Journal of Access Services Jumps the Shark, Pt. 2

Yes, this topic is old. It was discussed last month - a lifetime in blog years. Not to beat the dead horse, but I continue to be concerned over the decision to use an issue of the Journal of Access Services to publish posts from an anonymous blogger. 

My concern has nothing to do with the blogger. The constitution gives them the right to write what they want. My concern continues to focus on the editorial decision to publish this issue.  

In response to a post by Wayne Bivens-Tatum, whom edited the much discussed journal issue, T Scott (who has edited a LIS journal) comments:

As I said in my post on the matter (http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2008/11/too-predictable-to-be-annoying.html) I'm fond of the Annoyed Librarian as well. But I find the decision to devote a quarterly issue of a supposedly peer-reviewed journal to a collection of edited blog posts to be somewhat bizarre. For those of us who don't have access to your introductory essay, I wonder if you might explain why you think this was a sensible move?

Wayne's response:

...that's a very good question. It is bizarre, but I don't see that one satirical issue of one journal amounts to that much."

"The journal issue was the idea of the journal editor, though. I don't know the motive. I'd have to look back through emails to make sure, but as I understand it the journal already had a regular humor column. Perhaps the AL special issue was supposed to be an extension of that."

The issue editor thought is was bizarre but didn't think one satirical issue of one journal amounts to much. What?! Would any peer-reviewed journal in any other profession ever make the decision to publish a satirical issue? Would we ever see The New England Journal of Medicine decide to post a series of satirical essays from Dr. Phil? We want our profession to be taken seriously but then are willing to compromise standards. In this case, in order to get some publicity? 

Wayne's decision to edit the issue and not question the journal editor was likely out of a sense of service to the profession. However, the decision still undermines the credibility of the Journal of Access Services and further erodes the perception of Haworth Press in general. This should be of a major concern since a significant number of LIS titles are Haworth titles. As a member of a promotion and tenure committee, I do not know if I could ever again think of JAS as 'quality' publication, although some would argue that I shouldn't have to begin with.  

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Is a Green Ocean Strategy Needed for Libraries?

Our medical center leadership has embraced the Blue Ocean Strategy as introduced by  W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. As a result, our library has also begun to use the metaphor presented in the book in our planning processes. 

Red oceans represent all the products and services in existence today - the known market space. In red oceans, boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are well understood. Organizations try to outperform their competition in order to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the space gets more and more crowded, products turn into commodities, and increasing competition turns the water bloody. Picture sharks in the water.

Blue oceans represent all the products and services not in existence today - the unknown market space. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There are two ways to create blue oceans. In a few cases, organizations can give rise to completely new products and services. But in most cases, a blue ocean is created from within a red ocean when a company alters the boundaries of an existing product or service. Blue ocean strategy is all about doing business where there is no competitor. 

For generations, libraries existed in blue ocean space. I would argue that many of the services that libraries provide now exist in the red ocean.

Let's say that a library creates a product or service in blue ocean space. For example, traditional reference services. For generations, reference librarians were alone in this information space. Along came the Internet. The tides shifted this service from the blue ocean into the red ocean. Traditional reference services now have to compete with Google in this space. The Blue Ocean Strategy suggests that organizations need move away from red oceans and should identify new service and product spaces. This approach is also consistent with Clayton Christensen's disruptive technology theory.

However, I believe that the greatest challenge facing libraries may not be in identifying new blue ocean strategies. Yes, that is a difficult task in itself. The much more difficult task may be the ability to identify when a product and service that was in blue ocean space is starting to drift into the red ocean. The problem is that while the red ocean is easy to enter, it is hard to survive. What an organization needs to either avoid, or knowingly enter, the red ocean is what I call the Green Ocean Strategy.

(NOTE 1: OK. Yes, I know. Red and blue make purple. I went with green to conjure up an image of murky, algae infested waters. This color wheel inconsistency aside, I have never seen naturally occurring purple waterways, but have seen green. NOTE 2: This concept is not even half-baked, so I am interested in feedback. NOTE 3: This is a different concept than the similarly named environmental approach also derived from the book) 

Perhaps the hardest thing an organization can do is to spot when the tidal shift between the blue and red oceans is underway. The ability to navigate through these waters requires the organization to make hard decisions. Does it complete in the red ocean, pull out of the waterway, or does it modify the product or service so that it is back in the blue ocean?

Making such decisions is complicated by the fact that significant resources and investments have been made to get into the blue ocean space.The decision to reallocate resources or eliminating products and services after significant investments have been made becomes extremely difficult to do. However, a Green Ocean Strategy would appear to be required to help guide the transition and prepared the organization to make those very hard decisions about whether when a service/product is ready to jump the shark.  

A complicating factor is that the Green Ocean has relatively calm waters. There are no rapids to alert the organization that a tidal shift has begun. The service or product simply drifts slowly into the red ocean until the organization wakes up one day, surprised, and surrounded by sharks. The organization may become paralyzed and unable to make a quick enough decision to get them back into the blue ocean.   

Lastly, sometimes an organization wears colored glasses which tricks itself into believing that they are still in the blue ocean when they are really in the red. They become so emotionally attached to the service or product they they do not see, or simply ignore the sharks. The auto industry is learning this nautical lesson the hard way. When you look at their situation, what they lacked was an effective Green Ocean Strategy.

Are libraries simply allowing too many services to drift into the red ocean and land up spending too many resources fighting off the sharks?  Instead, should we be spending more time coming up with a Green Ocean Strategy that includes concepts such as planned obsolescence or service life-cycles that acknowledges the perils of living in the red ocean? 

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Faculty Acknowledge Blogs Contribute to Scholarly Communication

One of my more recent hot topics is the need for librarians to expand how we define our own scholarly communications to keep up with changes in the practice of librarianship.  A new report by the Ithaka Group being distributed by ARL explores how (non-librarian) faculty / scholars are making use of digital scholarly resources in the course of research. In the report entitled Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication, authors Nancy Maron and Kirby Smith detail the various digital resources that expands the definition of what is a scholarly resource. Such resources include electronic-only data, e-journals, and blogs. 

The report states that blogs are “being put to interesting use by scholars” and contribute to scholarship by providing a forum for discussion. Faculty acknowledge that blog postings allow scholars to share research findings and open up a dialog that can help to further shape and refine their ideas. Blogs can add a layer of commentary to published literature and can give frequent updates of researchers’ opinions rather than just facts and can also attract well established, well known writers in specific disciplines.

While any scholar can use digital communications tools to post their ideas and share them with others, old traditions of establishing scholarly legitimacy through credentialing, peer review, and citation metrics still remain paramount. Although there have been many innovations such as open peer-review, many scholars still choose not to take advantage of these new innovations and continue to publish traditional articles.

Issues of informality and not having a traditional peer-review process are still keeping blogs and scholarly social networks from being accepted as creditable scholarly communication. Still, blogs still can offer faculty / scholars the lowest cost model for quickly communicating their ideas and to receive quick feedback. 

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Moving Towards an Innovative Library

I have been working for a couple months on a graphic that represents the elements of innovative library organizations. The one I came up with was inspired by that which appeared in The Game Changer.

The graphic below depicts a continuum of six concepts which are vital to building a more innovative organization.

Inspiring Leadership

In trying to determine where the continuum in the above model begins, I decided it begins with leadership. Leadership sets the tone for everything that a library does. Innovation is all about change. During times of change an organization will be unstable, characterized by confusion, fear, a temporary loss of direction, reduced personal productivity, and a general lack of clarity about the organization's direction and mandates. A time of change can be a period filled with emotion, with employees focusing on what is changing and being lost and therefore unable to look into beyond the present and into the future. Employees not only need to have confidence in their leadership so they have someone to look to during times of change, they need to be inspired by them.

While a director or formal management group may be the most visible leaders, most library organizations have leaders throughout. Innovative organizations would also seem to have a higher number of change agents and idea champions. As Helene Blowers points out, Innovation starts with 'I.' The challenge is identifying innovation leaders, cultivating their potential, and empowering them to act. While these individuals may not be leaders in the hierarchical sense, they are extremely important leaders in building staff buy-in and moving ideas ahead. It therefore takes inspiring leadership to spot and cultivate organizational leaders.

Courageous Culture

If leadership is the starting point of the innovative continuum, then creating a courageous culture is the foundation. A climate and culture that conducive to innovation will generally be open to change, willing to take risks, tolerant of debate and disagreement, playful, will stress flexibility, adaptability, and celebrate both individual and group achievements and failures.

When it comes to implementing innovative change, there is an inevitable resistance as individuals discover that they may be giving something up. In many organizations, simply suggesting a change is often met with a negative attitude. Nothing is more deadening to the innovative process than having idea shot down even before it has a chance. A change in culture, behavior patterns and how change is approached are critical to moving towards an innovative organization.

Training and Development

Sir Francis Bacon is quoted as saying "Knowledge is Power." Indeed, innovative organizations have knowledgeable staff equipped with the skills they need to innovate and perform. An organization looking to become more innovative should expect, no, require that it's staff advances their understanding and broaden their point of view beyond their individual responsibilities.

To that end, many library organizations are moving towards a competency-based assessment system which recognizes individualized learning styles and methods. In this model, every employee and their supervisor should be accountable for continuous learning with training goals spelled out in annual performance reviews. Exploring and refining new skills, ideally outside of their area of expertise, should be of high value to the organization.

Enabling Organizational Structures

Most mature organizations, and libraries certainly are that, reach a sustaining level where the focus is on efficiency. Employees are slotted into specialized roles and are gathered together in social groups based on those roles and the resulting processes. Therefore, each employee's web of social connections mirrors the way their work is organized. As Chris Trimble points out, most social connections are made with others with closely related specialties, which share similar perspectives, and are shaped by the demands of the same customers.

Being a part of a particular social network for a prolonged period of time does influence individuals in significant ways, such as 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 do many brainstorming or strategic planning sessions start off? By counting off and creating new groups. Otherwise, people tend to organize into the same social groups.

Organizations that are unstable, or responding to instability, are also more likely to innovate. A constant of slight discomfort gets individuals out of their comfort zones, gets them talking to one another, and can create new connections where none previously existed. Trimble states:

"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..."

Streamlined Processes

Andrew Van De Ven observes that people and organizations are largely designed to focus on, harvest, and protect existing practices than paying attention to developing new ideas. The more successful an organization is, the more difficult this becomes. Clayton Christensen echoes this theory. While the process of conceiving an idea may be an individual activity, innovation is a collective achievement of pushing and riding those ideas.

Transforming innovation into practice involves so many individuals that those involved may lose sight of the big picture. Innovation transforms the structure and practices of an organization. The challenge is creating a culture where process does not get in the way of innovation.

Resource Reallocation

Many innovative ideas die simply due to limited resources. While resources are often equated with dollars, resources also refers to the reallocation of time, people, materials, existing equipment, and assistance. To become more innovative, inspired library leaders need to reposition staff to support innovative projects and programs, through new hires and reassignments where appropriate.

The efforts of staff that develop successful systems should also be rewarded. Innovation activities need to be recognized when decisions are made about merit increases, promotions, and even tenure decisions. If such rewards exist, then more staff will be interested in engaging in innovative activities. In the end, participation in the development of innovative solutions needs to become a vital part of the librarian's career track, and as such, should be reflected in how the librarians work, and resulting scholarship, is defined and evaluated.

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