Innovative Libraries: Tales from the Stacks

1
Innovative LibrariesTales from the Stacks

• Jill Hurst-Wahl Christina K. Pikas
• Hurst Associates, Ltd. The Johns Hopkins Univ.
• Applied Physics Laboratory

www.hurstassociates.com/ppt/cil2007_d203.ppt
2
Agenda

• Why is This Study Important?
• Research Methods
• What Our Participants Told Us
• Conclusions
• Advice From Participants
• QA

3
Background

• 2006 Failing to Innovate Not an Option
• Need to innovative to remain relevant
• Could be driven by community needs
• Formal processes exist, but
• 2007 Pikas Hurst-Wahl
• What could be learned from library leaders?
• Are there useful tales from the stacks?

4
What is Innovation?

• The creation of a new process or product
  resulting from study and experimentation.  The
  successful implementation of creativity.  It
  combines free thinking and brainstorming with
  careful planning, execution, and evaluation of
  results.

5
Why is this study Important?

• The need for real-world analysis on library mgmt.
  support for innovation
• Pressure from all sides to innovate
• Seemingly insurmountable barriers
• The desire to know how successful library
  managers understand
• The role of staff, structure and funding in
  library innovation
• The role of the user in innovation

6
Methods

• Why Qualitative Research?
• We wanted to know best practices
• Lack of data to compile useful survey
• We wanted in-depth information
• Make the invisible, visible  librarians
  frequently don't take credit and brag about
  themselves!

7
Methods

• Purposeful sample
• Semi-structured interview, flexible
• Most by phone, one on-site
• Not recorded
• Coded analyzed by C J

8
Limitations

• Time! (Work, school, CIL)
• Types of organizations
• Note-taking vs. taped interviews
• Analysis is a work in progress
• Limited member checks

9
 Managers From

• One special library, 26 FTE employees
• Two academic libraries
• 30K students
• 3,000 FTE students, two campus
• Two school library systems
• 1 district, 67 schools, 53K students
• 22 districts, 63 school libraries, 26K student
• Three public libraries
• Inner-city central public library
• Mid-size public library with 56 FTE
• County library system, 250 FTE

10
Manager Personality

• All were amazing, enthusiastic, and smart
  people.  Other traits
• Persistent in dealing with non-goal oriented,
  non-team oriented, non-leadership people (ckp-3)
• Able to see the big picture or view the box
  from a different angle

What would best serve the organization? (ckp-3)
11
Manager Personality

• Proud of staff, system, accomplishments
• Willing to ask for permission as well as ask for
  forgiveness
• Model (the verb) behavior

12
Lucky?

• Supportive bosses
• Technology advanced leadership supportive of
  getting new tools, even ones that are expensive
  (jhw-3)
• Leadership is open to anything (jhw-1)
• Wonderful staff
• I'm lucky I have an incredible staff (ckp-4)
• Pre-existing innovative culture
• Healthy budgets

13
Some create their own luck

• Hire amazing people
• Work with people who are willing to try new
  things
• Work around uncooperative people
• It's all out there but let more interested people
  find things - they become very positive voices -
  focusing on early adopters (ckp-4)

14
Money Plenty vs. Lack

• While some were well funded, others found the
  motivation to be innovative out of their limited
  funding.
• expensive is not equal to innovative! (ckp-2)

15
Formal vs. Informal

• Our participants reported using both formal and
  informal brainstorming, submission/approval,
  planning, and evaluation processes
• Explore, read reviews, pilot back off or expand
  (jhw-3)

16
Formal Processes

• Item on staff evaluations
• An innovation goal / Expectation to serve
• Written into the strategic plan
• Recognition for innovative ideas
• Formal Submission Approval Processes
• But...delegated to the lowest level possible
• Task forces to identify needs, innovations (jhw-2)

17
Informal Processes Freedom to Play

• Innovative library managers do not micromanage
  their staff.  Instead, they allow them time and
  resources to play.

18
Informal Processes Freedom to Play

• They try things that they don't know how to do
  or that are outside of their experience.  Put
  people in that position and it feeds on itself..
  increases confidence (ckp-1)
• One branch tried it and now others have picked
  it up...they all have permission to try (ckp-2)
• Experiment, show it to everyone else, then get
  permission to put it in production (jhw-1)

19
Informal ProcessesInnovative Approaches

• Innovative library managers look for ideas
  everywhere
• business books ? other departments
• customers ? non-LIS conferences
• And for everything
• Shelving
• Checking out books
• Organizing workflow, work spaces

20
Informal Processes Living the Innovative Life

• We live it so things don't seem innovative to
  us (jhw-3)Tech people see themselves as being
  innovative.  Librarians see it as doing their
  jobs.  Constantly evaluating.  Matching programs
  with population (ckp-4)

21
Entrepreneurial Role

• Several mentioned the library as the organization
  that came up with the ideas, did pilot projects,
  and then transitioned the functioning program to
  another department, complete with best
  practices.we are small business incubator.
  funding agency is the venture capitalist.
  (ckp-4)

22
Entrepreneurial Role

• The library
• has the enterprise view
• has access to ideas/vision
• can do research
• is the home of innovation

23
There are No Failures

• We asked each manager about things they'd tried
  that failed.  Overwhelmingly, the managers stated
  that there were no failures.
• Some innovations were too early
• Some had unexpected consequences
• Some did not have customer/partner buy-in
• they were things to bring more attention to what
  we had, not what we needed to do (ckp-1)

24
There are No Failures

• They learned, identified what didn't work, tried
  a new approach, got more buy-in/feedback the next
  time...
• Don't worry about mistakes...know that things
  will break (jhw-1)

25
Staff Structure

• Need to do more with fewer FTE
• One reported 30 less in last 4 years
• Flat staff vs. growing user base
• Limited hierarchical structure
• Aging staff that needs to work smarter
• Want staff to be self-motivated
• Innovation used to mean hiring more staff.  Now
  innovation means doing more with less money.
  (jhw-2)

26
Mentoring

• Our participants hire creative, enthusiastic
  staff, and have them manage projects.  The
  manager offers coaching and mentoring in project
  management.
• Everyone has something that they can feel
  passionate about, my job is to coach them in how
  to do something and then they take it to the next
  level (ckp-3)

27
Conclusions

• Non-innovative ? Innovative
• Motivation
• Funding
• Staff size

28
Conclusions

• Atmosphere
• Everyone looking for new ideas
• Low risk experimentation and play
• "Committee of the whole" to bounce ideas off of
  (jhw-1)
• Training
• Ways to think about innovation
• Planning/project management

29
Advice Leadership

• Be committed
• Embrace technology or promote those who can
• Be open to successes failures
• Have a plan / long-range plan
• Have courage
• Make a financial commitment
• Hire a consultant

30
Advice Training

• Attend workshops conferences (leadership
  staff)
• Teach techniques that help with innovation
• Read share what you read
• Reward staff for participating in training

31
Advice Focus

• Focus on your users their needs
• Make yourself available to your users
• Implement their good ideas

32
Who Inspires Them?

• Americans for Libraries Council (ALC)
• Cornell University
• Liverpool (NY) Public Library
• MIT 
• Middle Country Public Library- Centereach
• Mukilteo (WA) School District
• NY Library Association
• Orange County (FL) Library System

• Public Library Association (PLA)
• Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County 
• Richmond (B.C.) Public Library Ironwood Branch
• Smaller college libraries
• South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative 
• Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library
• Western Benchmarking Consortium

33
Final Advice

• You have to feel excitement and passion and
  have fun and laugh and make mistakes and feel
  it and these are hard things to do. (ckp-1)

34
Contact Information

• Jill Hurst-WahlHurst Associates,
  Ltd.hurst_at_HurstAssociates.com
• Christina K. PikasThe Johns Hopkins
  UniversityApplied Physics Laboratorychristina.pi
  kas_at_jhuapl.edu