literacy, inspire creativity, strengthen communities, educate citizens, and do meaningful good around the world. In that spirit, I set up a Tumblr called…
Library Awesome!
On it you can share videos, links, images, quotes, or stories of awesomeness related to libraries. They can be your own stories or ones that you come across and you feel need sharing. In a world where there can be a lot of negativity and un-awesomeness, hopefully this will be a place where you can share inspirations and be inspired by others.
Share your awesome today!
Make Your Own Learning
Several weeks ago I wrote a post about courses that I wished that they had offered in library school. There were a lot of great comments from folks about knowledge that they wish they had. These were things like event planning, research methodologies, programming, and others. The reason I wrote it was not so much to complain about the lack of opportunities in library school, but for it to be a signpost for current MLIS students about what they may want to investigate. It was also a recognition of skills that I would like to learn and skills that are useful for librarians today.
After the post, Fiona Bradley wrote a related one saying rather wisely that there is no way that we can learn everything in library school, and that it doesn’t matter because “librarianship is the ultimate extensible profession.” We have the skills for lifelong learning. She says in her post to go out and “make your own learning.” I love this sentiment, and it is getting easier all the time.
Education is noticeably changing. It is becoming less centralized. People with initiative can gain new skills or get a very good (though perhaps not credentialed) education for free or cheap. People who want to improve their skills can brush up or take a class any number of ways online or in person. There are a wide variety of tools available to get those skills in things like event planning or graphic design.
You can learn about entrepreneurship and innovation by watching lectures (like the one above about change and fear) from Stanford’s eCorner. You can learn how to code the fun and easy way with CodeAcademy or learn Python at the Kahn Academy. You can learn how to host a conference or basic graphic design from SkillShare.
With the vast amount of content available, instead of finding a teacher you could create a learning community on a service like Google+ and design lessons that center around shared readings and videos and host discussions via text or video chat.
Anne Murphy Paul at a Time Magazine blog says that projects like these are “ushering in a new golden age of the autodidact: the self-taught man or woman.” I tend to agree with her. Learning is not merely going to be students passively receiving knowledge from teachers. It will be a proactive pursuit for people who are curious and want knowledge that will benefit them either for personal growth or additional job skills. As librarians we are the “ultimate extensible profession.” We can learn graphic design if we want to. But are there also ways for us to help our students and users learn outside of the classroom? Can we somehow connect them with resources like those mentioned above? Can we facilitate peer to peer learning among students and community members who want to share their expertise? How can we create more opportunities for our community members to make their own learning?
Information Tyrannosaur is the dino-mite site of Andy Burkhardt, librarian and emerging technology enthusiast. I blog about libraries, social media and connecting people and information. If you enjoy my posts feel free to subscribe.
