When institutional cultures and innovation clash

I was scanning one of the Corante Innovation Hub's feeds, and I came across this line. I have been doing a bit more reading in the area of innovation and organizations. At this point, I mostly scan what I have added, but I am finding some interesting things. At any rate, the post's title is "Culture Shock: Do Most Innovation Problems Come Down to Culture?" According to Jeffrey Phillips, a Corante contributor, "Probably a third of the people I spoke to [at the Front End of Innovation conference] felt stymied by their culture - to the point where they've given up trying to implement anything and are simply observers of innovation." The line stuck with me for a couple of reasons. For one, while I was at Immersion, I had a chance to talk to some people in the program track during breaks and common sessions. A very common concern for the program folks was the issue of institutional culture. It seems they had a lot of questions in that regard, and some of those questions did make their way into the teacher track as well. How do you bring innovation when faced with an institutional culture that is stagnant, indifferent, and/or resistant? I will admit that I also wondered about that question. I am still looking for an answer.

Second, I wondered about libraries in general. The blog sector where librarians hang out is often full of the people who "get it." We hear of a few librarians who do great things, which is wonderful. We need more of those. However, it bothers me often that those who "get it" feel the need to chide (or worse) those who "don't get it." Here is my question: what if you do "get it," but you are in a culture that stymies you so much that you know implementing anything is out of the question? Sure, I am all for becoming the change you want to see and so on. One should be able to put their money where their mouth is. But there are places and moments that will drown the most shining example of a luminary. You see, for many of those libraries that do the wonderful things the rest of us read about, they needed to have institutional support in one form or another. They could have had the greatest minds of the L2 movement, but without an institutional culture to nurture, embrace them, and commit to innovation, they could have given up, or more likely used the power of their feet. I think it's easy to chide those seen as "not getting it" when you are in an easy supportive position. What is tragic is when someone talented and brilliant gives up to become the observer, and it probably happens in a quiet fashion that many do not consider. That came to mind when I read that line.

While I thinking, the post also quotes a definition of "learning moments" that I found interesting. I don't necessarily think that libraries will start giving out trips as prizes to those who share their learning moments. However, if my director is so inclined, I may have a list of places in mind I would not mind visiting (I know she reads this, thus the remark). What I want to point out is that the idea of removing fear so that learning can occur and be shared is a good one. It's good to take risks. Anyhow, the quote is from the CEO of WD-40 according to the post:

"A learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation. But what it really is, is a culture where people are applauded and rewarded for sharing what works and what doesn't work. It's a freedom culture. It is one that takes away fear. I ran a 12-month program where every month I had people email me and share their learning moments. They would all get prizes and in the end we sent one of our employees on a fully paid trip around the world. The first month there were a few emails. Then as they saw they weren't being punished for this, more came."

In the time I have been a teacher, I have come to learn from what works and what does not work. You have to take risks. Sure, you will fall flat a few times, some lesson plans will simply implode or explode, and that should be ok. I like that freedom culture.

Presentation Notes: SirsiDynix's Library Conflict Management Webinar

I just completed listening to the online web seminar on Library Conflict Management offered by SirsiDynix. I have to say that after sitting an hour for it, I was a bit disappointed in this one. It seemed a bit too theoretical and not practical enough. In addition, the presenter seemed to be moving a bit too fast, which may be a reflection of trying to cover too much information in a short amount of time. It did have a lot of information. In the initial poll they ran, it turns out that a little over half of the attendants were public librarians (or from public libraries), which I admit makes me wonder about their settings. The seminar gave some signs of unhealthy conflict, key questions to ask, and four magic words to keep in mind. These are useful things, but in essence, for me at least, it seemed a bit too centered on "you have to change" and less on "what about when you do change but nothing still happens." In other words, as my father used to say, "if you bend over too much. . ." you get the idea. Personally, I don't bend over very well. I am flexible, but I only go so far. So in a way, the seminar's advice seemed a bit too idealistic. The reason it concerns me is because that line of thinking often leads to the conclusion of "if it's not working, it may be time to move on." But, there are still some useful ideas.

• The three key questions to ask when trying to resolve a conflict: what do you want? what about the other person? what will you change? The presenter noted that it is often very easy to forget about the other/opposing person in a conflict.
  
• The four magic words: what do you want next? what do you want instead? what do you want despite? what would satisfy you? Asking about what is next is looking towards the future. One should not be obssessed with the past; it is not healthy. Asking about instead and despite serve to acknowledge that the world is not perfect, and it looks towards making a change.
  
• You need to have empathy. However, empathy does not mean you agree with the other party. It means that you understand how something affects them. Also, remember to give people the benefit of the doubt.
  
• The presenter emphasized the importance of taking civility seriously, even if it means putting in as part of job descriptions and making sure people are evaluated on this as well as being evaluated on their more technical/job skills. This would definitely be nice. It is not something we need to worry about in terms of our workplace, but some of the patrons do have the ability to push the limits of civility. However, the seminar only concentrated on the workplace.

The seminar also looked at a list of bad symptoms. There were ten items on the list, which I am sure readers can look over in the archive once it is available. I just have some thoughts.

• The presenter started with bitterness as the first item. In the personal front, if you are bitter, you become toxic to others. So, it may be time for you to move on. Just remember not to take that bitterness with you. If you go to a new job, forget the old one, never talk about it, leave it behind. After all, you are looking to the future.
• Another bad symptom is stopped learning. This I would consider catastrophic, maybe because I could not envision myself as not learning. If I get to that point, I know I have to quit. To cure this, the presenter suggests including continuous learning in job descriptions and holding people accountable for it. Another bad symptom was stopped contribution where people just stick to a rote and refuse to be cross-trained or seek new tasks. The solution is the same as dealing with stopped learning.
  
• Loss of respect was listed as number eight on the list, but it probably should be higher on the list. Under this, sarcasm can be a very bad sign. Personally, respect is a big issue for me, and I see it as something you earn. You are owed courtesy, but respect you have to earn. So, if you don't respect a leader/administrator, options are either leaving, isolation, or minimizing the disrespect.
  
• Another issue was lack of consequences. This would be situations where: no one is ever disciplined or fired (due to conflict aversion), where there is no praise or reward, and/or where there are no evaluations or accountability. The question I would ask is what if there are evaluations, but they hold no consequences. In other words, an evaluation becomes an annual (or semiregular) ritual exercise that does not bring any merit reward (monetarily or otherwise), and it probably ends up in a dossier someplace that will not be revisited. If there is no incentive other than the ritual, what is the point? I would not mind an answer to that.
  

So, I would give this one a mixed review. There may be some good things for people who may not know anything on the topic. However, if you have already seen other workshops on the topic or read on it, there is nothing here terribly new.

Presentation Notes: Two on online tools for librarians

Yes, I am still playing some catch up, but I am also thinking some things over. This time I have Evanescence's "Haunted" on Pandora, which actually goes nicely with my mood, but let's get to it. In his presentation for the HigherEdBlogCon, "Blogs, Wikis and IM: Communication Tools for Subject Specialists," Chad Boeninger suggests that "instant messaging, blogs, and wikis can help to make the subject librarian's job easier and more effective as these technologies allow for increased communication with the academic community." Mr. Boeninger is a business subject specialist. He describes his setting and the business curriculum, which tends towards group work. Actually, this is similar to some of our business classes. He started his Business Blog as a way to answer recurring questions from his classes. He describes some of the blog's contents as follows:

The content of the Business Blog posts has ranged from general business research tips, such as how to find a SWOT analysis, to more specific topics such as finding information about the popcorn industry. I’ve even used the Business Blog to tell faculty and students about new databases and resources, as well as alert them to upcoming library events. Regardless of the content, the intent of each post is to teach and recommend the best resources for a project, not to simply provide an answer to a question.

The blog has proven successful overall given usage and the fact that other librarians have gone to create their own subject blogs.

Mr. Boeninger goes on to describe his use of instant messaging (IM). He, in essence, has made himself available to students by offering his personal IM screen names for students to contact him. I have done the same for my classes starting last spring. While I have not logged any transactions on IM yet, I do like the idea of offering another option. I can leave the IM running in the background while I work, so it's not intrusive. Unlike Mr. Boeninger, my screen names are not on my contact information on library web pages. I just advertise them in my classes along with other information like my e-mail. If I make that trading card I was thinking about for students, I would probably put my IM screen names in it. I do get a good number of e-mail reference transactions, and that works out well for me.

Next, Mr. Boeninger describes how he began experimenting with wikis for library guides' maintenance, and this led to the creation of the BizWiki, which is described as "a collection of business information resources available through Ohio University Libraries. It is designed to assist business researchers in finding the best resources for their projects or topics." Advantages of the wiki include the ability to search by keyword and the ability to assign categories to articles in the wiki. Cross-referencing can be greatly enhanced as well. There are other advantages to using a wiki discussed in the presentation.

Overall, this presentation shows how a combination of online tools can enhance communications with the academic community.

I also went over Rebecca Hedreen's presentation "An Online Research Toolkit--Exploring Web 2.0 for Library Research." This presentation has things for librarians, but it is also useful for students. The presentation's opening lines were interesting to me as I have often wondered about finding stuff I found once online at a later time. I started a del.icio.us account to supposedly
solve that, but I find that I don't really use it consistently. Sure, I have a bunch of bookmarks in one place, but one problem for is that I like having different sets of bookmarks. For instance, there are items that are related to work. Then there are other more recreational things I want to keep separate. Maybe I need a different account for those, or a different tool. I am aware of some tools to synchronize bookmarks from one computer to another, but I don't necessarily want the stuff I have at home mixed with the stuff I have at work. Something for me to think over.

The presentation begins with a small video introduction using YouTube, which is an interesting way to "walk the talk." She highlights her Online Research Toolkit, which provides reviews on various 2.0 tools. The presentation then moves on to various slides highlighting specific tools and application, using a blog to hold it all together. The presentation is well-organized, and it is the type of content that students may find useful for their research. I think some things may work on our setting. The set up with ODEO and Blogger looks like something I may be able to put to use, maybe for instructional purposes? Just a thought at this point.

The presentation also points out some of the disadvantages in the use of 2.0 tools, something I think some of the evangelists in their zeal tend to forget, such as loss of access or change in a company's ownership. Overall, remember that anything you put in these tools is public, even if you use the privacy options, so don't put anything sensitive on them.

Presentation Notes: On blogs at a small academic library

Again, I am doing some catching up. I got Pandora running last Saturday and took some time to look over a couple of presentations from the HigherEdBlogCon. The better half was working, so I had some time to be productive. I read over the "Blogging at a Small Academic Library" presentation by Natalie Forshaw, Karen Jensen, and Ilana Kingsley. I also read over Chad Boeninger's "Blogs, Wikis, and IM: Communication Tools for Subject Specialists," but I will post on that one later. The Forshaw et.al presentation was interesting to me for what I could learn to use in my own academic setting, where we have a set of library blogs.

The presentation is done on a blog, which makes it very easy to read through, plus it illustrates use of a blog. The presentation authors consider three types of blogs: a training tool for circulation workers, a blog for liaison work in the English area, and one for the reference librarians. Personally, I am more interested in the latter two given they are things I could use, but I learned a bit from their discussion of the training blog. I was already thinking a little about this after looking over Johnson's presentation on "Subject Librarian 2.0." I may need to go back and review that.

In regards to the circulation blog, the authors point out the blog's use as a record of communication. This would be something I would appreciate in a reference blog. For us, this could be a place to note frequent reference questions, assignments, policies, and some incidents in one central location that could be searched as well. An issue for us would be privacy, as this would be for the librarians. Maybe password protection and secure posts? Just speculating at this point. Another issue would be getting the librarians to use it without making them feel that one is adding "yet another thing to look at." I do think this could have an advantage over the various e-mails one has to remember to keep in a folder, which is done haphazardly. All I have to do is ask around to find varying degrees of keeping such types of information. A blog might be a way to centralize this. Yes, I said it, centralize. When it comes to policies, everyone should be on the same page. We should not be saying, "oh yea, it was in that e-mail from last semester." You know, it's the one e-mail no one can find now. That's just one example.

When discussing the reference/service blog, the authors remark that only six of the reference staff had posted (as of the posting's writing). This is an issue for us: getting more librarians to post. Our Engineering Technology Librarian has an Engineering Technology subject blog, and she does a pretty good job of posting to it. However, we have other blogs that sit without regular updates other than the latest technology downtime news. I should note that as of this writing, there have been some postings (maybe some psychic confluence?), which is good. This includes the bright note that the Director, who is one of the our two business liaisons, rediscovered the Business blog and began posting again. She e-mailed some of her faculty announcing the new content, and she got some good feedback. Now, it is necessary to keep it up. I do have to claim some fault with this for I don't post as much as I could when it comes to our institutional blogs. I have access to the News blog, the one we use mostly for library announcements, and to the Books blog, the one we use for highlighting new books and some book-related news like awards. For me, a feeling of formality is a problem. Intentional or otherwise, I feel that I have to ask permission. So many things I might post on a whim I just post to my professional or personal blogs.

Overall, I can attest that blogging does require some sense of commitment, but I have some leeway in a personal blog. In something more official, if you build the expectation, you have to keep at it. Overall, while my initial impulst would be to get all the librarians blogging, I know this won't happen for various reasons. So, realistically, we should nurture and encourage those with the inclination, talent, and eye for blogging. I think for the Business Cornerstone classes, a core class that is one of our big instruction clients, the business blog can be a good resource if cultivated and marketed well, but it needs content to market. On the feedback the Director received, one of her readers told her that he would be adding the blog to his syllabus. Now that is a good start we can build upon. In the future, I would envision using wikis for guides in those classes, maybe using the current print guide as a starting point. This may or not require additional staff training. Personally, I have a sense of who is savvy enough or not, but since a lot of things are compartmentalized, it is just that, a sense. Maybe we also need to look at issues of focus when it comes to our blogs. By the way, I am not averse to letting something stagnant die a quiet death, preferably swift as well, but for this I just think we have a case of underutilization combined with a feeling of "yet another thing to do." Just my guess from the trenches.

The author's subject blog is dedicated to English studies. This caught my eye since freshman composition classes make up the bulk of our instructional services. Like the example, we could use such a blog to provide research hints and links to resources for those classes. I jumped over to our website as I was looking over this presentation, and I think we could use a general research guide for freshman composition. Maybe it's time for me to talk to someone at the Writing Center for some collaborative possibilities. Therein lies the rub for me. I keep coming up with all these seemingly neat ideas. Heck, if I do a search of my blog, I probably have a trail of ideas with a notation to revisit or look over later. Coming up with the ideas is easy. Adding them to my perpetual list of things to do is not so easy. I suppose I need to remind myself that I am a guerrilla kind of librarian: small objectives, one at a time, hit and run, live for the next day. But I am disgressing.

In the example, the authors mention that the English blog is used more as a webpage, but it also serves as a communication tool between the liaison and the department. Maybe there's applicability to my Arts and Humanities subject area. I love their long term ideas for the English blog, particularly the one for a creative writing section where students could post their own work. I would be curious as the the authors are if such a section would attract users to the blog. It does sound like a good community building idea.

An Immersion Report. . .

. . .or what I would write if I had to turn in an "official" report to my superiors.

I have to admit that I am very overwhelmed. I took in a lot of information in a short amount of time. So, I am having a bit of a hard time deciding how I will write some things up. When my A.D. asked if I had a "life changing experience," my answer was "yes, I have seen the light." Think of the scene in the film The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood visit the Reverend Cleophus's Triple Rock Church, and Jake sees the heavenly light and starts jumping. That's pretty close to the feeling of rapture I had as I came out of Immersion. So, here's the "official" stuff.

• I attended and participated in general sessions. By this, I mean sessions for both tracks. Topics included information literacy, creativity, and assessment.
  
• The teacher track sessions were more focused on teacher needs. Teaching techniques, learning styles, additional work on assessment, and leadership were among the topics covered.
  
• I worked on a project based on one of my lesson plans. The plan was written before attending Immersion, and it was revised during Immersion to reflect new concepts learned. I also gave a presentation from part of the plan. The presentation was mostly designed to practice teaching techniques with peers and our faculty. The presentations were done in smaller cohort groups.
  
• I did some networking, and I had the opportunity to meet with peers from various library settings. Talking to my peers and learning from them was a significant part of the experience.
  
• (This stays out of the "official" report) And I had fun at the social events. A good balance is one where there are both work and play. The host's hospitality in this regard was very good.
  

In future posts, I hope to write up some specific session summaries. I would like to also write about some future plans regarding my teaching and classroom practice. What I learned during Immersion is not something that can just be posted briefly (ok, so by trying here I am sort of throwing that off); I will likely be reflecting, practicing, revising long after the events. This note is just a mere overview, like an executive summary without the bureaucratese. Since "official" reports usually give recommendations, here are mine, if I were writing an actual report:

• A complete review and revision of teaching practices. We need to move away from lecture models as the primary method and integrate more active learning techniques in our lessons.
  
• Train the other librarians. The idea is to make the work of integrating active learning and assessment into a collaborative effort. We need to work on enhancing our information literacy initiatives from within.
  
• Review and revise efforts to reach faculty. Faculty and librarians have a common interest in student success. More work in communicating expectations and teaching with faculty is necessary. This may include looking at library procedures regarding faculty who "conveniently" do not attend classes in the library with their students. Exploring various collaborative opportunities would also be recommended. We need to work outwards to enhance our information literacy initiatives, but more importantly, we need to see how they align with other campus initiatives.
  
• The library needs to send other librarians to Immersion on the teacher track. Any librarian involved in teaching can gain benefit from this. Off the top, I can identify two colleagues who should go. Maybe I can "talk" them into applying.
  
• We need to send someone to the program track. Going through the teacher track and talking to people on the program track has made me very aware of institutional issues, mostly in terms of programs needing development. If we are going to grow in terms of campus involvement and make sure information literacy is an important part of student success, we can gain from participation in the program track. For me, this would be the next logical step to allow my outreach duties as well as my instruction librarian position to expand. Additionally, one of the administrators, preferably the one most directly involved in public services, should attend as well. If funding were an issue, then the administrator should be sent in lieu of the librarian. Ideally, both the instruction librarian and the administrator should go through the program together. This would allow them to work together on creating a campus action plan, which is a core of the program, as well as engage in the learning experience.
  

So, there you have it, some brief thoughts that would go in the "official" report, if I had to write one.