i2c2 Conference

6th/7th March

Manchester

Contributions by attendees:

Sam Aston

Lorraine Beard

Ros Bell

Rosie Jones

Vanessa McHugh

Ciaran Talbot

i2c2Conference

…and there was

Lego.

The opening sentence of the i2c2 website was “Using

Positive Disruption to improve libraries”, and the conference

at The Hive in Manchester’s Northern Quarter certainly

encouraged innovative and inventive thinking from its

delegates.

In this report you’ll find our Top 10 picks of the conference.

Some of our favourite bits, whether they’re from specific

talks, or more general concepts from the conference as a

whole. There will be thoughts on how these ideas can be

used at the University and top tips on how to think in an

innovative way, and get your ideas implemented.

Take aways

Guerrilla Ethos: What academic librarians can learn from tactical urbanism and

tactical urban libraries // Karen Munro

Karen Munro, head of University of Oregon Portland Library & Learning Commons,

presented on the notion of Tactical Urbanism and what academic libraries can learn

from it. Tactical Urbanism is a method of communities taking ownership of public

spaces by employing tactics and ideas that benefit the community as a whole.

Whether they require some or no involvement from the public, are an individual

acting their own or an organised group, all tactical urbanist strategies have some

things in common, says Munro, “They are community-focused, inexpensive,

entrepreneurial, and easy to replicate. Most of all, they are accessible to the ordinary

individual, without the need for specialised training or qualifications.”

1. Using creativity to

engage customers

Munro spoke about ‘The

power of the pilot’, and

how low cost, low

threshold pilots could

prove concepts. Treat the

concept as an hypothesis

rather than the definitive

solution. Using

Prototyping is key to

develop the final offer.

An NYC pop up library

Echoes in the library: Programmes and services for users in their 20s and 30s //

Sam Helmick and Mallorie Graham.

Sam Helmick and Mallorie Graham were talking about getting their local

communities involved in their public library by using creativity to engage. With

specific reference to ‘echo boomers’.

Helmick and Graham spoke about the different types of events they had organised in

order to engage these ‘echo boomers’ Doctor Who events, Comic Con, Big bang

Theory bowling and had a gaming library.

This is something that would apply well to WP, and fits in really well in with the

Creating Communities strategy strand.

“Echo Boomers are the catalyst to several social, economic, and

technological changes. This generation, also referred to as

Millennials or Generation Y, have shown to be a more tolerant and

open demographic in society. They are always digitally connected

and are shifting the practices of information curation, retrieval,

and analytics. However, this is the smallest group of community

users in public libraries today.”

A designer walks into a library... // Paul-Jervis Heath.

Paul-Jervis Heath leads an innovation programme at Cambridge University

Library, and spoke about the Importance of design thinking in innovation .

Heath quoted Bill Burnett “to re-invent a future that doesn’t exist you have to

understand what users do now and re-imagine it”. Use techniques such as diary

studies and shadowing to understand users workarounds, habits, values and

think about how design intervention or innovation can help. “When it comes to

innovation market research won’t provide all the answers as users often don’t

know what they need.”

Heath suggested searching for clichés; the typical features and benefits of a

service; interaction clichés – how frequently people buy or use things; pricing

clichés. Once identified, you can disrupt clichés, invert them, reverse them,

scale them, reinvent them to create something entirely different. See Heath’s

presentation here.

2. Library Design

Library design challenge: make-a-space workshop

Christina Mune and Mallory Debartolo from San Jose State University ran the

‘Library design challenge: make-a-space workshop’. Time to flex the Blue Peter

sticky back plastic skills! They described the challenge they face in addressing

Library space redesign back home. They noted the 3 aspects of a Library Ecosystem

that make a space ‘work’ are:

Access to information - Tools and Technology - Comfort and Ownership

One might compare the traditional space in the Main Library with the space in the

AGLC and possibly conclude students feel they have more ownership over the

latter because they’re able to control the space. It would be interesting to see if this

influenced the effectiveness of work and learning.

Before Christina and Mallory cracked out the library construction kits, they ran

through a few Libraries with features of note.

North Carolina State University Hunt

Library’s Connections Wall. In fact, have

a look at Hunt Library in general, it looks

amazing.

A Japanese library in

Saitama Prefecture,

Hanno which has RFID

tags you can scan with

your smart phone.

Warwick University

Grids, in which every

item of furniture is on

wheels, for truly

dynamic spaces.

Singapore Polytechnic Library which

includes Drawing Rooms; rooms

where all the walls and tables are

writeable on with white board marker.

Key note speaker Brendan Dawes is obsessed with beautiful visual representations

of data. He explores data as physical objects, as something you can bump into as well

as data you can hold in your hands, on paper or on a phone.

He pleads for “More signal and less noise”. Dawes pulls snippets of data from the

news and various databases and assigns them to visual events, by doing this he can

anchor it to our memories and add life to data.

3. Filling for Rectangles //

Brendan Dawes

A library creates and logs vast swathes of statistics, but Dawes inspires new ways

of thinking about data, and therefore the way it is presented.

“Data by itself is not enough –

what data needs is poetry!”

The Kennedy App is a way to

mark moments in time

complete with context of the

things happening around you.

Kennedy will capture your

location, the date and time,

the current weather

conditions, the latest world

news headlines together with

what music you're listening to

at the time. Add a note or a

photo and then save it to the

archive of captured moments.

Megan Lotts, an Arts Librarian from Rutgers University in New Jersey had myriad

maker/craft-based activities for helping to de-stress students, as well as learn. She

has previously organised pumpkin carving sessions, DIY photo booths, make your

own bookmark and an edible book making competition (as pictured).

Maker spaces are a common occurrence in academic libraries in the United States.

The Library could draw inspiration from some from some of these spaces, which are

well established in the US. Maker spaces are essential for understanding critical

making as well as engaging students with our spaces. We could use graffiti walls,

‘express your stress’ photobooths to help during exam time, for example.

4. Implementing a culture of creativity:

Engaging events and making in the

academic library // Megan Lotts

“The Old

Mango and

the Pea” –

Winner of an Edible

Book competition.

Making ideas

happen

One of the key techniques to adopt if you are trying to be innovative, is getting

buy in from decision makers. It is essential to be able to bridge the gap

between ideas, and making those ideas a reality. You need influencing skills in

bringing people with you when it comes to innovation. The table below helps

with that.

5.

Liking Add a human connection

Frame the idea around who it is going to affect.

Commitment and

consistency

In line with your mission statement (consistency)

Idea serves your Library community

(commitment)

Reciprocity An unsolicited favour for a favour.

Start with a big idea, then back off to a smaller

request.

Scarcity Limited supply – no guarantee the product will

last long.

Deadlines – the clock is ticking!

Authority Be the authority of your idea – do your research!

Get hold of an expert in your area of interest.

Social Proof Lots of examples to show your idea isn’t new or

risky

Use other organisations that are similar to yours.

Barriers to

Innovation

There were two group

sessions at i2c2, which

was refreshing as group

work and discussion isn’t

something you always

get chance for at a

conference. We were set

a challenge: What are the

barriers to innovation?

Each group identified

very similar barriers. The

main themes were:

• Unwilling

Management

• Cynicism among

staff and

management

• Lack of funds

• Lack of time

• Not enough

backing

A group’s impression of barriers to innovation

6.

Conferences can provide a brilliant forum for sharing ideas and techniques, but usually only a few people from each organisation can go. The library of University College Dublin organised a conference that everyone was able to attend. The Library was staffed by security for a day, which enabled all staff to benefit from an internally organised conference; with a program similar to that one would find in an external conference.

This could be of benefit to our library staff as well. It would be brilliant for engagement, for showing that employees and their ideas are valued and for spreading information.

Library

conference 7.

Library book

club for 1st years 8. We help students by orientating them

around the library, but we could be

helping them make friends, expand

their critical reading skills and

demystify the library all at once with a

book club for first years. At University

College Dublin, each first year is given

a book and the option to attend a book

club style meet up to discuss it. These

are informal, laid back gatherings and

allow students to engage in a thought

provoking and academic way without it

being course related.

Involving

It is important to involve your customers in important decisions that affect the

service you provide, but it’s often hard to engage people. Ideas Jams (pictured) can

be an effective ay of harnessing a large number of customer’s ideas. It also allows

for a no-pressure environment, where people can really be honest, as well as be

inspired by other people’s suggestions. This could also be useful to capture staff

ideas.

You can also customer input to help with building design. There were some DIY, low-

cost suggestions (see picture pages at the end), in a Blue Peter style, where

students would use craft items to build a model of their ideal library. It is also

possible to use Minecraft to get students’ design input into library spaces.

9.

Using Ketso to

Manage Challenges Mapping the information landscape: Using Ketso to help academic librarians

understand and manage change // Andrew Whitworth, Maria-Carme Torras Calvo,

Bodil Moss, Nazareth Amlesom Kifle and Terje Blåsternes.

This study was undertaken in the first phases of the “Changing Libraries” project, a

collaboration between the universities of Manchester, Stavanger (Norway) and the

Høgeskolen i Bergen (Norway), in which researchers studied how change was

managed in academic libraries. One library had several campuses being merged, the

other was undergoing a change of management. Both are potentially high stress

situations, with possibilities of staff disillusionment.

Ketso can help us understand and manage change, by concept mapping – essentially,

a map of cognition. The way that Ketso uses visual imagery, promotes reflection and

reveals the ‘taken-for-granted’. By using Ketso you can better identify problems and

suggest solutions, by grouping related concepts.

10.

Ketso kits are, in short, reuseable workshop kits in a bag. However, Ketso also offers a structured

way to run a workshop, using re-useable coloured shapes to capture everyone's ideas. Ketso is

unique in that each part is designed to act as a prompt for effective engagement. It is used as a tool

for engaging everyone and allowing all workshop attendees to have a voice. www.ketso.com

Some photos…

What we enjoyed about the conference Ciaran’s self-designed name badge and lego kit

More barriers to innovation De-lego-gates

Design a library kit