Repurposing 23 Things for Health Sciences Educators?!

"23 Things" is a library staff development learning concept centered on social collaboration tools. It was conceived by Helene Blowers in 2006, and libraries and library organizations of all sizes and types have adapted the idea for their own staff. The focus of the program is a hands-on, self-directed, and innovative way to introduce staff, volunteers, trustees, and others to Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis.

This afternoon I 'attended' a 2-hour 23 Things Summit that had over 250 participants. The summit consisted of 'presentations' from several successful programs who shared their best practices and lessons learned. I am not going to spend any more time on the summit since you can revisit it here. (Note: the number of attendees Twittering the event made the summit a trending topic on Twittersearch and Twittergrid, )

I think we now have enough anecdotal and survey evidence to say that the program is a success in the library community. Both the technical knowledge and technology learning behaviors of participants does change by the end of the program. Great job to all!

As an academic librarian, however, I have noticed that the same concerns and issues that lead to he development of 23 Things within the library community also exist in colleges and departments across our campus. Colleges and departments are being pressured more and more to include social and Web 2.0 technologies into their educational experiences. In fact, I have a introductory meeting tomorrow to discuss a 'social networking strategy' for our college of medicine.

My first response to the meeting request that I received last week was essentially "it is great to have a strategy, but it will not be effective if the faculty don't understand or know how to use the tools. We need to come up with a way to get them engaged."

About 90 minutes into the summit a light bulb went off. It was was an exciting 'AHA' moment.

What I will be discussing at the meeting tomorrow is the idea of '23 Things for Health Sciences Educators.' It will essentially be a re-purposing of the 23 Things concept for the continuing education of health sciences faculty. What's that? Sure, library staff can participate as well!

The more I think about it I think this is an idea worth pursuing grant funds for. I also felt that idea is the way to go once I realized something. The audience I am looking at is the health sciences. The program is called 23 Things. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. I see the logo now, a double helix. With such a neat theme the program would have to be successful!

If this is such a good idea, why am I telling you and giving away my great idea? Perhaps, it is to find some possible collaborators to move this idea to a state, NLM midwest region, or national initiative? At the very least, it is to document the idea... Sphere: Related Content

Does Font Make a Difference in the Effectiveness of Library Handouts?

Every so often a handout or document published by a library comes across my desk that makes me squint or shake my head. The problem is frequently with bad design, colors, or layout. Many times the problem is when the author, trying to be cute or unique, decides to use a fancy font. Even at my library I'll make the argument that a simple sans serif font like Arial should be used.  It is not uncommon for the reaction to be a look of "what do you know? You're not a graphic artist!" 

Well, I have found research to back up my point of view. 

A University of Michigan psychologist and grad student, Norbert Schwarz and Hyunjin Song, wanted to see if they could motivate a group of 20-year-old college students to exercise regularly. The students were given written instructions for a regular exercise routine. Some were given instructions printed in Arial, a plain font; others got the instructions in a Brush font, looking as if it was written by hand with a Japanese paintbrush. The Ariel font was easier to read then the unfamiliar and much harder to read Brush font.

The outcome was that the students receiving the Arial font instructions were more enthusiastic about the exercise routine than those receiving them in the Brush font. The psychologists repeated the experiment using a sushi roll recipe and saw similar results. The authors noted:

Apparently the students’ brains mistook the ease of reading about exercise for the ease of actually doing push-ups and crunches, and this misunderstanding motivated them to think about a life change. Those who struggled through the Japanese brushstrokes had no intention of heading to the gym; the reading alone tired them out.

While the fonts used in the study were dramatically different, the research does indicate that font choice can impact the effectiveness of library handouts.

Hyunjin Song, Norbert Schwarz (2008). If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do: Processing Fluency Affects Effort Prediction and Motivation Psychological Science, 19 (10), 986-988 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02189.x

Sphere: Related Content

TechTips: The Blog

Over the past two months or so, I have been emailing various technology related tips and tidbits to the students, staff, and faculty of The Ohio State University Libraries' system. The motivation to research, write, and communicate these TechTips came after many hallway conversations. It seemed to me that there was a growing need for our staff for a regular dose of emerging technology talk. 

The first TechTips were sent as email messages to gauge interest, plus, I know virtually everyone reads their email. Based on all the great feedback I received on the email version, I decided to set up "TechTips: The Blog." ( RSS ) to publish, archive, and syndicate the TechTips.

While many of the TechTips I publish on the TechTips blog may seem old technology and concepts to many readers of this blog, it will be the first time that many OSUL staff have read or heard about them. Perhaps for your staff as well.

I have a couple other ideas in the works relating to other staff technology education initiatives that I will make sure to communicate while they still aren't quite ready.  Sphere: Related Content

Using IDEAS to Create an Innovative Library

I have been reading The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan. The book provides a different way of thinking about management processes to make innovation a central driver of a business. It draws upon the authors experience at Proctor and Gamble. There, they made building an innovative culture a fundamental part of the organizational strategy by using the concept of IDEAS.

Inclusive - the benefits of diverse thinking and ideas

Decisive - eliminating organizational debate and overanalysis to enable faster innovation development

External - being in touch with customers

Agile - able to react quickly to changing customer and market conditions and taking calculated risks

Simple - ongoing streamlining and simplification of structures and processes.

I think that libraries do the inclusive and external parts very well. However, we have a lot of work to on being decisive, agile, and simple.

In fact, we tend to have very specific processes and procedures (committees; task forces) to encourage debate and overanalysis (all areas must be represented) which prevents us from being agile (12-18 month development cycle).

The book also reinforces two other characteristics of innovation that I have learned. First, innovation is not about the end product. It is not about the widget produced. Instead, innovation is all about the new interpersonal connections and the intersection of ideas which emerge.

Second, leadership plays a very important role. Leadership does not mean the administrative organization. Instead, it is about building a pipeline of leaders which allow a culture of innovation to grow and be sustained. These leaders can exist at any level of an organization. They must be given opportunities to lead and learn. Sphere: Related Content

Are We Ready for Half-Baked Ideas?

In "Open Source Scholarly Publishing" I summarized a scholarly communications model called open source publishing being proposed by Dr. Eric Mockensturm. It presents a dynamic environment that allows authors to present their ideas rapidly, even in 'half baked' unfinished form, and then fill in material as it becomes available.

Today, as I walked around campus, I listened to an Educause podcast from the Seminars on Academic Computing Conference by Jon Udell, Evangelist of Microsoft Corporation, entitled "The Disruptive Nature of Technology". The talk was primarily about the creation of personal digital space, or lifebits, the half-baked theme came up again.

"Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies invite exploration, innovation, and building with “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet those opportunities can disrupt traditional academic processes that undervalue amateur participation, discourage faculty from venturing outside their realm of primary expertise, and look to “enterprise solutions” for administrative convenience. Can the academy include “half-baked ideas” in its core mission and processes?"

Once again I wonder. Why is it that librarians still tend to favor fully-baked ideas, especially when it comes to providing services, rather than a more half-baked approach? 

This week I proposed to the three campus library directors (University Libraries, Law, Health Sciences) the idea of creating an Ohio State University Libraries Labs.  It will be OSUL's emerging technologies sandbox. The concept was well received and I will be leading the effort. The challenge will be pulling it together with no new personnel and limited funding.

Sphere: Related Content

Tossing Technology Eggs

I had a chance to chat with Richard Akerman over lunch at the NISO conference last month.

During our conversation he made mention of the various position / white papers he has created over the years. What caught my ear was when he said he experiences about a two-year time delay between the time when he poses an idea and the time the same idea emerges from elsewhere in the organization. It is not until it reemerges that it gains organizational buy-in.

This made me feel good since this is the same idea lag time I generally experience. As I talked to other technology-oriented librarians this does seem to be the general trend. Add on another 6-12+ months of working through the logistics and politics of getting an idea off the ground the technology concept-to-release gap is about three-years.

Three years!? I can't think of another part of a library organization that such a delay is acceptable. For some reason with technology it is OK. But I digress.

In my Why Someone May Hate Your Ideas post I point to an egg and bird analogy, which I shared with Richard.

When technology staff tosses out half-baked ideas to library staff it is like tossing them an egg when they are expecting a bird.

Technology staff can look at the egg and see what will happen; the egg will hatch, the hatchling will grow and eventually learn to fly. It may eventually have eggs itself and the cycle is repeated. Since the library staff expected a bird they simply let it drop and splatter on the floor. Unless the library environment is very forgiving, an egg (a premature technology idea) will simply not survive.

At the same time, libraries can no longer wait two-years for an egg to hatch. As library technologists, we need to do a better job of tossing our staff and customers hatchlings (prototypes). The time has come for libraries need to carve out a part of their organizations to focus on creating Library Labs like the one at the National Library of Australia. It is a place in which prototypes and emerging ideas can be made available and tested. Sphere: Related Content

Should Librarians Rely on Associations for Technology Guidance?

Once again, dusting off some older topic stubs...

The results of a Medical Library Association's Task Force on Social Networking Software survey to see which social networking tools were important to association members are available. The survey results were summarized:

" new social networking technologies are important to MLA members, but only up to a point. While MLA members understand that these technologies may be important, they do not always see a personal or professional use in them (yet!)."

A couple specific results:

• 73% respondents rated blogs very to somewhat important for sections, chapters, and SIGs of MLA. However, only 52% reported using blogs in their professional life when combining the same numbers.
  
• 71% respondents rated RSS very to somewhat important for sections, chapters, and SIGs of MLA. 39% reported very to somewhat important use of RSS in their personal life
  
• "overwhelmed with the technology options and not yet sure how the tools may really help them in their daily lives."

Hmmm. So, members are looking to MLA for information and guidance on new technologies. They want MLA to tell them how these technologies are going to solve problems and make their life easier. They also see technologies such as RSS and Blogs as being important to the Association, but not important enough for them to use in their personal lives.

Double hmmmm.

I have opening wondered for some time now if the reason libraries can be slow in adopting new technologies is simply because by the time a trend is spotted, a need for a task force identified, a group is created, a survey administered, recommendations made, resources identified, a project group assembled, a position paper developed, final version approved, and the result communicated (huff puff) - the original concept is likely already outdated.

The shelf life of technology has gotten so short that I not so sure I should expect any professional association to provide me with guidance. While annual meetings are a great place to hear about emerging technologies, I believe it should be a part of every librarian's continuous learning process to explore themselves (using tools such as RSS and blogs!) and no longer wait patiently for an annual meeting to hear about them. One needs to find out for themselves how these tools can be used in their daily lives and not wait for someone else to tell them

If our profession Associations need to start doing anything, it is to provide more sandboxes to play in and promote a culture where it is OK to get dirty. Sphere: Related Content

Calling All Librarian Learning Communities

Librarians are often tasked with developing a new services and coming up with procedures for supporting them. We not only find ourselves creating innovative services for which there are no standards, but services which are likely to be replaced in 18-months. Historically, librarians have relied upon the literature and conferences as their primary learning tools. An idea for a services is gauged and weighed against what others are doing. The short service lifespan provides little time for best practices to emerge, let alone to be documented using traditional communications methods.

So, where can a librarian go for answers and support when creating innovative services when standards and best practices don't exist? Today! At this point, you are probably thinking that this is going to be another post touting the important role blogging can play in the evolution of librarianship. Nope. Instead it is about the growing need for librarian learning communities.

Within a learning community, a member seeks assistance from a virtual workgroup instead of consulting traditional learning tools and professional networks. In effect, the informal community itself plays an active role in the problem solving process and he archiving of solutions. There are many challenges to this approach. This first is that there must be a legitimate self-interest to sustain individual participation. Community members must each feel a personal return on their investment in their involvement in the group.

Getting librarians to think in terms of mutual, collaborative support is a challenge. Given the pace of change and the demands for expertise, we are at a point where we really have little choice. We must learn to share our expertise to survive in an environment with commercial competition.

Perhaps the most notable librarian learning community is WebJunction, established in 2002 with a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant awarded to OCLC. WebJunction is now supported in part by OCLC, grants from IMLS and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, our partners in state library agencies and other library service organizations. Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki is also a very helpful site. The number of topics has grown a great deal. It is a great jumping off spot, especially for those that I am a novice.

What other librarian learning communities do you know of out there? Sphere: Related Content

The Vanishing Librarian? Sound the Alarms!

John Berry's Library Journal article has been making the rounds internally here. Sound the alarms!? Nope. Either I am missing all the uproar on the blogs about this article, or there simply isn't any. The editorial is so misguided that I am not going to spend any time arguing the points made. Maybe others are feeling the same way.

As AL comments on the LJ site: "Is this John Berry or Michael Gorman!?!"

OK. One point.

Libraries need to take a lesson from the train industry, who met their demise because they thought they were in the business of trains, not transportation. Libraries can no longer afford to view themselves as being in the business of libraries; we are in the information business. As such, our organizations need to create innovative products, services, process, management styles, and organizational structures in order to remain relevant. Sphere: Related Content

Social Operating Systems

As has been reported elsewhere, the 2008 Horizon Report is out. The report describes a qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations. The meta-trends are described in more detail on the Horizon Project wiki where anyone can participate in the discussion.

One of the items item that caught my eye was on Social Operating Systems:

The essential ingredient of next generation social networking, social operating systems, is that they will base the organization of the network around people, rather than around content. This simple conceptual shift promises profound implications for the academy, and for the ways in which we think about knowledge and learning. Social operating systems will support whole new categories of applications that weave through the implicit connections and clues we leave everywhere as we go about our lives, and use them to organize our work and our thinking around the people we know.

The emergence of anytime, anywhere access has led to the growth of social computing and social networking in both teaching and learning. (Although, the report also indicates a widening gap between the student and teacher in understanding technology and the expectation of how it is used.) While some may view social networking as more of a fad rather then a trend, I believe social networking will continue to be a major influence in our knowledge seeking patterns.

There are two issues I have with the current state of social networking affairs:

Profile Management. It seems that each of my social networks have chosen to use a different system to build their network. As a result, I have profiles on many social networking-type sites including Ning, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our local expertise system. I can't be the only one that is getting tired of creating profiles for all the various sites and then remembering to change the photo on all of them when I change it on one.

The solution may be a default profile standard that can be used so one can plug into the various services. This profile standard is an approach that Tim O'Reilly blogged about. O'Reilly also indicated that to happen, applications like Facebook will have to focus on interoperability with other providers of social graph data. The concept calls for a profile system that is independent of the social networking service providers. I must not be the only one that looks forward to the day I have an open portable identity (OPI?).

Unconnected Networks. Since many of my networks and profiles exist in different systems, I have to remember to visit each one to keep in touch. This is not very efficient and in essence creates a network of unconnected networks. Can you say The Department of Redundancy Department? My ability to utilize the power of each of my networks should not require these multiple touch points.

Creating a social network around a single service provider also creates a single point of failure. Such a social network would fail if the service it relies upon goes offline. Social networks not tied to a single service have no single points of failure. If one service fails, other members of the network can remain in contact using other communication paths. Sphere: Related Content

Lunch with Michael Jensen

I had the honor of having lunch with Michael Jensen today along with several other colleagues from around campus. He is the Director of Strategic Web Communications for the Office of Communications of the National Academies and National Academies Press.

I blogged about his Chronicle Article last year which describes what he feels will be the new metrics of scholarly authority. I revisited the article and wanted to pull out some other parts.

In a world of unlimited computer processing, Authority 3.0 will probably include (the list is long, which itself is a sign of how sophisticated our new authority makers will have to be):

• Prestige of the publisher (if any).
• Prestige of peer prereviewers (if any).
• Prestige of commenters and other participants.
• Percentage of a document quoted in other documents.
• Raw links to the document.
• Valued links, in which the values of the linker and all his or her other links are also considered
• Obvious attention: discussions in blogspace, comments in posts, reclarification, and continued discussion.
• Nature of the language in comments: positive, negative, interconnective, expanded, clarified, reinterpreted.
• Quality of the context: What else is on the site that holds the document, and what's its authority status?
• Percentage of phrases that are valued by a disciplinary community.
• Quality of author's institutional affiliation(s).
• Significance of author's other work.
• Amount of author's participation in other valued projects, as commenter, editor, etc.
• Reference network: the significance rating of all the texts the author has touched, viewed, read.
• Length of time a document has existed.
• Inclusion of a document in lists of "best of," in syllabi, indexes, and other human-selected distillations.
• Types of tags assigned to it, the terms used, the authority of the taggers, the authority of the tagging system.
  

None of those measures could be computed reasonably by human beings. They differ from current models mostly by their feasible computability in a digital environment where all elements can be weighted and measured, and where digital interconnections provide computable context.

What are the implications for the future of scholarly communications and scholarly authority? First, consider the preconditions for scholarly success in Authority 3.0. They include the digital availability of a text for indexing (but not necessarily individual access — see Google for examples of journals that are indexed, but not otherwise available); the digital availability of the full text for referencing, quoting, linking, tagging; and the existence of metadata of some kind that identifies the document, categorizes it, contextualizes it, summarizes it, and perhaps provides key phrases from it, while also allowing others to enrich it with their own comments, tags, and contextualizing elements.

Sphere: Related Content

Is Your Library Tech Staff Friendly?

The LibrarianInBlack provides a nice summary of Jenny Benevento's presentation at Internet Librarian 2007 discussing the problems of tech-savvy librarians leaving libraries. Jenny cautions that libraries need to be careful about keeping tech-savvy people in the profession. Some of the things that contribute to negative environments for techies in libraries include (my modifications/enhancement/creative liberties in italic):

• Creating a organizational culture where technology and library staff are not put into a position where they can (have to) gain respect for each other's uniqueness
• Adopt technology just because of the buzzword aspect. Make the implementation a high priority
• Hop on Internet trends two years after they happened and 18 months after your technology person suggested them, rinse and repeat
• Include the workplace luddite on all technology projects with the expectation that the individual will change or somehow assimilate the technology
• Under resource and underpay your technology staff
• Don't fund projects yet expect them to be important services
• Tell techies that you want new technology, but reject all change that they suggest.
• Don't make an effort to understand emerging technologies, but expect the techie to create, implement, and manage new services based on them.
• Equate all technical knowledge--it's all interchangeable; all techies know everything. For example, desktop support staff can manage firewall issues.
• Expect your techie to keep all staff up-to-date on emerging technologies and still investigate, implement, and maintain it.
• Expect all tech requests to happen immediately

Sphere: Related Content

2007 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and IT

The Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Study of Undergraduates and Information Technology, is a longitudinal study of students and information technology based on interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience.

The 2007 results are now available. Some random key findings:

- 94.7% use their library's web site
- 91.5% have high speed connectivity
- 84.1% use instant messaging
- 82% has used a course management system
- 81.6% use social networking sites (e.g. Facebook)
- 78.3% play computer games
- 75.8% own a personal laptop. 34.5% of those are less then a year old
- 74.7 own a music/video device (e.g. iPod)
- Engineering majors are online the most at 21.9 hours per week. Life sciences are online 16.3. Sphere: Related Content

CAUTION: Paradigm Shift Ahead

As a librarian inclined to think that libraries are at risk, I am one of those open to many of the more radical ideas about how libraries need to change. Several of the other librarians I work with may gravitate towards ideas that support the traditional core values of librarianship and will reject those that involve redefining reference, circulation, and cataloging services. The resulting discussions are very intersting, if not polarizing.

I was just rereading a John Blyberg post about how librarians are drifting into two camps – those that believe libraries are in peril and those that don’t.

"Like two distinct brands of the same religion, librarians are drifting into two camps–those that believe libraries are in peril and those that don’t. Those who find themselves as a member of the former tend to feel that their libraries need to change in a number of fundamental ways in order to remain relevant. Those who identify with the latter group feel that good old-fashion librarianship is still what their users want or need. They’re the purists."

This brought me back to Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where he discusses paradigms as they relate to scientific discovery and evolution. It is the work which popularized the term 'paradigm shift.'

A scientific revolution occurs when an older paradigm is replaced whole or in part by an incompatible new one. When a new paradigm is revealed, the supporters of the new and old paradigms naturally argue in defense of their position. The emergence of a new paradigm affects the structure of the group that practices in a given field.

This is exactly what we are are experiencing in library science. We have the emergence of a new technology driven/focused definition of what a library is and is contrasted with the existing traditionalist definition highlighted by reference librarians sitting at desks. These are the two camps that John identifies.

According to Kuhn, scientific paradigms before and after a shift are so different that their theories are incomparable. It is impossible to construct a language that can be used to perform a neutral comparison between conflicting paradigms, because the very terms used belong to a the paradigm and are therefore different. In essence, a new paradigm cannot build on the preceding one, it can only supplant it. Advocates of mutually exclusive paradigms are in an impossible position:

"Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing science and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proof."

When an individual or group produces a synthesis that attracts the attention of the next generation of practioners, the older schools gradually disappear. In part, the disappearance is caused by the members conversion to the new paradigm:

"a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

The next generation of library scientists graduating from library school will be hardwired to naturally accept the technology driven/focused definition of a library. If Kuhn is right, as the profession's retirement bubble bursts over the next few years the next generation should help complete the library science paradigm shift.

That is, until the next paradigm emerges. Sphere: Related Content

A Two Hour Meeting to Plan A One Hour Meeting?

I just read Alexander Johannesen's resignation from a library in Canberra, Australia. Mr. Johannesen is not a 'librarian' by training and admits that he is leaving libraries due to an incompatibility. So it goes.

"Every time I see a glimmer of hope or a flash of something exciting going on in the library world, it usually fast fades into a charades of politics and committee-shuffle. I'm too impatient for this, and I seriously think the world is, too ; it will race past us as we decide on who's going to chair what committee, who'll take notes, and how we're reporting progress to what group. Also since these glimmers of hope usually is attached to specific people more than institutions or organizations, whenever that person goes or moves, so does the glimmer. Again, because we're not traditionally in the business of technical development, we're so fragile..."

It is unfortunate that Mr. Johannesen is so frustrated. Yet, I do think that the perspective he offers as a programmer coming into the library profession is an important one. One could try to argue the culture and problems he encountered are unique to his library, but we all know better.

This quickly brought to mind Stephen Abram's quote:

"librarians like to process things to death, and death wasn't the original goal."

Just yesterday, I had lunch with a colleague who is not a librarian, but whose current and previous positions have allowed her to work closely with libraries and librarians. Our various discussion topics always seemed to loop back around to the culture of libraries, resistance to change, and the need to process EVERYTHING.

Another colleague also told me yesterday that earlier in the day they were in a two hour library meeting to discuss plans for a one hour meeting.

What's the deal with us, folks??!!

What also concerns me is that Mr. Johannesen is a self admitted "mid-life-crisis-aged" individual. What will happen when the younger generation begins to enter the profession? The next generation of library scientists graduating from library schools will be hardwired to naturally accept the technology driven/focused definition of a library. Will this culture embedded in the 'legacy' librarians reaching retirement bubble simply be handed off to the next generation, or, will the next generation finally force a culture shift?

I am fairly confident that Mr. Johannesen is not alone in his frustration about the library culture and maybe even with his unwillingness to wait for that shift to occur. Sphere: Related Content

Does Breaking Social Networks Encourage Innovation?

In doing some background work on innovation I came across an article by Chris Trimble (Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth) publish last year on the impact of social networks on the ability of an organization to innovate.

More often than not, innovation results from an unexpected combinations of ideas, or chance meetings of people with complimentary perspectives. Within most organizations innovation is not viewed as an organizational process but the focus of a work group of individuals that comprise their own social network. However, aspiring innovators within organizations can often be handicapped by existing social networks. This is not because these individuals lack the creativity or other skills to innovate, but instead are functionally out of the innovation loop because the nature of their jobs keeps them from interacting with the "innovative" social networks.

Once an organization has reached a level where it is sustaining itself the focus changes to becoming efficient. Employees are pulled into specialized roles and tasks and are gathered together in social groups based on processes. Each employee's web of social connections therefore mirrors the way their work is organized. As Trimble points out, most social connections are made with others with closely related specialties, who share similar perspectives, and are shaped by the demands of the same customers.

Being a part of a social network for a prolonged period of time influences individuals in significant ways. Individuals that have been in a specific social network for a long period of time has likely internalizing the "ways of thinking" (groupthink) of that network. Yet, innovation initiatives are often most successful when there is an unusual interaction between employees. How many brainstorming or strategic planning sessions start off by counting off and creating new groups? Trimble therefore argues that while enriching existing social networks accelerates idea generation, the breaking of social networks is often required to convert vision to reality.

Trimble states that "Breaking networks is the only way to prepare an organization to take innovation efforts beyond mere ideas. You can train an individual about what an innovation is and why it demands different behavior, but you can't retrain an organization simply by training the individuals within it. The individuals may acquire knowledge, but organizations are more powerful than individuals..."

Yes, organizations are more powerful than the individuals from which they are comprised (the whole is greater the the sum of its parts). Therefore, organizational leaders that are serious about building an organization with the capacity for strategic innovation cannot simply keep a few innovators close by that "do" innovation. They need an organization built to innovate. Reorganizations are an opportunity to break those involved with an innovation out of their existing social networks, and force them to forge new relationships and new networks from scratch.

Breaking networks takes a deliberate effort and is tricky because networks are made up of relationships between people, and relationships are cultivated over time. Social networks are often built upon relationships that often go beyond work and becomes the foundation for trust. Breaking these social networks would mean disrupting the social capital that has been built within parts of the organization. The challenge is that any group of people that have invested time and effort into a relationship or social network and have built a 'circle of trust' are reluctant simply to walk away.

Still, one can build a strong argument that innovation is more likely to occur when an organization moves from one that aspires to enhance existing social networks to one that breaks them, then rebuilds them over again. Sphere: Related Content

Innovative Approach to Institutional Learning

Once again our innovative friends up north in McMaster U's Emerging Technology Group have come up with a way to get library staff involved with learning emerging technology. The have created a program entitled Learning 2.0 @ Mac. Learning 2.0 is a hands-on, immersive learning program that provides library staff an opportunity to explore Web 2.0 tools as well as the impact they are having on libraries & library services.

Over a 12 week period (starting February 12, 2007), staff will use tools such as Blogger, WordPress, Bloglines, and del.icio.us to complete a number of activities. Each week focuses on a specific type of tool and activities will provide their staff a chance to explore the tool and consider the ways in which it can be used in a library environment. Participants are encouraged to use a blog to discuss their thoughts about and reactions to the tools and technologies they explore.

At the end participants who have completed all the activities will receive an MP3 player and entered into a final draw to win a laptop.

82 staff has signed up to participate.

What a great idea! Sphere: Related Content

More on Continuous Learning

Back in July, I jumped into the librarian continuing education thread with my post Continuous Learning: Making it a Priority...Period in response to the Continuous Learning: Making it a Priority Without Breaking the Bank post by Meredith Farkas.

Dave King has revised the discussion in his post Making Time for Web 2.0.

Learning new technologies is an essential part of the continuous learning process and should be a higher priority. Librarians also need to carve time out of their schedule to experiment as well as eat their own dog food. Sphere: Related Content

Why Don't Men Ask for Directions?

Why do men always control the television remote?

Why does a man has the ability to identify a sports car model a mile away but can not find the ketchup in the refrigerator?

I thought about these and other questions as I was contemplating Roy Tennant's August 15th, 2006 piece in Library Journal which focuses on the Gender Gap in digital library development.

I had to read the piece a couple time since I was unsure if the point of the article. Was is about environmental factors were preventing women from becoming involved in digital library projects? Or, was it was questioning why women were not out there leading the way at conferences, etc.?

I feel any perceived shortage of women in digital libraries has little to do with libraries, their culture, and work environments for female colleagues. Instead, it may have to do with our educational system and gender specific learning styles.

When I do an environmental scan I see many examples of women involved with library technology / digital libraries:

• In a survey of current practice and staffing patterns in academic and research libraries , Choi and Rasmussen looked at current practitioners that were in charge of digitization projects or digital library projects during the period from September to December 2005. Their research indicated there were slightly more women (27, 56%) than men (21, 44%) among the respondents. Of the 48 respondents, 37 (77%) had a master's or doctoral degree in Library and Information Science, and 7 (15%) had an academic background in computer science, engineering, or information technology management. One-third of respondents were aged in their 30s.
• Six very technically competent women (based on their blogs) are taking the lead in a Five Weeks to a Social Library online course being developed for online presentation in 2007.
• At the Digital Libraries a la Carte conference, 25 of 40 participants of the Web 2.0 module were female as were 33 of the 56 participants in the Technological developments module.

The interest that boys have with technology starts with the games and toys they play with. Today's video games are simply yesterday's erector sets or Lincoln Logs. By the time males reach the undergraduate level they are comfortable with technology environment and culture. Young girls have not had the same exposure to the technology and feel less confident at the same point in life.

Males tending to have an explorer-type mentality, finding interest in just playing around with the computer to find out the capabilities. Women tend to prefer working towards a goal or end.

This difference in approach could also help explain why don't men ask for directions.

Introductory computing courses typically assign programming projects that may lack purpose or meaning to female students. Considering that females may begin technology programs with less exposure than males, their learning strategies may be less effective for skills like programming. Courses which encourage learning through repetitive exercise and projects without a direct application may discourage females from continuing with the major.

In the end, the problem may be the lack of a technology learning model that fits with the needs of women. Sphere: Related Content

Has "Google" Always Been A Verb To You?

Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List ®. Beloit creates the list to share with its faculty in anticipation of the first-year seminars and orientation. Those entering college were mostly born in 1988 and:

8. They are wireless, yet always connected.
19. "Google" has always been a verb.
20. Text messaging is their email.
23. Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.
38. Being techno-savvy has always been inversely proportional to age.

Other technology notes of interest:

7. They have never heard anyone actually "ring it up" on a cash register.
28. Carbon copies are oddities found in their grandparents' attics.
36. They have rarely mailed anything using a stamp.


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