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.

“Eighty percent of success is just showing up”   – Woody Allen

I’ve found the above quote to have a lot of truth in my career so far, but I’m not talking about just showing up at work. It’s easy to simply spend all your time in your office. You have a lot of work to do. It’s comfortable there. It’s safe. But I’m not sure that just showing up at your office is going to bring success.

What I’m talking about is just showing up in other places, especially outside the library. Go to faculty senate meetings. Go to community gatherings. Attend board or town hall meetings. Join committees. Go to conferences or informal gatherings of librarians. Go to social events or holiday parties. The benefits of just showing up at events or meetings quickly become clear. You begin developing relationships with others. People remember your face, know who you are, and know that you are from the library. By just showing up you become an ambassador of the library. You’re getting out of the library and spreading your message of information and helpfulness in multiple places. If you go where the action is, good things just start to happen.

You may be able to help someone on a project that they have been thinking about for a while. You may have a great suggestion at a meeting that utilizes library resources. You may find a colleague or faculty member to collaborate with on a shared interest. Informal conversations with community members, faculty, staff, or students outside the library can and do lead to much bigger things. But these things won’t happen if you are sitting in your office all day. The first step is to just show up.

On Friday I was at the LJ/Temple Library Future Symposium. I was on a panel with some great folks about bridging the culture gaps in our libraries. Courtney Young, our moderator framed the panel in terms of misunderstandings, and I found this to be really enlightening. Many of the problems we face when groups interact with one another, whether it’s the library vs. IT, change agents vs. resistors, or librarians vs. students, stem from these groups having different perspectives and a lack of mutual understanding of those perspectives.

Let’s take change agents vs. resistors as an example. For this example we’ll use changing the food policy as the conflict (though any change could be substituted here). On one side, you think that the food policy is outdated and that food and drink should be allowed in the library. On the other side there is a group resistant to this change who believe that it shouldn’t change. In order to get past this, there needs to be clear understanding on both sides.

You should first try to understand the other person’s perspective. And don’t just pretend to listen while dismissing what they say in your head. Pay attention and genuinely understand their concerns. Are they concerned about damage to the books or computers? Are they concerned with messes? Are they concerned with the smell? These are all genuine concerns and should be (and can be) addressed. Get to the bottom of why they are resisting the change. When you understand concerns you can then address them.

Then you need to communicate clearly to them why you think the policy should change and make sure that they understand your concerns. Do you think it will create a more welcoming environment? Do you see it happening other places (bookstores, etc.)? Are your users asking for it? Make a clear case for why you think the change is necessary. In discussing the change and coming up with solutions together make sure that their concerns are addressed. You can say something like, “I understand you are concerned with damage to our collection. I don’t want anything to get ruined either. Do we think that will happen a lot though? It seems like Barnes and Noble is not concerned with food or coffee ruining their merchandise. And at home I drink coffee and read books all the time. Does the benefit of making the library more comfortable and welcoming outweighs the risk of a few damaged books? Is there a way that we can limit damage while still allowing food and drink?”

Too often we assume that something is obvious or that someone is just obtuse when in reality we just have differing perspectives. The above approach might work and it might not, but it will be a lot more effective when we try to understand others and address them in terms of their concerns instead of only ours.

Shedroff discusses 15 core meanings that we have as humans. These meanings are:

1. Accomplishment - Achieving goals and making something of oneself; a sense of satisfaction that can result from productivity, focus, talent, or status
2. Beauty - The appreciation of qualities that give pleasure to the senses or spirit
3. Community - A sense of unity with others around us and a general connection with other human beings
4. Creation - The sense of having produced something new and original, and in so doing, to have made a lasting contribution
5. Duty - The willing application of oneself to a responsibility
6. Enlightenment - Clear understanding through logic or inspiration
7. Freedom - The sense of living without unwanted constraints
8. Harmony - The balanced and pleasing relationship of parts to a whole, whether in nature, society, or an individual
9. Justice - The assurance of equitable and unbiased treatment
10. Oneness - A sense of unity with everything around us
11. Redemption - Atonement or deliverance from past failure or decline
12. Security - The freedom from worry about loss
13. Truth - A commitment to honesty and integrity
14. Validation - The recognition of oneself as a valued individual worthy of respect
15. Wonder - Awe in the presence of a creation beyond one’s understanding

Thinking in terms of meaning when creating resources and services can be a really helpful framework in libraries. At a more professionally focused school (like my institution), accomplishment is likely a meaning that would be important to many students. With this meaning perhaps services would be designed in such a way that students could learn on their own and there are a lot of ways they can Do It Yourself (DIY). Perhaps at liberal arts college, enlightenment would be a more relevant meaning. For these type of users you may want to design more around the “a-ha!” moment. Using this model, you need to examine your own community and tap into what is meaningful to them.

We are not simply delivering access to e-books or databases. We are not only conducting reference interviews or doing information literacy. We are doing something much more important than that.

Change starts with you

Sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike or the perfect moment is not going to bring about change. These are outside circumstances that you have no control over. What you can can control is yourself and your own decisions. This is the starting place, and having this mindset is the most important part of being an agent for positive change. One of the biggest mistakes that librarians can make is getting discouraged or giving up because of colleagues who actively resist change, an administration or board that is stuck in the past, or an institution that is seemingly calcified. You cannot control these things (but you can influence them). What you can control is your response. If you direct your anger and energy at the board or your “backwards” colleague or your inflexible institution, you will only reap frustration.

In chatting with librarians who are frustrated, I hear a lot people say things like “we can’t have drinks in the library because x,” or “if only x would retire, then we could enact change.” But this is giving up control. You still can respond. Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I’m getting hooked on this book) talks about using proactive language instead of using reactive language. Instead of using phrases like “I can’t” you can say “I choose.” Instead of saying “there’s nothing I can do,” say “let’s look at our alternatives.” By understanding that you have the control over your choices and the decisions you make, you empower yourself.

I’ve seen other librarians talking about this same idea. There was recently a great post by the folks at In the Library with the Lead Pipe on the theme of the Occupy Movement. One of the sections was about occupying yourself and they discussed this idea of owning your own power and not giving it away to others. In the post they give a great model for a positive communication technique to bring about change without sounding like you’re attacking.

Know what change you want to see

In bringing about change it’s also necessary to be strategic. One person can’t change everything; they just don’t have the time. So you have to clearly understand what it is you want to change. You also need to be able to prioritize and recognize when a service or resource needs to be dropped. We can’t be everything to everyone in libraries, so we have to play to our strengths. Jenica Rogers talks a lot about this and she recently did a presentation for the LIANZA conference entitled Reality-based Librarianship for Passionate Librarians. In it she discusses identifying goals, but also this idea of picking your battles. Not everything can be changed, or it may not be worth the time, effort, and effects on your sanity to change something. Change doesn’t come easily, but have a road map for how to get there makes things simpler.

You’re not alone

My favorite part about library conferences is meeting with other librarians and hearing what they are working on and what they are passionate about. It’s easy to get caught up in the very narrow view from your own institution, but when you talk with others, you realize there are a lot of different ways to bring about change. By talking with others outside of your own institution you can begin to see other perspectives and different approaches to problems you are trying to solve. It is also a way to invigorate yourself and gain new energy. If you feel that no one at your institution wants change or has the same interests as you, find others who share your passion and collaborate with them.

You have to take care of yourself as a librarian. Burnout is real, and if your passion and creativity continually gets stifled at your institution, try to collaborate with other passionate librarians at different institutions. There is no shortage of passionate librarians. Go to conferences. Go to local meet-ups of librarians. Connect with folks via social networking. And if there aren’t many networking opportunities in your area, start some. There are likely others who want to connect and share ideas and are looking for a venue.

What strategies are most helpful to you in bringing about change at your library?

photo by Tulane Public Relations on Flickr

The classroom is a wonderful environment. I truly enjoy teaching students in the classroom and I loved taking classes. That is the principal place we think of where learning takes place. But the sort of learning that takes place there is facilitated. It is instructor directed and mediated. As educators though, both professors and librarians, we’re trying to help students become lifelong learners. This means gaining the ability to learn outside a classroom environment as well.

This is why the library is such a perfect place. It’s a place where students can struggle with assigned readings before class. It’s a place where they can go after class to reflect on things that were discussed, or debate the concepts with friends or classmates. It’s a place where students can work on a project or paper and focus on what they find interesting and follow research paths that speak to them. It’s a place where students can go to learn with and from one another.

If the classroom is a space dedicated to instructor facilitated learning, the library is a space dedicated to self-directed learning. The library is the place where the rubber meets the road learning-wise. It’s a place where failure happens, but also discovery. There’s a lot of trial and error, but also many insights. Students get to take concepts they learned about in class, examine them and then either reject them or build on them in the library. It’s a lab for testing out ideas or digging deeply into a subject of interest.

Sure, self-directed learning happens all sorts of places: the dorm, student unions, coffee shops. But the library purposely creates an environment where they can practice being a lifelong learner. There are quiet areas — carrels, cages, nooks — for solitary reflection and concentration. There are louder areas for students who prefer a buzz in the air in order to get work done. There are group meeting rooms and spaces for collaborative and team-based learning to take place. And there friendly experts available when students get hung up and need a little encouragement or a nudge in the right direction.

To create lifelong learners there of course need to be classrooms, but students won’t always have classes and professors to direct their learning. Ultimately they need to figure out how to learn on their own. The library is a space to facilitate that endeavor. The library is where students shape themselves into lifelong learners.

image from Ars Electronica on Flickr

A study was recently published in Science Magazine called Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. It concluded that because of the ever present access to information via the web people are remembering less. The Ars Technica summary says “experiments suggest that people expect computerized information to be continuously available, and actually remember less when they know they’ll have access to it later. We also seem to remember where we can find information instead of the information itself.”

I have heard students say things like “I don’t have to know that, Google knows it for me.” It seems that we are increasingly outsourcing parts of memory to Google and the web. This is definitely a shift in how our minds work and how we think about information. What then, are the implications for information literacy and how we talk about accessing and recalling information?

For one thing our thinking about information is becoming increasingly meta. Instead of remembering actual information we remember where it was located. We no longer need to know as many facts since connectivity is seemingly ubiquitous now and we can access collective knowledge via the web with devices that are in our pocket. We now just remember bits and pieces of an article that we read, but we can remember who tweeted it or which email account it was sent to, and then access it again when we need it.

Is depending on the web for our memories a bad thing then? People have made arguments in the past against technologies ruining our memories. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates depicts the new technology of writing as a device that will ruin the memories of it’s users:

“ this discovery of yours [writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

It seems that this did not happen, in fact writing was a great technology for spreading ideas across time and great distances. But what are some of the possible implications of outsourcing our memories to the web, and how can we talk with students about them?

Taoism is, among other things, a philosophy that originated in China in the 3rd or 4th century BCE. It began with Lao Tzu’s writing of the Tao Te Ching and is still around today. It is a philosophy which values balance, moderation, compassion and being pliant and adaptable. There is a wealth of wisdom from the Taoist philosophy that could be applied in librarianship.

Laws Create Lawbreakers (58) – “Where government stands aloof, the people open up.” Instead of constantly trying to control the behavior of your users, see what they do and create guidelines around that. Instead of setting furniture up a certain way and then moving it back when it gets out of place, see what configurations users like and allow them the freedom to make spaces their own. Instead of having strict mobile phone or food rules, recognize that as humans we need to communicate and eat. Outlining numerous strict library policies makes for a lot of broken policies, shushing, and saying no constantly.

Bend, Don’t Break (76) – “When a plant becomes hard it snaps.” Libraries, especially in academia, have done things certain ways for many years. We continue purchasing print journals. We still have items on microfilm. We still tell people to turn off their mobile phones in the library. In order to not become outdated or obsolete libraries and librarians should cultivate an attitude of softness. We should examine services, collections, and policies constantly to see if they are still meeting user needs and if they are still in touch with reality.

Realize When Enough is Enough (9) – “Instead of pouring in more, better stop while you can.” A key concept in Taoism is that one opposite follows another. Emptiness follows fullness. As librarians, we keep taking on new roles and offering new services without dropping other services. This is a recipe for disaster. Instead of doing a few things really well, we fall into the trap of doing a lot of things poorly. By holding onto legacy services and trying to do everything, we are in fact defeating ourselves. There is only so much energy and so many resources that we can provide. We need to think strategically about what we can drop and what is most important to our community. One way is through a great presentation that I saw at ACRL about Planned Abandonment.

Be Like Water (8) – “The best are like water, bringing help to all.” Water helps all people, that’s it’s nature. Just so, we should constantly be thinking about how we can best serve others. Water also is quite adaptable. It can fit easily into any sort of container and it naturally goes with the flow. Librarians too should be able to change themselves, their services, and their resources to meet their community’s needs. They should be able to adjust along with the changes that are constantly happening in the world both technologically and socially.

The Tao is typically translated as “The Way.” It’s a very nuanced concept, but at it’s core it refers to the true nature of the universe. And the point of Taoism is to live in accord with The Way. Instead of struggling against everything all the time Taoism states that humans should try to see how things actually are and live in harmony with them. This can be a very illuminating idea for libraries.

Librarians need the ability to be in touch with reality and not be blind or naive. The job of a librarian does not have to be a struggle against obsolescence or a constant proving of  their value to stakeholders and administrators. Instead librarians can try to understand what is actually of value to our patrons and be leading the parade instead of fighting against it.

The quotes and numbers above refer to chapters/sections of the Tao Te Ching translated by Red Pine, though there are plenty of free translations available as well. 

This doesn’t mean that we’re not doing really important work though. It also doesn’t mean we’re not serving our patrons. In fact our patrons take notice. This past semester I had a student ask me “why do you librarians smile so much?” The reason we smile is because we’re having fun. Having fun allows us to better serve our students and makes for a more welcoming, encouraging environment.

But having fun isn’t just about improving the service that we deliver to our users. It also has to do with learning. In the book Homo Ludens, a book dealing with the element of play in culture, the Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga has a great quote. “Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing.” Learning and play are very closely tied. Learning doesn’t just have to be all-nighters and 10 page papers. Most of the time learning is fun.

By creating an atmosphere of fun and play and not taking ourselves too seriously we are creating a place where it is safe for students to experiment, test out ideas, and even fail. That is not always true in the classroom. Students need to succeed in the classroom to get a grade. They need to do the reading and pay attention to the professor. In the library they can be curious and explore their interests in more depth. They don’t have to be bounded by the right answer.

At the NELIG conference last week, the keynote speaker Randy Hensley, said that by calling something play we can pretend that it doesn’t matter. Normally we think about things very practically. But by calling something play we give ourselves permission to be creative and explore different possibilities without having to say “that’ll never work,” or “that’s a stupid idea.” In play all ideas are equally as stupid, thus making them all equally as good. Having a place to play and have fun is important for creativity and learning.

It’s not always easy to create an environment like this though, so how do you go about doing it? Here are a few ideas:

• Get a motto, mantra, or philosophy -” All fun, all the time” seems to work for us. Huizinga’s “let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing” could be another good one. Find one that works for your staff and then infuse it into everything you do.
• Don’t make everything about academics or tie fun things to academic things – We hosted a Harry Potter exhibit that was tied to several of our general education courses about the scientific revolution and religious and secular traditions. We also have a chili cook-off every year that has nothing to do with academics. Not everything has to be scholarly.
• Play with each other as a staff –  Recently our awesome new Scholarly Resource and Academic Outreach Librarian Hanna organized a staff button making afternoon where we created buttons from book images to hand out to students. I was really busy and felt like I had no time for button making. But once I started I couldn’t stop. We were all joking with each other, having fun and being creative. It was really energizing. I highly recommend getting a button machine to anyone. Instant team-building excercise.
• Build fun into your teaching – Be willing to try new things in the classroom. We tried integrating mobile phone polling as a pedagogical tool this fall and it made the classroom dynamic so much more fun. Not only because students enjoyed it but also because it we got to try a new technology. Another example is Amy Springer’s Jersey Shore themed library instruction. Trying out new things keeps your teaching fresh and keeps it fun.
• Integrate games into the library – Fairfield Library, for example, has created a fun, interactive, online game that orients new students to the library and all it has to offer. There are other games out there and they don’t have to all be electronic. But games are great for injecting fun and play into learning.

These are just a few ideas, but I’m sure you’ve got some others. How do you keep things fun at your library?

If you still need more convincing about the power of fun and play, check out this thought provoking TED talk about Serious Play.

Professor’s give out assignments. They grade and judge students. They make students, gasp, work hard! They try to challenge their students and take them out of their comfort zones. This can be stressful for students. It can leave them feeling overwhelmed and confused. Professors are basically like the cop in every movie yelling at the suspect telling them that ” they do bad things to students like you in summer classes.”

Librarians on the other hand are not grading students. We offer a welcoming supportive environment, where students can feel free to ask without being judged. We are not going to yell at a student if they haven’t done the reading, or in our case, don’t know how to use a book or locate it in the stacks.

I often say things to students like: “yeah, this is a pretty difficult assignment, but I know some great places we can look to make it easier.” Or, “I see that your frustrated that your professor is requiring at least one book and one scholarly article, but he/she is probably trying to get you to see why each is important. Let me explain what each one is good for.” I try to create an environment of empathy and understanding where students feel safe to explore and make mistakes.

I have to admit that there are definitely times when librarians challenge students and professors usually try to create safe environments, but I often see our roles following this “good cop, bad cop” framework. We are both working towards the same goal. We are just helping students learn in different ways.