Unshelved from August 13, 2007 / (c) Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum / Unshelved.com / Used with permission

When I undertook my first library website redesign a few years ago, I stumbled upon an ongoing culture clash in web-based industries between the developer and the designer. Developers are programmers – they have coding skills and speak languages like PHP, jQuery, and AJAX. For them, Cake isn’t something you eat – it’s a development framework. They use these tools to make technology do what they want.

Designers, on the other hand, are artists. They work with clients to understand their needs, sketch potential designs using tools like Photoshop® or pencil and paper. They deal with the frustrations of the client relationship (e.g., telling the client pictures of his cat shouldn’t go on his website).

Designer vs Developer from anistar sung on Vimeo.

Here’s the rub: many designers can’t code and can’t make the websites they draw. Some designers wield CSS well enough to set the visuals of a website, but they don’t know how to get search boxes, dropdown menus, and interactive elements to do what they want. Conversely, most developers don’t understand the relationship with the client or have training in visual design. They believe they know best when it comes to a website that works, and as a result, don’t work well with fickle clients.

Relationships between designers and developers range from antagonistic to cooperative, and the best of these relationships embody the complimentary nature of the two roles. However, some designer/developer relationships devolve into name-calling and contempt. At the heart of these kinds of relationships is a lack of understanding and respect for one another.

In libraries, there is an obvious parallel: the library’s web developer[1] and the public services librarian[2]. The web developers spend the day making library websites and systems work, rarely taking shifts at public service points. They work within the constraints of proprietary systems they can’t change and grapple with the web environments of larger systems in which they work (e.g., a city or university’s web infrastructure).

Public services librarians put out a lot of fires. They teaches people how to navigate library systems that for some reason never seem as good as Google. Because of their constant contact with users, they understand the heartbeat of the community. They focus on developing relationships with users and stakeholders.

Sometimes, these two clash in the same way designers and developers do, each clamoring for respect. Having occupied both sides of the divide, I find myself in a unique position to understand how both sides may perceive the relationship.

For example, I understand the frustrations public services librarians feel when they work with end users on systems that are deficient. These librarians are the eyes and ears of our organization, and yet, they are often powerless to do anything about it except to bemoan the inefficiencies of these systems to their web developers, who don’t seem to understand the community’s needs.

I also understand that web developers are frequently hamstrung by inflexible interfaces and conflicting opinions of how the systems should be optimized. Some librarians clamor for more controlled search features, while others request simpler search options that provide “good enough” results. Some librarians come armed with research studies from the literature supporting their position, and others call upon anecdotes from their interactions with users. The demands of their colleagues may even contradict their own expert opinion.

The frustrations web developers and public services librarians feel sometimes boil over into animosity:

• “The web developer doesn’t understand what our users need! Why can’t she just fix the problem?”
• “The public services librarian brings me these anecdotes, but no evidence! Does he expect me to change the whole website based on one story?”

Resolving this disconnect requests a deeper understanding of each other’s territory. In addition, new tools and skills are required for both types of librarians to become better partners in a web developer/public services relationship. These include the use of APIs to break free of the out-of-the-box interfaces our vendors provide and ethnographic research skills that provide insight into the needs of our users.

A Systems and Services Team

It’s clear that public services librarians can’t do it alone: they don’t have the capability to change the systems that users interact with. Similarly, web developers can’t do it alone either: guessing at user needs without interacting with actual end users is a losing battle. The answer is developing a team with shared goals and an attitude that lends itself to collaboration and learning.

First, you’ll need to identify the right people for the team. In small libraries, you may not have a choice if you only have one web developer. In Good to Great, Jim Collins (2001) wrote that excellent “teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests” (p. 63). This means both the web development and public services staff must be committed to users, not their respective departments.

A positive, optimistic attitude also contributes to team success, especially in newly formed teams (West, Patera, & Carsten, 2009). Someone with a sour attitude who is only interested in protecting ‘their domain’ will not be a good candidate for the kind of collaborative work this team will be doing.

But what if the attitudes are not there? Collins (2001) notes that some employees join companies because they like the job and the direction the organization is going. This becomes a problem when the organization shifts direction and jobs begin to change; those same employees become discontent and start putting on the brakes.

Collins (2001) would recommend that library directors confront bad attitudes directly by stating plainly what the new directions of the organization are, and inviting employees to commit or quit. He quotes David Maxwell, who focused his first years as CEO of Fannie Mae finding the right people to work at the organization and getting the wrong people to leave. Maxwell would say, “Look, this is going to be a very hard challenge. I want you to think about how demanding this is going to be. If you don’t think you’re going to like it, that’s fine. Nobody’s going to hate you” (Collins, 2001, p. 45). Several Fannie Mae employees left the company, but on amicable terms, and Maxwell was able to hire people who came to Fannie Mae because of its mission and the people who worked there, not because of the nature of the job.

In a down economy and with tenure systems in place, getting the wrong employees to leave is almost impossible, but there may still be hope for developing the type of culture needed for a successful systems and services team, but it will be extremely difficult without gaining buy in from the curmudgeons. If your organization doesn’t have the right attitude, the systems and services team may not be a good fit for you.

New Tools: Ethnographic Research and API

Once the team is assembled, there’s another element to making it work: new tools. Anecdotes are not enough, and out-of-the-box systems are inadequate. Public services needs new ways to gather data and web developers need better ways to change the interfaces users encounter.

Ethnographic Research

If web developers have anything to complain about the kind of feedback they get from public services librarians, it’s that the feedback is entirely anecdotal. Users that come to the physical services desk in tears because they can’t figure out how to use the website leave a lasting, significant impression on the public services librarians that try to help them. However, to a web developer, one person is not enough to merit changing an entire site.

In this situation, neither the public services nor the web developer has a clear view of how the vast majority of people use the website. One distraught user cannot dictate the design of the site; conversely, web analytics don’t tell the “why” of the paths people take through the site.

Ethnographic research provides a way to improve upon anecdote and analytics by examining “the context in which activities occur, usually involving a researcher working with participants as they go about their daily lives. Ethnographers typically describe a particular situation or process by asking multiple people about it, and by analyzing multiple types of data, such as interviews, direct observation…” (Duke & Asher, 2012, p. 24).

Ethnography isn’t new in libraries. A good first step might be to learn from what previous ethnographies of libraries have discovered, and consider what opportunities you already have to introduce change based on their findings.

Ethnographic research solves the dilemma of the anecdote by providing an analysis of situations that go beyond the surface; in other words, we’ll know why our users interact with our sites in the way that they do, and we’ll be able to identify patterns in user behavior.

In an era of fewer and fewer reference demands, ethnography presents an interesting new role for public services librarians. In a sense, they become not only the eyes and ears of the library, but they also contribute a deep understanding of users based on qualitative research. For a web developer, having access to this kind of analysis of user behavior is invaluable.

APIs and Web Services

For some time, librarians have recognized that library instructional content must come at the point of need (Stevens, 2009). Digital learning objects, online tutorials, and guides relegated to a remote corner of the website do not get traffic – they must be embedded in places where students struggle.

The problem with most libraries’ current set of tools is the inflexibility of the systems that students interact with. As we have recognized at St. Edward’s University, the library website is little more than a pass-through site for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). Most of our users land on our page and then immediately leave via the search box to enter EDS.

Unfortunately, when users get to EDS, we have little control over the user experience. We can toggle certain elements on our page, re-label some of the facets, and add a little bit of branding to the page, but little else. We are constrained by the administrative controls of EBSCOhost, and as a result, most of users time in library resources only vaguely resembles the library site at all:

Deeper problems happen with the folder feature. Many of our students access EDS from off-campus. As a result, they explicitly log in to our library’s proxy server in order to conduct searches and access full-text. They assume that when they add items to the “folder,” those items will be associated with their login. Instead, they discover days later that all of their folder items are lost, because they did not log into EBSCOhost in addition to the library’s proxy server.

While EBSCO will likely find a way to tie folders to university authentication in the future, we are stuck waiting for that to happen. Even if this were solved, the folder of items still lives on EBSCOhost, disconnected from where students are using those items.

The solution lies with an API (application programming interface). EBSCO provides programmers with tools to use EDS metadata, its search algorithm, and facets and filters without having to use EBSCOhost as the user interface. This allows web developers to create a search interface from scratch, including a folder system that ties into university authentication.

Google, WorldCat, Facebook, and Twitter all provide APIs that could be used to enhance the digital experience for users. For example, previews of library books can be displayed in an OPAC using Google Books previews. The ability to “like” and “share” library web pages and materials via Facebook also ties use of the library to the user’s social circles – something public library users may be inclined to do.

APIs free us from the constraints of out-of-the-box interfaces, and there are a lot of them to select from. They require a different set of programming skills than typical web development.

Bullets to Cannonballs

Ethnography and APIs represent an incredible opportunity, but at what costs? Is it worth reinventing the whole discovery search interface using an API? How likely is it that an inexperienced public services staff of one person can add a comprehensive ethnographic research study to their “to do” list? A reasonable answer comes once again from business author Jim Collins and co-author Morten T. Hansen, who recommend that organizations try new initiatives in small doses before investing significant resources (Collins & Hansen, 2010). They use the metaphor of a ship at sea engaged in a fight:

“Picture yourself at sea, a hostile ship bearing down on you. You have a limited amount of gunpowder. You take all your gunpowder and use it to fire a big cannonball. The cannonball flies out over the ocean…and misses the target, off by 40 degrees. You turn to your stockpile and discover that you’re out of gunpowder. You die” (p. 78).

The moral of this story is that new initiatives are inherently risky; a misfire could result in lost profits, lost time, and ultimately may sink a company altogether. A better strategy is to fire bullets – ventures that require less “gunpowder” – until one hits a target, then fire your cannonball.

For us, this means starting slow. A fully fleshed out ethnographic research study could take years of data gathering using sophisticated research techniques. However, you could start as we have as St. Edward’s University with focus groups that try to get at the context of library research. Rather than directing questions at the use of library resources, the focus group should be about the whole research experience, from topic selection to completed paper. For public libraries, questions might be addressed to local business owners in order to determine what information they need to run a successful business and where they find that information.

A small focus group may not get you the same level of understanding as a full ethnographic study would, but it will uncover some aspects of the context in which library users interact with our resources and services. The focus group would require far less time, staff, and expertise to carry out.

If the focus group results in ideas to improve services or systems, library directors might be more willing to provide resources to expand ethnographic studies of library users. Andrew Asher and Susan Miller provide A Practical Guide to Ethnographic Research in Academic Libraries as a toolkit for libraries to begin a more in-depth study.

For APIs, perhaps the bullet is in smaller projects that add value to the site, not an entire site redesign. For example, our website makes use of an API to dynamically pull the number of computers that are available in our lab. Other APIs, such as those provided from WorldCat.org, can pull APA or MLA citations into a catalog based on an item’s ISBN or OCLC number.

Valuable entry-level projects like this can be used to gauge the time and effort working with APIs might require, along with experience that helps us consider possibilities APIs introduce. For example, an API-driven discovery interface can position libraries to integrate deeply into campus portals (instead of just linking to the library, users can search and mark library materials they want to use right from their library management system), solve usability issues in out-of-the-box interfaces, and embed context-sensitive links and resources into the search experience (e.g., video tutorials on search strategies when a user gets no results; or ‘help’ messages that pop up the first time a user logs in, but not during subsequent visits).

Jason Clark offers an online LITA workshop designed to get library web developers using APIs, and code4lib provides articles and conferences that are worthwhile investments for library directors looking to fire bullets at APIs before asking their web developers to commit to bigger projects.

Ethnography and APIs are tools that not many people in libraries can use, and it will take a serious commitment of time, money, and reorganization of job duties in order to make the fullest use of them. Small investments and pilot projects like these provide ways to fire a few bullets before deciding if it’s time to fire a cannonball.

Managing the Team and Making the Time

Even if small pilot projects are successful, library directors and librarians themselves may have difficulty committing to a new set of responsibilities. How can ethnography and API programming be added to job duties when librarians and web developers are already spread thin? The answer is a commitment to learning and growth.

For example, 3M has been recognized as one of the most innovative companies for several decades (Kretkowski, 1998; Nelson & Quick, 2011). Business analysts credit the company’s innovative culture to the “15 percent” rule, which gives professional employees permission to use up to fifteen percent of their work time on personal projects and constructive daydreaming.

Fifteen percent might seem like a lot to sacrifice, especially if librarians are already busy enough maintaining current levels of service. However, in How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins (2009) notes that companies that succeed in turbulent times are the ones that invest in research and development and growth, not in maintaining the status quo. A close examination of what legacy services should be dropped may free up the room for employees to explore, learn, and grow the library in new directions.

The right employees will relish this opportunity. Buckingham and Coffman (1999) point out that managers who put employees in positions where they have to learn a new skill are more satisfied with their work, because they are growing as a result of it. Speaking from experience, there has not been a more satisfying project at my own workplace than learning how to use APIs to do more with our Discovery Service. It is a new skill I’ve picked up as a result of the project and I am energized by the opportunity to grow as an individual.

But what should we drop if we allocate our time elsewhere? At our library, we didn’t drop anything – we hired. Having second employee in our systems unit has increased our capacity to maintain library systems and expand into new areas of web development. The funding for this position came from recently vacated positions in technical services, administration, and acquisitions.

For public services, slow hours at the desk were converted to office time for our reference staff. There are many months of the year where traffic at our desk does not merit having professional staff waiting for questions, and this time can be recouped for projects like focus groups and ethnography.

Gaining Respect

Public services librarians will garner more respect from their web development colleagues when they present findings from studies that illustrate real, measured, and significant user needs. Unlike an anecdote from the reference desk, ethnographic study comes with legitimacy. Recommendations seem less like complaints about the systems, and more like steps to take to meeting a shared goal of improved user experience.

Conversely, the web developer equipped with the skills to design a system that addresses identified needs gets more respect as well. Instead of blaming inflexible interfaces for bad user experience, web developers can invent solutions and fix problems.

Gaining Momentum

Usability tests are the perfect introduction to developing a deeper public services and systems partnership. It isn’t ethnography and it requires no technical training, and lightweight usability methods are easy to adopt and use. It exposes public services libraries to the work of designing websites, and it exposes web developers to working closely with end users trying to accomplish specific goals.

Pick up Steve Krug’s book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy. Krug explains how to conduct a low-effort, high-reward usability test that pulls upon the talents of many people in the organization and produces an actionable list of fixes for a site.

The process is as follows:

1. Develop some goals for the usability test: what part of the site do you want to improve?

We’ve done tests on eBook access, front-page design, and EBSCO Discovery Service among others.

2. Identify one person to conduct the usability test, and write the script for the test.

Krug provides tips on how to develop the script and even provides templates on his site to use to take care of the privacy and permissions aspects of working with end users.

3. Conduct only three short tests, with the idea being that 3 users will capture 80% of the problems on the site. It will also not require a huge time commitment.

4. Screencast[3] the usability test to a room where people interested in improving the site can watch the test and record notes.

This allows the tester to focus on conducting the test, not on taking notes. It also provides the opportunity for varied perspectives on the user’s behavior.

5. When testing is over, immediately conduct a debriefing with everyone who watched the test. Use this time to identify the top three or five things to fix on the website.

Krug provides guidelines on what kind of fixes deserve priority, and which ones can wait.

A well-executed usability study following Krug’s guidelines results in action and productive change. It sets the tone for teams to engage in more time-intensive projects like ethnographic research studies and API-based web development. The usability test may uncover some deficiencies in systems that only API development can fix, or it may lead to questions about the users that a simple usability test cannot answer. More than anything, it will start discussions that are user-centric between people that may not ordinarily come into contact.

Onward, Library!

Every aspect of the library profession is retooling. Catalogers are working with batch loads of records more than they do original cataloging. Collection development librarians are working with patron-driven acquisition models more than approval plans or firm orders. Archivists are deriving new value from their digitized collections with text mining techniques. Public services are spending less time at the reference desk, and ethnography might be their new tool for learning about users. APIs are the newest tools of web developers.

We are vastly different than we were a few short years ago. Our libraries need to be able to grow and change as the world around us does. There is little room for silos and the status quo, and no room for those who are unwilling to grow and learn the new skills required to thrive. Collaboration is about gaining new skills and gaining respect for one another. It is about finding a way for us to apply our talents to achieve success together.

Finally, we need to recognize that not all libraries need to do original coding or ethnographic research. Code can be shared, and ethnographic studies already exist. Libraries unable to commit the resources needed to do local work can use the work of others. What may seem like unique situations and circumstances are actually commonplace from library to library. If your library engages in work that provides insight into user behavior or develops code that enhances the user experience, share it!

I cannot thank the smashing editing work and candor of Ellie Collier and Erin Dorney enough – they are my editing heroes!  Similar kudos and thanks to Pongracz Sennyey, director of the library at St. Edward’s University, and reviewer for this post.  His contributions of ideas and directions for this post were invaluable!

References

Asher, A. D., & Duke, L. M. (2012). A practical guide to ethnographic research in academic libraries. Retrieved from http://www.erialproject.org/publications/toolkit/

Booth, C. (2009). Informing innovation: Tracking student interest in emerging library technologies at Ohio University. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association.

Buckingham, M., & Coffman, C. (1999). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap–and others don’t. New York, NY: HarperBusiness.

Collins, J. C. (2009). How the mighty fall: And why some companies never give in. New York: HarperCollins.

Collins, J., & Hansen, M. T. (2011). Great by choice: Uncertainty, chaos, and luck : why some thrive despite them all. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Duke, L. M., & Asher, A. D. (2012). College libraries and student culture: What we now know. Chicago: American Library Association.

Foster, N. F., & Gibbons, S. (2007). Studying students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

Krug, S. (2010). Rocket surgery made easy: The do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability problems. Berkeley, Calif: New Riders.

McDaniel, C. (2011). Two cats in a sack: Designer-developer discord. Smashing Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/13/two-cats-in-a-sack-designer-developer-discord/

Nelson, D. L., & Quick, J. C. (2011). Organizational behavior: Science, the real world and you. Australia: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Stevens, M. (2009). Being at the point of need. Tame the Web [blog]. Retrieved from http://tametheweb.com/2009/09/20/being-at-the-point-of-need/

by drp on Flickr

Introduction

This Lead Pipe post is about two libraries attempting to reinvent services, collections, and spaces as the walls of their buildings come crashing down. Rather than embarking on phased construction projects, the library buildings at both St. Edward’s University and Millersville University will be completely shut down for a period of one and two years, respectively. Co-authors Eric Frierson, Library Digital Services Manager at St. Edward’s and Erin Dorney, Outreach Librarian at Milersville discuss renovations as catalysts for change, experimentation and flexibility, and distributed/embedded librarianship. These facets contribute to the identity crisis librarianship has struggled with since the Information Age began – only exacerbated by unique circumstances. The conversation below is one example of the kinds of real questions being proffered to librarians at both institutions:

“I don’t mean to sound disrespectful,” began the biology professor, “but if we can do without a library for a whole year, what does that say about the library?” An awkward silence settled over the science faculty meeting before the librarian was able to pull together a response.

“You’re right. The library as it exists now – the print collections, the reference desk – these may not be required elements of a thriving university library. This renovation project gives us the opportunity to re-examine what a library does on campus, what things we don’t need to do, and what things we could start doing that we haven’t done before.”

This post will not cover the new, technologically-situated, collaborative learning spaces which will exist following the renovations, but rather discuss how renovations can bring organizational change that has the potential to shape the library of the future. It is our belief that the pace of change our libraries have adopted should become the norm at all libraries.

St. Edward’s University

St. Edward’s University is a private, Catholic institution in Austin, Texas. It is home to over 5,000 students and is situated on a hill overlooking the lower Colorado River, boasting gorgeous views of the Austin skyline. Enrollment has nearly doubled in the past ten years, and the campus master plan has made the grounds and buildings cohesive, beautiful, and a delight to explore. The library, however, has been a 30-year anomaly with its white stucco, rounded-edge shell.

(Current St. Edward’s University Library Building)

During the summer of 2011, the university received a gift of $13 million from Austin-area philanthropists Pat and Bill Munday for the creation of a new library and learning commons. The only catch is that construction must be complete within a period of two years. This aggressive timeline demanded the selection of an architect almost immediately, and the library, along with its partners in the new commons, needed to have the plan for the new space completed within a few short months.

Because the project involves renovating existing square-footage and building a new addition, almost all physical resources – including collections – will be need be removed from the building for one year. The print collection of 170,000 books will need to be aggressively weeded and stored off-campus, inaccessible during the project. Only a few hundred high circulation items and the media collection will remain on campus. Seventeen staff members will find a new home in Mang House, a three bedroom residence with kitchen and a laundry room. The 100 computers and public use furniture from the old library will be dispersed throughout existing campus locations.

(Mang House – The temporary location for St. Edward’s University’s library.)

The librarians are not sure what Mang House will be like. For so long, they have identified public services with the desk that sits near the front door of the old building. There is no space for a robust reference desk in the temporary location; instead, staff will have a smallish living room with a fireplace. For an entire year, the library will exist without a reference desk, a print collection, or dedicated computing and study spaces. “If we don’t have those things… who are we, exactly?” asks Frierson and countless others.

Millersville University

Millersville University is a regional comprehensive Pennsylvania state school with a 2010 FTE of approximately 6,970 undergrads and 583 graduate students. As a state institution, campus buildings are only eligible for renovations on a strict schedule. Originally allocated $7 million from the state for basic infrastructure updates, the library and university administrators have successfully increased that amount to $25 million based on additional state allocations, university support, and private donations.

(Millersville University Library – Under construction for two years)

This intense renovation project will take 2 years to complete, gutting the interior of the 11-story building to replace all major systems (including heating, cooling, lighting, fire protection, vapor barriers and elevators). The library had to be emptied of all people, books, microfilms, computers, shelving, and furniture, down to the last piece of signage and window shades in order to allow construction to move at a quicker pace and ensure the safety of staff, visitors, and physical materials. Over 300,000 print items have been placed in storage off-site, where, similarly to St. Edwards, the books will be inaccessible to students and faculty members.

(Millersville University – The temporary library @ Gerhart Hall)

For the next two years, the campus will rely on a temporary library in Gerhart Hall containing approximately 10,000 items and less than a quarter of the study and computing space that the old library provided. There is no traditional reference desk and most of the librarians are distributed across campus, embedded in offices within academic buildings that align with their liaison areas. Similarly to the situation at St. Edwards, this period of massive change calls into question everything an academic library has traditionally been known to provide and represent.

Renovation as a Catalyst

From a librarian’s point of view, temporarily disconnecting from the building provides an opportunity for a clean slate. Many legacy processes are tied to institutional history and specific circumstances. To put it another way, buildings come with baggage. Libraries make exceptions, create lengthy policies, even determine resources and services based on prior experiences. Concern has been voiced by librarians (particularly those new to the profession) over the “way we’ve always done it” mantra that sometimes infiltrates institutions, marking this steadfastness as resistance to change that will leave libraries irrelevant to their constituencies. Ross and Sennyey (2008) describe some library services as holdovers from an era that has disappeared, “making our professional assumptions seem as foreign as a medieval manuscript in chains” (146). Included in these assumptions are services that are tethered to user needs that no longer exist.

The situations at St. Edward’s and Millersville are unique in that the renovations are not incremental. At both institutions, the scale of construction will shut down the entire space – not just one floor at a time. There are no branch or specialized libraries to absorb collections, services, or personnel. Business simply cannot proceed as usual – the status quo has become impossible to maintain. The libraries at St. Edward’s and Millersville have an opportunity to let go of legacies in order to better meet the needs of their respective campus communities.

Warehouse for Books

One assumption under interrogation is the idea of a library as a warehouse for print books. Neither institution is a research library attempting to collect and preserve all of the world’s knowledge. Millersville has a collection development policy stating that theirs is a “teaching collection” which directly supports the university curriculum. With limited physical space and budget, items not used are transitioned out of the collection and replaced by more accessible materials relevant to institutional learning goals. The renovation at Millersville has prompted the library to increase its number of electronic books and databases in order to support campus research needs.

At St. Edwards, the massive renovation project has provided the library with an “excuse” to look holistically at the print collection. One year ago, the library owned 170,000 volumes. Through the first weeding project in the library’s long history, staff managed to reduce that number to 130,000. In the new building, space allocated for stacks can house approximately 90,000 books, meaning staff have some ways to go before boxing up the collection. Because librarians can’t guarantee that the library will hold the same number of print volumes in the future, the space needs to have a flexible infrastructure in order to be used differently.

It is possible that after two years of adjusting to primarily electronic scholarship, faculty and students may shed some of the traditional stereotypes held about libraries as warehouses for books. Although collection assessment and strategic reallocation initiatives at both St. Edward’s and Millersville were primarily designed to help students and faculty survive the lengthy renovation periods, this may in fact become the de-facto standard for content development for the foreseeable future. Preliminary findings of ebrary®’s 2011 Global Student E-book Survey  revealed that while E-book usage and awareness have not increased significantly in 2011 compared to 2008, the vast majority of students would choose electronic over print if it were available and if better tools along with fewer restrictions were offered. Reflecting global trends like this, libraries are moving towards an increase in electronic holdings and are reorganizing space within their buildings to emphasize engagement with content, not simply storage.

Rethinking Reference

In addition to addressing changes in content and collections, the renovations at St. Edwards and Millersville provide opportunities to experiment with (or without) certain longstanding library services. At Millersville, the two years without a building have been internally referred to as “a big experiment” in order to test out new ideas and determine which existing or new services are brought back into the new library.

Traditional reference is one service currently being investigated for transformation. Staff at Millersville decided not to install a reference desk inside of the temporary library in Gerhart Hall. In fact, there are no librarians located within Gerhart Hall, only staff and student employees. For just-in-case research questions, the library has developed a stand up, self-help kiosk where users can walk up to a dedicated computer and instantly chat/IM/email a librarian or pick up the phone and call. To assist, student employees working at the circulation desk are being trained on a referral system where they can lead students to the kiosk or direct them to specific subject librarian.

Staff at Millersville have expanded their suite of virtual research help options for just-in-time questions. Librarians take shifts providing assistance through phone, text, email and chat/IM (11-8 Monday through Thursday, 11-4 Fridays, and 2-8 Sundays). Another facet has been initiating at least three consistent office hours during which subject librarians will be available in their office for research consultations or appointments.

Inspired by Austin’s Coolhaus Ice Cream Truck use of Twitter to notify customers of their current location, St. Edward’s is considering heavier use of social media to inform students and faculty where reference assistance can be found. While still in the planning stages, the general idea is for librarians to check in using Foursquare or Gowalla at various campus locations with a note about how long they will be there.  This check in will automatically propagate to the library’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and show up on the website in a rolling feed of library news and updates. In this scenario, even users who do not connect with the library through social media services will still benefit from the check in.

Librarians who station themselves around campus will be equipped with a netbook or a tablet computer with a keyboard and have the ability to print to any campus printer. The hope is that fully mobile librarians with high-end technology and the ability to help wherever the student may be will begin to shape expectations of students.

Traditional reference desks are often immobile and, in some cases, emphasize the power disparity between the knowledge seeker and the knowledge holder (either purposely or inadvertently). In these situations, it may be difficult for libraries to experiment with new methods of interacting with users, either face-to-face or digitally. It is easy to fall back on what is known, what is safe. The removal of these structures for renovation purposes is described by Dorney as an “almost cathartic experience,” providing a sense of freedom to test user and librarian reaction to innovative avenues of service.

Professional Identity & Relevance

While impact of these two renovations on their respective campus communities is an area ripe for discussion, the projects have also released the internal floodgates. Both institutions are witnessing discussions relating to professional identity and the library’s relevance/value within higher education. Often, anxiety accompanies these conversations, a natural reaction for any passionate professional.

At Millersville, staff is distributed on and off campus. There are librarians in academic buildings, staff in Gerhart Hall, librarians and staff at the off-site storage facility, and student employees everywhere in between. The way library work is accomplished is changing dramatically. Employees are beginning to rely more and more on technology to assist in everyday activities. Where resistance to change may have before existed for initiatives like video conferencing or using a wiki to share documentation, individuals have been forced out of their comfort zones to grow as a high-functioning team of professionals.

In the case of St. Edward’s, questions abound about how group dynamics may change when seventeen staff members are forced to exist within a cozy, three-bedroom house for one year. Without personal offices, librarians there may have a completely different experience in terms of collaboration and it is inevitable that all interactions will reach new levels of intensity, for better or worse.

Though the St. Edward’s library website already provides a great deal of services and resources, it will become even more apparent that it is the primary means of interacting with the library.  David Lee King writes that “the library’s website IS the library,” and the absence of a robust, physical presence will solidify that perception. It is time for as much – if not more – effort to be placed on our digital assets than our physical spaces.

On Failure & Flexibility

It would not be apropos to conclude this article without mentioning the importance of flexibility and freedom to fail. Both authors have found that it is often the best laid plans that have disintegrated while spur-of-the-moment ideas have taken off like wildfire. There is no ultimate road map to ensure success.

At Millersville, for example, the old library was the tallest, most heavily-trafficked building on campus. Assuming that the next largest building for student gathering was the newly-renovated Student Memorial Center, librarians set up a “Research Blast” table in a high-visibility area. The plan was to have multiple librarians available in shifts with computers and informational handouts to help students with their research questions. Staff promoted the one-week event heavily, using Facebook, QR codes, emails, posters, word-of-mouth. Librarians wore bright green tee shirts saying “Ask me about the library” and were proactive, making eye contact and greeting students as they passed.

The librarians barely received one research question the entire week. It turned out to be a great opportunity to answer questions about the library – what’s in the temporary library, where can I go to print papers, what is the new library going to look like, when is it the project going to be done? But librarians certainly weren’t helping students locate or evaluate peer-reviewed articles, analyze sources, or brainstorm search strategies. It was a failure in one aspect and a success in another. The freedom to fail and flexibility to adapt accordingly is paramount to initiating change.

St. Edward’s has the benefit of learning from Millersville’s two-year experiment before knocking down their old building. If students are not using roaming librarians to ask research questions, then where are they asking those kinds of questions?  Studies of student research behavior suggest that faculty members, teaching assistants, the writing center, and course readings and websites are frequently sources students turn to for help (Foster & Gibbons, 2007; Head & Eisenberg, 2009). Though liaison librarians continue to inform faculty and teaching assistants about the services that will be available during construction, reaching students through course websites is another avenue worth exploring.

Currently, all Blackboard course websites at St. Edward’s University have a link labeled “Ask a Librarian,” which links students to the general reference assistance page. However, most students do not understand how librarians can help. To improve this Blackboard presence, librarians have written a short javascript widget that will link students to course or subject-specific pages designed to be an in-context landing page for library resources and services. In other words, if a student clicks on “Library Resources” from a course in the school of business, he or she will be directed to the research guide for business students, not the generic library homepage.

Exploring new options takes staff time and creative thinking; some projects will fail, but the spark of innovation provided by challenging circumstances may result in new and improved practices that last well beyond the transition period into these new buildings.

Conclusion

As economist Paul Romer once said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” (Rosenthal, 2009). In the cases of St. Edward’s and Millersville, the crisis of being without the library as one cohesive place provides librarians with an opportunity to initiate change. Without the baggage of the past, libraries can look holistically at the their portfolio of services, determining which to continue investing time and resources into. Others may have simply run their course, poorly designed from the outset or dated for serving a new generation of scholars.

Measuring the success of these experiments is often difficult. Due to the magnitude of change (moving from one centralized building to many distributed/embedded locations), neither St. Edward’s nor Millersville can simply compare usage statistics to the those of the old library. Because these libraries are focusing on interacting with users in new ways, measures have to be more comprehensive, taking both qualitative and quantitative aspects into account. In some cases, this will be longitudinal data. Both authors are hopeful that what is learned during these experiments outside of the library will be brought back into the new libraries in order to support the university community at a higher level, showcasing our professional growth and relevancy.

For each traditional library aspect that is re-envisioned, time and resources are made available to investigate new and innovative ways to interact with information. While keeping the history and mission of the academic library close to heart, librarians need to initiate honest, open, and difficult conversations and take immediate action towards readying academic librarianship for a new era.

In her fall 2010 convocation address to the university community, Millersville University President Francine McNairy stated: “…Indeed, the Ganser building will close, but the University library will not. You might think that the library is at the intersection of Frederick and George Streets, but it is actually at the intersection of scholarship, innovation, creativity and collaboration. And that’s the road to our future.” It is possible that upon moving back into each of these new libraries, the resources, services and spaces provided to users may look completely different. When individuals inquire about the risk of becoming irrelevant after a year or two without a building, perhaps that is the opportunity for librarians to inform their communities that the library is much more than bricks and mortar, and we are in the midst of fundamental shifts regarding our impact on students and learning.

Embarking on extensive renovations like those discussed here bring unique opportunities to initiate change within libraries, but they are not the only way to prepare for the future. The authors are issuing a call to action: How would you change your library as if you had a year without the historical baggage of a building? Take those plans and run with them – there is no reason why you have to wait for the bulldozers.

Many thanks to Melissa Gold for her feedback on this piece. Thanks also to Lead Pipers Hilary Davis, Leigh Anne Vrabel, Ellie Collier, and Emily Ford for edits, comments, and thought provoking questions.

References and Further Readings

Association of College and Research Libraries (n.d.). Value of Academic Libraries Report. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.acrl.ala.org/value/?page_id=21

booth, c. (2010). Librarians as __________: Shapeshifting at the periphery. Retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2010/librarians-as-__________-shapeshifting-at-the-periphery/

ebrary® (2011). ebrary Surveys Suggest Students’ Research Needs Unmet, Results to be Presented at Charleston. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.ebrary.com/corp/newspdf/ebrary_2011_Student_Survey.pdf

Foster, N. F., & Gibbons, S. (Eds.). (2007). Studying students: The undergraduate research project at the University of Rochester. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/Foster-Gibbons_cmpd.pdf

Frierson, E. (2011, July 8). Course-specific library links in Blackboard, Moodle, or any LMS you can name [blog post]. Retrieved November 8, 2011 from http://thirdpartylibrarian.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/librarylinksinlms/

Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2009). Lessons learned: How college students seek information in the digital age. Project Information Literacy First Year Report with Student Survey Findings. University of Washington Information School. Retreived November 8, 2011 from http://projectinfolit.org/publications/

Millersville University Library (n.d.). Millersville Library Renovation Information. Retrieved November 6, 2011, fromhttp://blogs.millersville.edu/newlibrary/

King, D. L. (2005, September 22). Website as destination [blog post]. Retrieved November 8, 2011 from http://www.davidleeking.com/2005/09/22/website-as-destination/

Rosenthal, J. (2009). On Language – A Terrible Thing to Waste. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02FOB-onlanguage-t.html

Ross, L., & Sennyey, P. (2008). The library is dead, long live the library! The practice of academic librarianship and the digital revolution. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(2), 145-152.

St. Edward’s University (2011). St. Edward’s University Receives $13 Million from Pat and Bill Munday. Retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://think.stedwards.edu/marketing/blog/post/st-edward%E2%80%99s-university-receives-13-million-pat-and-bill-munday

by Calsidyrose on Flickr

Introduction

There are sections of the bookstore many people don’t want to be seen in. For me, it’s the business section. Every time I’m scanning the spines of new titles on leadership, innovation and management, I feel a little nervous that someone’s going to jump out of the photography section and call me a square.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. There’s a strong anti-corporate feeling in many of the social circles I inhabit. In fact, the bookstore I usually go to is the largest independent bookseller in Texas. In a city whose mantra is “Keep Austin Weird,” it’s not unexpected. Business books represent corporate culture, “the man,” and mumbo-jumbo for suckers in suits.

It’s not just in Austin. Mega-corporation IBM recently released a commercial that featured “buzzword Bingo” in which employees of a large organization are called to a large meeting with the CEO of the company who boasts about the direction of the organization. As he spits out buzzword after buzzword (e.g., “Web 3-dot-0,” “out-of-the-box thinking,” “value-added”), cynical employees mark off squares on the premade bingo cards.

What I get is this: administration, regardless of what kind of organization you’re in, is often functioning within a “Dilbert-like” reality. Managers are wrapped up in their insulated world of mission and vision statements and strategic planning. They have delusional and misguided ideas about what goes on at the frontlines.

I suspect that for many librarians, the words mission and vision and strategic planning conjure up the same kinds of images. Perhaps you haven’t played Buzzword Bingo, but you’ve exchanged knowing glances with coworkers during planning meetings. You’ve experienced enough strategic planning to know that the majority of the time it’s not going to get you anywhere, and it’s going to take a long time to do so.

A recent excerpt from Benjamin Ginsberg’s book The Fall of the Faculty that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides examples of visions that turned into strategic plans that turned into years-long failed efforts at change. He faults administrators that use the strategic planning process for their own personal gain in the form of resume-building experiences. These career administrators busy themselves with visioning and planning rather than making real change, all the while continuing to seek out more lucrative opportunities for themselves.

In essence, these inauthentic leaders were using the process for personal gain, and others in the organization could sniff it out.

It’s important to note that Ginsberg doesn’t deny the effectiveness of a good vision or a good strategic plan. He highlights the University of Illinois Strategic Plan as one that contains the characteristics of effective corporate or military plan in that it has explicit objectives and ways of measuring success. It’s not the idea of vision and planning that is broken – it’s the way in which it happens and the motives behind the process that make for failed efforts.

Authentic Leadership

Princeton philosophy professor emeritus Harry Frankfurt’s essay On Bullshit was a best seller when it was released as a book in 2005. In it, he writes about authenticity and fakes:

For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 47).

This echoes Ginsberg’s stance that the processes used for change are not inherently bad. It also explains why a fiscally sound, conceptually correct plan might reek of bullshit. Together, Frankfurt and Ginsberg highlight the need for competent, authentic leaders.

Authentic leadership isn’t just about leaders who are true to themselves and their organizations, though that is a part of it. Bill George (2003) identifies five dimensions of authentic leadership: purpose, values, relationships, self-discipline, and heart.

Purpose

Authentic leaders know who they are and what they stand for. They know where they are headed and are inspired and intrinsically motivated to achieve their goals. The way this comes out in leadership situations is leaders who have passion.

Values

Authentic leaders understand their own values, and they use those values to know the right thing to do in difficult situations. Instead of compromising their values in difficult times, they use those situations to strengthen their understanding of their own values. People can tell leaders are true to their values through their behavior.

Relationships

Authentic leaders engage in mutual disclosure with others. They build strong bonds between themselves and others based on trust and closeness. They don’t necessarily reveal everything to everyone, but they are considered transparent and open. They will be open about their weaknesses and are willing to listen to others. People describe leaders with these kinds of relationships as well connected to others in the organization.

Self-discipline

Authentic leaders who practice self-discipline are able to maintain focus and stay on track in order to reach their goals. They are accountable to themselves, to others, and they hold others accountable to the organization. Others know what to expect from them and describe these leaders as consistent.

Heart

Perhaps the “softest” of the dimensions of authentic leadership, heart represents the awareness leaders should have about others’ struggles. They seek to help others who need it. They are frequently described as compassionate leaders who put others before themselves.

A Lack of Authentic Leaders

There are few people who can live up to these standards on a daily basis. There are even fewer who have the management skills to use visions, missions and strategic plans to effect the change they want to see. Even fewer occupy management and leadership roles in our workplaces. It’s no wonder there are so many “Buzzword Bingo” sessions in our work lives.

We have seen economic, social, and political leaders create massive amounts of distrust of leadership throughout our society. Even those identified as authentic leaders have turned out to be less authentic than we had hoped. In what is a basic textbook for leadership studies, Leadership: Theory and Practice by Peter Northouse, of the three case studies exemplifying authentic leadership one was about Greg Mortenson. Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, was once known for his selfless, purpose-driven work in creating schools in difficult political and geographical areas. Now, he is more known for lying about the extent of his work.

Authentic Library Leaders

Now more than ever, libraries are in search of authentic leaders because we have pressing problems. Budgets are being slashed around the country. In my own state, Governor Rick Perry has signed off on a budget that will cut 88 percent of the state library’s programs that aide and assist libraries throughout the state.

By  virtue of their transparency, self-discipline, and high ethical standards, authentic leaders enhance employees’ engagement with the organization and inspire behavior that goes beyond what is expected (Walumbwa, Wang, Wang, Schaubroeck, & Avolio, 2010). Frankly, that’s what we need to solve difficult problems.

In a study of 387 employees and their 129 direct supervisors, researchers found that supervisors who demonstrated authentic leadership characteristics led more motivated, empowered teams than those who were not authentic leaders. Because followers can identify with authentic leaders, they feel more empowered to make change as well (Walumbwa et al., 2010). We need employees that don’t just come to work for a paycheck – we need employees that come to work engaged in the profession and concerned about what’s happening around us. We need employees who are willing to go above and beyond to ensure our users are being served in spite of the cuts all around us.

The Vision Thing

Motivated employees who feel empowered are great, but all of that energy needs to be synchronized, and therein lies another role for the leader: vision-setting. Business guru John Kotter found that of the eight reasons why firms fail, three of them had to do with vision. Firms that failed underestimated the power of vision, undercommunicated the vision, or permitted obstacles to block the new vision. The Leadership Challenge places ‘Inspiring a Shared Vision’ in its model of effective leadership. Other studies on leadership have placed vision at the core of the transformational change process (Zaccaro & Banks, 2004), claiming that it is responsible for generating trust in leaders, aligning the beliefs and values of entire organizations, and intellectually stimulating all who work there (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996).

Vision can be a powerful motivator if it appeals to major stakeholders in an organization, including staff, customers, and community members. The business world has a variety of examples of successful visions. Kotter’s seminal work, Leading Change, identifies six characteristics good visions have.

Imaginable

The vision is something that is easily pictured. It doesn’t represent the organization as it is now; rather, it is a picture of the organization in the future. This ‘future organization’ provides people with a direction.

Desirable

The vision is something the appeals to a variety of stakeholders, not just a single group of people. Visions that ignore one group of stakeholders in favor of another will eventually demoralize followers and invariably spark resistance.

Feasible

The vision should not be so farfetched that it appears unattainable. In order to develop a vision that will seem feasible, it should be rooted in reality. That said, it should not be an incremental change, as this will not be inspirational. The right vision stretches an organization’s limits, but not to a point of incredulity.

Focused

The vision should provide a clear direction to work towards. Kotter provides the example, “To Be a Great Company,” as a vision that lacks enough focus to answer questions about where the organization is going.

Flexible

Just as a vision should not be too vague, it should also not be too prescriptive, limiting the options an organization has for achieving the vision. A flexible vision allows for the environment to change and the organization to adapt to it while remaining focused on the vision’s goals.

Communicable

The vision is easy to communicate. It shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes to explain well. If the vision is too complicated to communicate, it will eventually lose its power as others in the organization try to adopt it as their own.

Library Vision Statements

In looking at library vision statements posted on websites, it is clear that there are not a lot of what Kotter would define as good – and without a good vision statement, it will be difficult to align a whole library to achieving change even with a good leader.

It is clear that that the library world has yet to embrace a single definition of what constitutes a vision.  These statements range from long, multi-page documents that more closely resemble a mission statement (what a library does and its purpose) to one-liners than seem more like a slogan.

Kent State University Libraries

The Libraries provide information resources and services that are essential to research, discovery, and learning at Kent State University. Activities of our information professionals include synthesizing, organizing, evaluating, and providing access to the corpus of human knowledge and experience. We are committed to the broad-based support of our primary users – students, faculty, and staff – while also recognizing our role in ensuring and maintaining the Carnegie Research II status of the University. We also provide leadership in cooperation with other University offices in the visioning and management of new and more effective information resource services to the University community. Our vision embraces this ideal while acknowledging that we are bound by available fiscal resources.

It goes on to list seven statements of belief too long to include here. Obviously, this vision statement is much too complex to be easily communicated. It also speaks of the library as it is now and doesn’t provide an image of the library in the future.

The University of Texas at Arlington Library

The UT Arlington Library … the best choice for navigating the world of ideas.

This one is definitely communicable. However, it does not have enough focus to guide individuals in the organization. When confronted with a choice to create a learning commons or build a special collection, this vision statement wouldn’t lend much support. It’s also hard to imagine what this place will look like in five years with no imagery or description of the future library.

Keene State College in New Hampshire

Mason Library’s vision is to achieve excellence in the following: Mason Library partners with the campus community to prepare citizens ready to engage in the world. The Library is a knowledge center where students learn information literacy skills that empower them to navigate a rapidly changing environment. The Library offers a welcoming space at the heart of the intellectual endeavor integrating materials, technology, place, and teaching in the tradition of a public liberal arts institution.

This vision statement is a good balance between focused and flexible.  It highlights a distinct direction for the library: community partnerships, a knowledge center that adapts to new environments, and a physical space with materials and technology.  Still, it doesn’t specify strategies to achieve this future, nor does it tie the library to specific technologies.  “Materials,” for example, might mean books, journal articles, and other traditional library materials; however, if the institution shifted to a data-centric curriculum and adopted an e-reader program, this vision is still relevant.

The Power of Vision, Authentically Led

New technologies, shrinking budgets, the growth in the demand for ebooks and several other converging forces are changing the landscape for library work.  At the same time, the library’s relevance is being called into question in our communities, our schools, and our colleges and universities by those who would believe “It’s all on Google.”  Our institutions are competing for scarce resources: for public libraries, fire and police get funded as essential services; for school libraries, instructional units[1] get priority funding; and for colleges and universities, other schools and academic units are vying for the same funding libraries seek.

Clearly, libraries operate in a volatile environment that demands strong leaders to unify an organization and set a path for success. Authentic leadership describes how leaders can interact with followers to overcome organizational inertia and inspire action through purpose, values, relationships, self-discipline and heart.  These leaders have integrity and emotional intelligence, and they rally entire organizations around common, heart-felt goals using a clearly articulated vision of the future.

Emergent Leaders with Vision

Leaders are not always the director.  They can be found throughout the library and are identified by the way they are able to influence others to create a new future for the organization. Northouse (2010) identifies those who do not hold formal authority but who exhibit leadership qualities as emergent leaders.  These leaders are identified by the way they motivate others, initiate new ideas, and seek others’ opinions.  They are passionate and involved.

Library visions can (and should) be emergent as well.  All institutional visions were once just the vision of a single individual that were shaped by others in the institution. Kouzes and Posner elaborate:

We all have dreams and aspirations.  We all think about the future; we all want tomorrow to be better than today.  Leaders have to make sure that what they see is also something that others can see.  When visions are shared they attract more people, sustain higher levels of motivation, and withstand more challenges than those that are singular. (2002, p.105)

While you may not have the authority to define the vision of the library and draft it as part of a strategic plan, you certainly can have a vision and share it with others – even if it’s not in the context of formal planning meetings. For example, in developing the St. Edward’s University library website, I had conversations with each staff member at the library to come up with a shared vision for the site.  This vision was partly mine – I built the bones of it on my own – but it was shaped through conversations with people that knew the St. Edward’s community, including faculty and students.  The final vision that guided website development was:

The St. Edward’s University library website is the go-to resource for academic research for our faculty, staff and students.  It provides unfettered access to high-quality library materials and opportunities for website visitors who have never interacted with the library in any other way to expand their research capabilities through intuitive design, rich information literacy content, and ways to communicate with library staff.  The library’s website will be ubiquitous in the research lives of our users and its content and tools will be found throughout the SEU digital infrastructure.

Because each member of the organization contributed to this shared vision, it withstood early criticism and gained buy-in quickly.  Others saw themselves and their input in the website.  Part of my role as an authentic leader in this situation was to listen actively to others and be honest and open about my own intentions for the site.  I was passionate about making an excellent site that would serve the St. Edward’s University community by recognizing the needs and interests of all major stakeholders.  As corny as it sounds, it was an effort both of the mind and the heart, and I believe that is why it has been a success.

I’m not a director, but I certainly have a vision of what the library will be in the future.  I believe it is a vision that I share with several of my colleagues, and that helps guide my actions.  As my library embarks on a strategic planning process that began this month, I am ready to contribute my vision to the conversations that our entire staff will have about the direction our library will take.  If I do that with authenticity and heart and articulate a good vision, I will help steer this library into the future.

What You Can Do

You can be an authentic leader.  Here are some thoughts on becoming an authentic leader at your library, regardless of your position:

• Take leadership seriously.  Just as the library community has come to embrace teaching as a skill that requires passion and knowledge, so does leadership.
• Participate, if possible, in leadership development.  The American Library Association’s Emerging Leader’s Program is one example, but state library associations may offer something as well.  The most valuable learning experience I have had has been the Texas Library Association’s TALL Texans Leadership Institute, led by ALA president-elect Maureen Sullivan and George Washington University Libraries dean Jack Siggins.  If leadership is a phenomenon you’re really interested in understanding, there are graduate programs like Simmons College’s Managerial Leadership in the Information Professions [2] that can engage you in leadership theory and help you explore how leadership happens in libraries.
• Find your own vision and voice.  You cannot authentically lead using someone else’s vision and someone else’s passion (Kouzes & Posner, 1999).  I recommend the Leadership Challenge, which not only is a great read, but provides activities to articulate your authentic self.  This sounds touchy-feely, but it is something many of us do not do in the midst of our busy, hectic days.
• Lead.  Take the five dimensions of authentic leadership and apply them in your work, starting today.

Many thanks to Dr. Anne Marie Casey, director of the Hunt Library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Irene M. H. Herold, dean of Mason Library at Keene State College for their perspectives on this piece.  As always, thanks to all of my fellow Lead Pipe editors, but especially Emily Ford and Ellie Collier who provoked me with insightful comments and questions.

References

George, B. (2003). Authentic leadership: Rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting value. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ginsberg, B. (2011). The fall of the faculty: The rise of the all-administrative university and why it matters. New York: Oxford University Press.

Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kirkpatrick, S.A. & Locke, E.A. (1996). Direct and indirect effects of three core charismatic leadership components on performance and attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 36-51.

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (1999). Encouraging the heart: A leader’s guide rewarding and recognizing others. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2002). The leadership challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Walumbwa, F. O., Wang, P., Wang, H., Schaubroeck, J., & Avolio, B. J. (2010). Psychological processes linking authentic leadership to follower behaviors. Leadership Quarterly, 21(5), 901-914.

Zaccaro, S. J., & Banks, D. (2004). Leader visioning and adaptability: Bridging the gap between research and practice on developing the ability to manage change. Human Resource Management, 43(4), 367-380.

by Neil B on Flickr

Introduction

Almost three years ago, Emily Ford wrote a post on ALA’s membership pyramid.  In this post, she commented on the need for the American Library Association to engage people she called Level 2 and Level 3 members – those who paid dues to ALA but who were not involved or only marginally so.  She argued that failing to do so would lead to the organization’s irrelevance and downfall.  The topic generated 44 comments, second most of all of our posts to this date – and it did so in the opening weeks of the blog.

The comments included a response from then ALA president-elect Camila Alire, who acknowledged the issues in the post:

We hear you! We have heard your concerns from many other folks. We know that we have to stay relevant to folks coming in as new members and members for less than 5 or so years. We know we have to think/act out of the box.

Don’t give up on ALA. We are working on it — but we are such a “process” organization that it is taking more time then we would like to admit.

Alire followed through on her promise and established the Young Professionals Task Force whose charge was to look at issues of engagement and retention with young professionals.  The initial work of this group resulted in a list of recommended actions for the Association to take.  The list included some concrete steps to more fully engage young members.

The Task Force presented its recommendations to the ALA Executive Board in hopes that they would spur action on behalf of young members.  What happened was revelatory for the group, and reflection on the events that followed provides a road map for not only young members to get involved, but for all Level 2 and Level 3 members to participate in changing an organization to meet their needs.

ALA Doesn’t Have a Magic Wand

ALA’s Executive Board did not take long to respond to the Task Force.  In short, they told the Task Force that it was asking them to endorse several recommendations that they have no ability to endorse. The recommendation would either have to go to the policy committee of ALA Council, or to Divisions and Roundtables. Executive Board couldn’t simply make these recommendations happen.

In a column for American Libraries, former ALA president Jim Rettig echoed this message:

With all due respect, if ALA members of any age group are waiting for a “magical entity” named ALA to bring about change of the sort and at the pace the Young Librarians Working Group and many other members want, my experience over more than three decades indicates that they will have a very long wait.

ALA is us—change for its members comes through our initiatives. The most helpful thing ALA can do is provide an environment in which members can continuously refine and redefine what participation means—an environment with not just appropriate tools, but also with enticing incentives. The best thing members can do is use that environment to get what they want out of ALA. A little rebellion is a medicine necessary for the sound health of our Association.

To put it bluntly, ALA is not your mom.  Each member is responsible for using what resources the association provides to shape the organization into something worthwhile, and from an initial look  at the association’s website, ALA (the BIG ALA, not its divisions) offers many opportunities for individuals looking to engage with the association and its work:

• In-person conferences twice a year
• National Library Legislative Day, Virtual Library Legislative Day and the Legislative Action Center
• ALAConnect, a social networking / workspace tool
• The Emerging Leaders program
• ALA Governance (including Council and Executive Board)
• The Copyright Advisory Network

This list of resources alone allows motivated members (even those without any financial support) to take legislative advocacy action on a national or state level, discuss copyright issues with other librarians and copyright policy experts, and develop online communities around topics of interest or need.

With additional money and time, members get access to discussion groups and social events at the conferences and the ability to participate on the ground in national legislative action.

Successful networking and a body of professional work will earn members the potential to run for office, increase members’ chances of getting involved in committee work, and having connections to draw upon when looking for jobs.

There isn’t a shortage of opportunities, and at first glance, ALA is providing the environment in which members can connect and make the association worthwhile.  Are these opportunities enough to make ALA worthwhile?

So What’s The Fuss?

Despite these opportunities, we still see people who believe the association is irrelevant, has a closed and elitist structure, and provides low value for the amount of investment ALA requires.

The Young Professionals Task Force responded to Rettig’s column by agreeing that ALA members are the drivers of change and value in the association, but also reminding readers what it is like to be new:

To new members, who are still trying to memorize acronyms and study the organizational chart, and who have never spoken to anyone in a position of power within the association, being an ALA member feels like being a guest on a cruise ship: you’re just along for the ride.

New members’ lack of knowledge and information is a barrier to participation in the association, even for those motivated to get involved in association work.  In a recent research article titled “New Kids on the Block: My First Time in a Political Community,” Dudash and Harris uncovered that political involvement is partly defined by “’having knowledge’ or ‘having information’ about politics” (p. 475). In the instance of politics, involvement means casting a vote for a candidate and engaging in discourse about issues.  In associations, it’s not entirely different – we also have elections and engage with others to learn or teach.  Armed only with cursory knowledge of the association, new ALA members will have trouble finding meaningful ways to engage beyond attending a typical conference program.

Going back to Dudash and Harris’s political research, we find a telling example of how young people make connections and get involved in supporting a cause or a person:

I wasn’t an Obama supporter, none of us were, but we went to this house party for Obama. We felt like we were a part of the party, even though we weren’t supporters. It made us want to be supporters. Even a house party made us feel a part of something. (p. 476)

The party led to an engaged group of individuals more likely to investigate issues, take action, and participate in the political process.  How can we help new members of ALA – those without a complete picture of what the association is and does – get to a point where they feel like they are a ‘part of something’ and the want to be involved in making the association better?

#makeithappen is How to Make It Happen

The only comment posted to the Young Professionals Task Force’s response to Jim Rettig was by JP Pocaro of 8bitlibrary.com, plugging an unofficial ALA Annual Dance Party in New Orleans.  It’s a way for people who enjoy dance parties to ‘feel a part of something.’  Even with no stated professional purpose, it serves one.

It is easy for people who have been members of ALA for a long time and whose schedules are filled with meetings, discussion groups, and “official networking events” to perceive dance parties that last into the night as a misuse of time at conference; however, these parties do serve an important purpose for professional librarians who like to dance or go to dance clubs.  Even if there are no professional discussions, it fosters a sense of belonging and gives people a reason to get together.  It makes being a part of ALA more valuable, because people develop friendships that turn into professional discussions later in the conference.

The dance party is not sponsored by ALA.  All of the initiatives at the beginning of this post that are sponsored by ALA are quite different than the dance party. There’s formality, structure, and in some cases, an application process and acceptance or rejection.

There is a need for both, and if ALA wants to remain true to its vision of fostering an environment in which members receive incentives for reshaping what participation means, then they need to support all types of events, including dance parties and impromptu networking events and presentations.

Looking at their activity, they do to some extent.  For example, at ALA Midwinter in San Diego, a space was set up with a projector and screen in the main hall of the convention center, complete with round tables and power and connections for laptops.

There are other examples of librarians – particularly young librarians – working outside of the official ALA structure because it doesn’t meet their needs.  For example, the ALA Think Tank sprouted out of a need for sharing expenses at conference, coordinate shared experiences amoung attendees, and the need to be able to respond to new ideas quickly without having to suffer through ALA’s bureaucracy.  If participants in the Think Tank want to hold an impromptu flash mob in to raise awareness of the importance of libraries, they don’t need a conference programming committee to do it.  As their hasgtag suggests, they just #makeithappen.

Action Items for ALA and its Members

The first and most important object for ALA should be to support these member created initiatives – even those that are outside of the ALA structure.  Continue to share news, events, and links to Unconferences, Think Tank groups and Dance Parties over official communication channels like the ALA Facebook Page or Twitter feeds.  People new to the profession look to ALA first, because the association is the primary organization of the profession.  It gets visibility in library schools and in libraries.  Let’s add these non-ALA opportunities for participation to the communication we give new members.

The ALA Membership Committee could create a welcome packet for new librarians that features the structure of ALA and a way to find their home in association activities, including committee work, conference attendance, ALAConnect groups, the New Members Round Table, and others.  The packet should also feature non-ALA activities that a new librarian may want to be involved with, depending on preferences and needs.

ALA might even consider sending financial support to these external groups if possible without attempting to absorb them.  Help these member-driven groups to develop the environment for young librarians to succeed.  This may require some maneuvering if ALA by laws do not allow for financing non-ALA initiatives with its finances.

Seasoned members need to take the same approach.  Many members are extremely good at involving new librarians in association activities.  For example, mentoring programs in the New Members Round Table and other units of the association deliberately set up structures by which experienced librarians play host to new librarians.  These mentors provide great advice for a new librarian to get involved with the formal structure of ALA, like advising people to go to committee meetings even when they are not on the roster in order to network with people that might place them on the committee.  Mentors give people strategies on which conference programs are the best, and they encourage people to apply for programs like Emerging Leaders.  They recommend these paths because that is what has worked for them – but that might not be the right advice for everyone.

What members need to do is to be aware of all of the other member-driven events going on that new librarians might be more attracted to than the official cadre of ALA initiatives.  These external groups (like the Think Tank) might be just what they need to grow as professionals, even if it’s not what people have needed in the past.

In time, young librarians become … not young librarians.  The association becomes less confusing.  People in positions of power in the organization become less intimidating.  Life as a professional becomes normal.  Perhaps then these members will find ways to shape the association itself into what they want and what it needs to be in the future.

The Pyramid Revised

ALA has done a fantastic job of trying to support young librarians.  Participation options are plentiful for those who can work in its structure.  Those who thrive in those situations rise to become what Emily called Level 1 members.  There will still be a massive amount of members who pay their dues, attend conference, but don’t get involved in committee work or other activities of the association.  These are Emily’s Level 2 members.

In the new model, there will still be Level 3 members, defined as dues-paying members who join as a professional obligation, like the fact that ALA provides toolkits and advocates on library issues.

If ALA and its membership do a good job, though, we eliminate the disenfranchised member that was also part of Level 3. These members create their own structure to thrive in and occupy a shadow Level 1 kind of member, engaged, active, making change and participating at high levels in whatever structure they create that works for them – all supported by the association and its members.

Much like the now official unconference that happens, the methods and models these young leaders develop will become part of what it means to be a member of ALA.

What Works for You?

If you are familiar with initiatives not mentioned in this post that happen outside the auspices of ALA, please share them here!  What can members do now that will make the association better for its membership?  Let us know in the comments.

Many, many thanks to Jody Bailey and Emily Ford for taking the time to clean this post up, offer encouraging remarks, and making the post much better than it was in draft form.

References

Ford, E. (2008, October 15). On the ALA membership pyramid [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/on-the-ala-membership-pyramid/.

Young Professionals Task Force. (2010, June 11). Young Librarians Working Group final report and recommendations. Retrieved from http://connect.ala.org/node/105013

Rettig, J. (2011, January 4). Is the association ripe for rebellion? [Web log post]. Retieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/01042011/association-ripe-rebellion

Johnson, A. (2010, September 23). ALA is not your mom [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.abbythelibrarian.com/2010/09/ala-is-not-your-mom.html

American Library Association. (2008, April 23). ALA | American Library Association website.  Retrieved from http://www.ala.org

Young Professionals Task Force. (2011, April 4). ALA is us, and we’re looking younger every day [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/ala-members-blog/ala-us-and-we-re-looking-younger-every-day

Dudash, E.A., & Harris, S. (2011). New kids on the block: My first time in a political community. American Behavioral Scientist, 55, p. 469-478.

Keeter, S., Horowitz, J., & Tyson, A. (2008). Young voters in the 2008 election.  Retrieved from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1031/young-voters-in-the-2008-election

Sweeney, P.C. (2011, February 21). The revolution won’t be televised, but it will be Facebooked [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://pcsweeney.com/2011/02/21/the-revolution-wont-be-televised-but-it-will-be-facebooked/

Kleinman, D. (2010, November 24). The ALA alienates librarians because it is politicized, elitist, group think oriented, not very professional, and generally does not serve the needs of librarians [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/11/ala-alienates-librarians-because-it-is.html

Librarians are always struggling to convince someone of something: convincing voters to say ‘yes’ to a library bond; persuading a library director to invest in a text-messaging reference tool; trying to get students to use library resources instead of Google. One of the most effective ways to be successful is to learn the art of “making it their idea.”

In his book, The Education of an Accidental CEO, David Novak (2009) illustrates a crucial idea in advertising a product:

You can tell people to go out and buy something, but that doesn’t make them do it. But if you appeal to both the head and the heart in a compelling and relevant way, then people will come up with the idea to buy of their own accord (p. 44).

Novak goes on to describe how Nike uses minimal language in its commercials, never telling viewers to buy their shoes. Instead, they fill the screen with images of professional athletes performing amazing feats in their products. The idea is to let the customer come to the conclusion that Nike shoes will help them accomplish their athletic goals.

In fact, very few advertisements tell people explicitly to do anything. They present information that leads customers to come up with the idea of buying their product on their own.

Convincing people by “making it their idea” isn’t unique to marketing. In Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up (Bing, 2003), there’s a chapter devoted to “convincing the elephant that it was the elephant’s idea” (followed by “Getting Drunk with the Elephant” and “Frightening the Elephant with Mice”). Though done with a little more tongue-in-cheek panache, this book highlights the usefulness of the concept in leadership and management.

Why does this approach work so well? Business people might argue that “making it their idea” is an ego boost managers need in order to act on something. However, educators have long understood the value in letting people come to their own conclusions, and it has less to do with ego than it does with the way the brain learns. People feel a rush of pride when they come up with ideas, solutions and concepts for themselves and see the value in what they have just learned much more clearly than if they had simply been told a good idea. When it comes to seeing the value in libraries and their resources, we need to leverage a mode of teaching that allows students to experience information literacy concepts in this way.

The Learning Cycle

In The Learning Cycle, Ann Cavallo and Edmond Marek (1997) describe a teaching technique used in science education that presents students with deliberately confusing or confounding situations. With minimal instruction, students try to make sense of these situations based on prior knowledge, observation, and experimentation. At its core, the learning cycle method embodies the nature of science and helps students develop critical thinking skills.

Cavallo (2008) describes an example of the learning cycle, illustrating how it works. In an activity called “The New Society,” a small subset of a class is sent outside while the instructor tells the remaining students that they are a new society with three simple rules:

1. They can only say the words ‘yes’ and ‘no.’
2. They only respond to people of the same gender and ignore those of opposite gender.
3. Regardless of the question, they always respond ‘yes’ if the questioner is smiling and always respond ‘no’ if the questioner is not smiling.

The students sent outside (called ‘the anthropologists’) are asked to find out as much information as they can about this new society that has recently been discovered on a remote island.

As the anthropologists move about the classroom, they are confronted with confounding answers. They quickly discover the first rule through their initial observations. The second rule takes more time – often students will develop hypotheses and test them on students leading to the discovery of the second rule.

The third rule is much more difficult to figure out. Students feel frustration, anxiety and impatience. Proclamations of “They’re lying!” and “They answer randomly!” are flung about until they finally figure out the third rule.

Throughout this process, the teacher simply provides guiding questions when people get stuck, on occasion reminding them how scientists find things out by making hypotheses and testing them out.

Two results of this lesson for students: utter joy or relief from solving a frustrating problem and experience working in a confusing environment but inventing a solution to a problem themselves (without the instructor providing the answer).  The joy or relief is what builds a love of learning into the experience, and the act of inventing a solution is critical thinking in action.

How People Learn

While many of us have been told that active learning and critical thinking are vital for our information literacy programs, very few of us understand the ‘how’ and even fewer the ‘why.’

Active learning is important because it more closely models the way that humans learn. Experiments carried out by Piaget (1973) and other noted educational psychologists (Renner & Marek, 1988; Inhelder & Piaget, 1969) indicate that all learning begins with data collection (called assimilation in Renner & Marek, 1990).

This assimilation can be the observation of a phenomenon or reading of new materials. In many cases, the new data is incongruous with the learner’s current view of the world, and they can’t make sense of it.

The next step in learning is trying to make sense of the new information (called accommodation in Renner & Marek, 1990). Critical thinking skills are developed during this phase as learners make sense of the new information by inventing rules, testing hypotheses, and changing their world view in light of this new data.

In this stage, they are no longer just memorizing information or learning a series of clicks; rather, they are actively inventing new ways of understanding the world and taking ownership of the knowledge they’re creating.

The final step is called organization (Renner & Marek, 1990), and this is when they use their newly created knowledge and skills to solve other problems, and figuring out where else their new knowledge can be applied.

The learning cycle instructional method – giving students a new situation, asking them to make sense of it, and serving merely as a guide in their process – models the way people learn, and as a result, generates authentic, meaningful learning experiences for students. Compared to lectures or demonstrations where students are told what the answers are and then perform exercises that verify that what they are told is correct, they are making the new knowledge out of their own ideas.

Library Instruction as Science?

Modeling instructional activities after the way people learn is vital for making learning experiences that ‘stick.’ Typical library instruction involves copious amounts of “click here, then click here, and once you’re there, click here.” There’s little discovery or invention of core information literacy concepts. Students are told how to use information resources, told how to use citation styles, and told the consequences of unethical use of information. How can we make discovery of information literacy concepts more… scientific? Can students invent information literacy concepts on their own, given a scenario and a librarian as a guide?

Let’s take peer reviewed journals as an example. At its worst, library instruction on this topic is equivalent to “Check this box for peer reviewed articles in your results. It’s what your professors want.” This kind of instruction not only goes against the way people learn new ideas, but also undermines the importance of the peer review process by reducing it to “because your professor wants it.”

Active learning can be used to get students to explore issues of peer reviewed journals and have them compare them to magazine or popular literature. While this introduces the element of discovery and active learning, it’s only discovering the difference between the two types of publications, not the importance of the peer review process. If a librarian in this class room tells them why peer review is important, even after this activity, it’s still telling, not students discovering.

Instead, I develop learning cycles that reflect how people learn. In this instance, I give students a situation where they don’t have an answer but must work together to solve a problem. I tell students they have decided to start a magazine and they want to publish the best, newest research done in educational psychology (or whatever field they’re majoring in). Unlike TIME or Newsweek, their articles should be useful for researchers who are pushing the boundaries of knowledge in their field. They plan on sending out a call across the Internet asking for people to send in their best papers for the magazine.

I then ask the students to come up with a method for judging how good a paper they receive is and let them go to it. As they come up with criteria (e.g., “It has to be undiscovered knowledge” and “It must be based on sound evidence”), I ask how they, as college students, will be able to tell what’s good and what’s not. Who is qualified to answer those questions? How will they, as the editors, use these people?

As they work to create this new publication, they will be inventing peer review. Peer review will be an idea that they came up with themselves. They may call it something else, but the core purposes of peer review will be in their responses. As a library instructor, my goal is to guide them with questions that challenge their thoughts, and finally, give it the label of ‘peer reviewed’ once they’ve established the concept.

This lesson models how the mind actually works.

There Isn’t Time!

Learning cycles, like the one described above, take lots more time. It would have taken at most two or three minutes to explain peer review and have students tell you why it is an important feature of scholarly research. However, if students don’t invent it, it’s much less likely to stick.

The learning cycle on the other hand would take twenty or thirty minutes. Librarians don’t have the luxury of time!

There are some solutions. In an article for the Texas Library Journal, Jeremy Donald suggests a model of library instruction that offloads most of the technical details to online tutorials and learning modules (see “Step 6” in Donald, 2010). This enables library instruction to devote needed time to the learning cycle.

Donald’s model requires librarians to think about the instructional needs of student in a different way. Rather than think linearly about what skills and knowledge students need to have, think about the tasks they need to do in order of difficulty or complexity. What parts of the lesson will be most confusing and most important? Identify one or two concepts, and plan on spending at least half of your time on those topics, including time students explore new tools and ideas independently and running learning cycle-style lessons.

The rest of the time is devoted to brief introductions and answering questions. This type of model not only creates the time needed to run meaningful, engaging lessons on key topics, it forces library instructors to identify what those core topics are, the first step in developing good learning cycle lesson plans.

Developing Learning Cycles

With that said, the first step in developing a learning cycle lesson plan is to identify those core concepts students should learn. For example, for a lesson on plagiarism, some of the topics that may come up are:

• What is plagiarism?
• What are the penalties for academic dishonesty?
• How do you effectively use quotes or paraphrasing?
• How do you cite articles using a specific citation style?

Of these, I see the second (academic dishonesty policies) and the fourth (mechanics of citation) as topics that could easily be off-loaded to online tutorials or even printed brochures. There’s no need to spend time in class covering these topics, short of connecting students with resources to learn more about them and their importance.

The other two are great topics for learning cycles. I usually approach these topics from a personal perspective: how did I come to understand these concepts myself? What’s important about them? How can I create situations or activities that will lead students to invent the concepts on their own?

At its core, avoiding plagiarism means giving credit for someone else’s work. How can I get students to come to understand this concept without simply telling it to them?

Before I tell students what the class is about, I ask them to take out a sheet of paper and be prepared to write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind after I say a secret word. When students are ready, I shout, “Plagiarism!” They scribble words and phrases down then I ask them to hold up their papers. Words associated with malicious cheating usually crop up: stealing, dishonest, and sometimes lazy.

I then ask them to take on the role of summer school teacher with an imaginary group of low-performing students in an English class. They are told they’ve received a paper from a student written fairly poorly, but right in the middle, a sentence or two of pure academic gold. What happened? When they say “Plagiarism!” I ask them to describe the actual events and student actions that led up to this. I ask them to think about student motivation and behavior, and I prompt them with questions like, “What was going through the student’s mind when they pulled in these sentences into this document?”

What results is astounding. Students describe quite innocent situations: perhaps the student didn’t know that copy-and-pasting information without quotes was wrong; maybe they couldn’t find an author on the website and assumed you didn’t need to cite anonymous sources; or perhaps it was malicious cheating.

Usually students don’t view this situation as the latter. Instead, they’re forced to revise their own definitions of plagiarism based on the critical examination of the scenario they were presented with. Plagiarism is no longer cheating or stealing… so what is it?

Again, these discussions take time, but they’re valuable experiences that students will be able to apply in more situations.  In these scenarios, students are employing critical thinking skills – they are working through problems by discussing them with peers, proposing potential solutions, and evaluating their own and others’ responses. There’s more to a learning cycle than rote memorization of the concepts the instructor intends to teach; instead, it’s problem solving.

Conclusion

Library instructors should develop a “less is more” philosophy. There is real value in spending time on learning cycles because it does more than just pay lip service to active learning and critical thinking – it helps students develop them.

Faculty members and students alike may be anxious if they don’t get the step-by-step instructions they’re used to from the library session. Combating this expectation is our challenge. Donald (2010) also addresses buy-in and collaboration as a way of preparing faculty members for these kinds of drastic changes to the typical library session.

Appropriately, Donald says, “They are likely to wait to hear your ideas before introducing their own, and they may re-state an idea of yours as one of their own. This is to be encouraged, as it signals their investment in the collaboration and its outcome” (2010, 129). How’s that for “making it their idea?”

For a visual representation of Jeremy Donald’s instructional design model, see his slides from a recent Texas Library Association webinar, titled “Technology & Information Literacy Instruction: A Model for Active Learning Environments” at http://bit.ly/cpt6ON.

Thanks to Michelle Millet, Ellie Collier, and Kim Leeder for their feedback on this post.

References

Bing, S. (2002). Throwing the elephant: Zen and the art of managing up. New York: HarperBusiness.

Cavallo, A. M. L. (2008). Experiencing the nature of science: An interactive, beginning-of-semester activity. Journal of College Science Teaching, 37(5), 12-15.

Donald, J. (2010). Using technology to support faculty and enhance coursework at academic institutions. Texas Library Journal, 85(4), 129-131. Retrieved from http://www.txla.org/ce/Collaboration/Donald.pdf.

Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Marek, E. A. & Cavallo, A. M. L. (1997). The learning cycle: Elementary school science and beyond. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Novak, D. (2009). The education of an accidental CEO: Lessons learned from the trailer park to the corner office. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Piaget, J. (1973). Psychology of intelligence. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co.

Renner, J.W. & Marek, E.A. (1988). The learning cycle and elementary school science teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

Renner, J.W. & Marek, E.A. (1990). An educational theory base for science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(3), 241-246.