Is a library without books still a library? Some thoughts on The Library as space

July 7, 2017July 10, 2017 / Christian Lauersen / 1 Comment

Text of my talk at The Danish Research Library Associations Winter Assembly 2017, Korsoer, Denmark.

I like people. Not all people but in general. I strongly believe that people talking to each other, sharing ideas, challenging one another on believes and arguments makes this world a better place. The landscape of human beings interacting has changed. The rise of social media platforms as a arena for sharing of opinions has change the way we talk to each other. It has changed the culture of communication. Is some cases to a more hostile, superficial, alternative facts environment. It’s easier to bash people when you don’t have to look them in the eyes I guess. In order to try to maintain a sound, healthy and democratic world we need to be aware of this development. I’m not anti social media, not at all, I’ll embrace them, but they are changing our game fundamental. And I think libraries are an important and unique counterpoint to this development as a platform for people to get together, talk, share ideas and opinions in a safe space, both within society and academia.

We must never stop talking and listening to each other.

I will, using our Data Lab at the Faculty of Social Sciences Library as a case, talk about the library as both a physical and mental platform for dialog between people in order to support research, education and learning by bringing people together. In this case the focus is on creating a platform for sharing knowledge ant network within data handling and data analysis, digital methods and social sciences but I believe the concept can applied to many areas.

The physical library space has been going through a highly interesting development and have changes a lot over the years and I like us to think beyond the library as a place for a collection and a traditional study environment with table and chairs. I like to take on a more active approach to the library as place and will give examples on how to do that.

You must know your past in order to understand your present, so before I get to the core of this story I would like to take you all along on a little tour – I would not call it a library historical tour, that would be too narrow – let’s call it is a story of what has always driven humans towards a better world: education, research and learning with the library in a leading role.

Historically we see two counterpoints: Knowledge is power and information sets you free. Both are true, and the library has pretty much served them both. In the early medieval Europe we find Monastery Libraries were huge collections of books where made in scriptoriums. It was a long and patient process where crafty members of the monastery wrote and illustrated the books. The access to the library collection was reserved for the few and the librarian was a powerful man (not many female librarians around monasteries) that to a great extent was more of a guardian than an intermediary to the collection. The book could not be borrowed, it could graciously be accessed. The physical libraries were fortresses, guardians of powerful knowledge.

I jump to one of my favorite periods in history, the Enlightenment. Who had just been a librarian in the Enlightenment, right?. For both libraries and our world in general the Enlightenment, combined with Gutenberg’s printing press came with significant changes. Philosophy and science were to expand human knowledge about the world they lived in and the gained knowledge should be used to question the authority of Crown and Church. The book was an absolutely perfect medium for disseminating these ideas and with Gutenberg’s printing press it could suddenly go tremendously fast. The libraries became public and was open to everybody and it was free to borrow books and the libraries role as supporting institution of free and equal access to knowledge for all was established. Through the collection the library was a window to the world, an open and accessible place for everyone and the librarian managed with a steady hand the huge book collections. Now I just want us all to take a moment and think about how extremely beautiful and important this was and still is.

We make a rapid jump to the library in the year 2017 where a forceful trend in recent years, at least in Danish academic library context, has been that the number of physical titles at the library fell while the number of students who came to work at the library increased. There are still plenty of academic and research libraries, varying from subject to subject, with huge book collections in the physical library, but I think most of us can agree that we are generally moving towards less physical collections in open academic libraries.

In the context of this development I think it is interesting to ask whether a library without books is still a library? And if so, what do we need library buildings for? I think personally that a library is not only defined by its collection – whether it be physical or electronic. It is a very important part, but our main assignment in my opinion is to support research, education and learning, and it relies on other activities than just the collection.

Libraries has for many years been quite successful by providing a physical study and learning environment for primary students on the square meters that was vacant when the book collection moved out. We have created a varied learning environment with reading rooms, group rooms and lounge areas with different types of tables, chairs, sofas etc. Students has been flocking to the library to work and I think this is because the library is a solid brand that signals tranquility, knowledge, contemplation and openness which has given the students study stimulation and study disciplining and a kind of community and identity. It’s completely different setup and identity you find to sit and study at a reading room than at home in your dorm room. It seems more professional to meet with you study group in a library than in private. Plus, very important I think, they have valuable assistance from library staff at hand. They may not use the library staff directly everyday but the awareness that it’s there and will help you if needed I think is important for most students.

It’s has been a successful use of the physical library which have created value and have supported students success and we must continue the good work with this kind of learning environment. But today I will show you an approach to a more active support of research, education and learning taking place in the physical academic library.

Very roughly, one can say that we have gone from a physical library as a place for a collection to a library with tables and chairs (again, I know this doesn’t goes for all libraries but for many). At The Faculty Library of Social Sciences (a part of Copenhagen University Library) we have tried to carry out an active utilization of library space for learning and network activities – and I’m not talking about on the regular library instruction – I’m talking about a facilitating approach where the library actively are setting a platform where people meet and learn from each other.

We don’t have patent on these thoughts. Back in the late 1800s Justin Windsor, the first president of the American Library Association, pointed out that The Library both had to be “…a repository, a collection, but also a workshop, a place where you together could be informed and learn about the world“. I highly agree with Mr. Windsor.

The world is not a static place – react on it

At The Faculty Library of Social Sciences, we opened Digital Social Science Lab on 18th of February 2016 as a reaction to some of the changes we saw around us. When the world changes, it often affects the institutions and people we serve and when they change, libraries should also take a good look at whether there is something they should change. And it seemed that something was changing and to frame what this was all about, I’ll like to tell you a little story from my own exciting academic life; When I did my master thesis at The Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen back in 2007 I did interviews with relevant people to collect information and data on my field of interest (University Libraries); I had recorded the interviews, transcribed them and analyze what was said in them. That was my data and the way of handling it. Pretty solid and straight forward method. Today students and researchers has other opportunities to explore the world. In Digital Social Science Lab we recently had a master student presenting how he harvested 2.5 million online articles on the crypto marked, analyzed them with a machine learning method called topic modeling and in the end visualized the huge amount of data in one single slide illustrating how the public opinion talked about the cryto marked over a period of 5 years. There is only 9 years between the two papers but they hold a proof of a huge difference in the way scholars work. Both methods are valid today and we are not trying to say, that one way is better than the other – we are simply trying to show students and researcher that there are other opportunities today.

To meet this change and development in higher education we established Digital Social Science Lab. DSSL is a physical space for education and instructions for data handling within social sciences, it’s software and hardware for harvesting, clearing, analyzing and visualizing various kinds of data, it’s a community but most of all it’s a reaction – a reaction to a changing world and needs of our students, teachers and researchers.

In DSSL we have initiated some activities in order to create a bridge between the students and the digital methods. The library teach and do workshops on various software and methods for handling and analyzing data within social sciences – for example Netvizz and TCAT for harvesting data, Open Refine for cleaning, NVivo, SPSS and Excel for analysis and Gephi for visualization. It is a very important part of DSSL, but that’s not what I want to talk about in this context. What I want to focus on is the facilitating work we put into it our data lab: We are trying to create a platform for people to meet and learn from each other in relation to work with data, we are trying to create a community where the library serves as platform and the librarian as facilitator.

Examples of the library as facilitating platform

One of the specific activities we are doing is an event series we call Digital Methods Sessions. It is an event where we invite students in to present their work with digital methods and data management for their fellow students. We typically have three groups of 20 minutes’ duration for the purpose of inspiring there peer students and give insights on other methods than the traditional ones. Digital Methods Sessions is not about learning something hands-on, the purpose is to inspire and create networks and new relationships.

We do one or two session per semester and we simply use our campus network to get students to come and share there ideas: Talk to the students and researchers we know have an interest in digital methods to hear if they know anybody who would be interesting in presenting; make calls in the various Facebook-groups relevant for the faculty etc. The more sessions we do the easier it seems to get students to come and present there work. We always wrap a session up with some snacks and beverages to support the network part of the concept.

Students presenting data visualization at Digital Method Session in DSSL

Another facilitating activity is Data Sprint’s. A data sprint is a time-limited often intensive research and coding workshop where people from different academic and non-academic communities convene physically on a set of data within a curtain topic. The two latest data sprint’s has been on crypto marked and just a month ago a all-day, week-long data sprint on fake news which we co-hosted with TANT-Lab, our sister data lab, from Aalborg University. The data sprint was open for everybody and it was extremely satisfying to see scholars from the different institutions work together with journalists and just regular people walking in from the street. The aim of data sprint’s like these are typical two-fold: 1) to raise awareness on how digital methods can be used on various subjects and a more concrete final result of working with the data. In this case the data sprint contributed to a global Field Guide to Fake News.

Data sprint break in Digital Social Science Lab

A key in the facilitating approach is collaboration with other parties in or outside the academic community. That could be students or faculty members, other instituions of higher education, companies, NGO’s and governmental institutions relevant in the specific case. We had an awesome and valuable collaboration with Open Knowledge Denmark – a part of the global Open Knowledge network, an NGO that advocates for access (and awareness) to open knowledge and open data. Together we have hosted Open Data Day in DSSL which is a yearly global event that serves as a celebration of open data all over the world with hundreds of local events where people will use open data in their communities. It has been such great events an this facilitation comes with the extra benefit that Open Data Day is open for everybody so we get the chance to hook our students and faculty members up with a lot of outside people with different perspectives and skill sets. How does this even come to happen one could ask? Well, in general we reach out, drink coffee and agree to make it happen.

Another more simple and basic type of event is to get someone to talk on a topic and then release the discussion afterwards. That is pretty normal in both public and academic libraries but that is because it works and we should remember to celebrate that. We recently had a huge event with Rufus Pollack, the founder of Open Knowledge, who gave a talk in Digital Social Science Lab on which models we could use to create an open knowledge society. We got a limit of 60 people in the lab and there was 70 present this evening; students, scholars, politicians, business people, librarians and just normal kinda people with an interest for the topic. It was a melting pot of discussion and sharing of perspectives on this very important matter. Was it hard and a lot to get Rufus to come then? No, we got a call from our friends in Open Knowledge Denmark who we did the Open Data Day with and they said the Mr. Pollack was in town on other business but would like to do a more open discussion event somewhere – cold we co-host this. Sure. Thanks again network and coffee drinking.

The last example on how the facilitating approach in the physical library space can be used is actually not an active move by the library – it’s more of a consequence of the work we do. We discovered that there was a lot of independent Stata workshops (Stata is a program for working statistical data) going on in Digital Social Science Lab. It was simply students who had been meting each other at various DSSL events and now had started a study group sharing knowledge and collaborating on Stata. We building communities here, ladies and gentlemen. Creating spaces where can meet, talk and share.

The value of facilitating peer-to-peer learning in the library space

What we are doing circle a little around the peer-to-peer setup. Now I’m not a learning expect but I can see that something different is happening when we set the scene with peer-to-peer sessions instead of the regular instructor/expert-to-student setup.

First of all it gives us other opportunities to create different events and learning content than if we where to be the expert/teacher/instructor on every event. I only have a certain amount of library staff, resources and skills and we have no chance to cover the whole spectrum of relevant digital methods and tools. And sometimes a student simply looks different at a certain method or tool than a library be course they are more often to use it on tasks in there academic life and not only as an instructor.

Then there is the actually learning situation. Then the librarians teach they represent an institution and they come with some sought of authority. That is totally cool and I think and hope many students see the teaching librarian as someone who really want to make the students succeed which gives the librarian a pretty cool role. But it’s different than a student who shares some knowledge and experience on a specific tool or method: The librarian is a professional and the student is a peer and when students see I think students are more likely to think “hey, if Joe from sociology can do this Gephi data visualization for his paper so can I”.

They way we set our facilitating events up we want the participants to be as equal as possible, we want them to collaborate and to work together. We don’t want one person standing at a chalk board being the expert. We want them to talk to each other, learn from each other, challenge each other. Peer-to-peer learning seems to be really great at that.

The librarians role

So what is the librarians role in using the library space in a facilitating and active approach? What skills does it take?

First of all I think some of the output could happen by itself, people in general like to learn new stuff and talk to other people, but it would not happen to the extend it does when the library actively set the scene. I have a lab director on Digital Social Science Lab and a part of his job is very much to drink coffee with various folks discussing how we together could do stuff that bridges digital methods and scholars. Some of that coffee talk is just coffee talk but a lot of it he puts into actually activities and events like the ones mentioned above. How does he come from talk to and event? His mind is set on letting others use the library as a platform to share, learn and get inspired. So at some point doing the talking he says “that sounds cool, how would you like if we did a little event on this anytime soon?”. Most people really like to share the knowledge they got – just basic human behavior – so it often doesn’t take much persuasion to get people on board. Then there follows some planning on the event and some practical stuff and it’s a wrap.

Skills? I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint specific skills that goes with this but if you got an eye for bringing people together, can communicate why it’s relevant and got a strong stomach (for all the coffee) you come a long way.

Final note – why does it work to use the library this way?

Digital Social Science Lab is a success. And a big part of this success is that we have managed to facilitate learning and network in the lab and have created a community within digital methods and social sciences.

Could we do this without a physical room. Maybe digital or just outside the library, somewhere on campus. I don’t think so or at least I’m sure it would not have the same impact. One of the reasons this is working so well is that we are doing in A Library. Sometimes as library professionals we seem to forget it but libraries are one of the most solid and trustworthy brands in the world. Both public and academic libraries are viewed as open spaces for enlightenment, collaboration, knowledge and experiences. A place where everybody is welcome. We make communities smarter (courtesy to library hero Jan Holmquist for the saying) by bringing people together. That is the library in the mind of many people with or without a physical collection. It’s important we remember this when we create and talk about libraries now and in the future.

I hope you all got some inspiration on how to use the library space for community building through a facilitating approach and to return to my opening question, is a Library without books still a library? If you believe that a library is not only defined by it’s collection but by the way it succeed to support learning, education and research. Remember; A Library is not a goal in itself, it’s a mean to contain those very things. When stuff around us changes, like physical books disappearing from the library, let’s take up an active approach to continuously support and create values for our communities.

And the one last note on the library decor in this facilitating environment: Different kinds of learning demands different kinds of physical learning setups plus nothing is static, you might want to change things at some point in the future. That is why the library decor should be flexible and mobile. Put things on wheels or whatever.

Thanks

Christian

And The Winner is.. How libraries can support students working for a better life on campus

April 29, 2017April 30, 2017 / Christian Lauersen / 1 Comment

Altruism. I find people who are voluntarily doing things for other people simply because they think it makes a different, one of the most beautiful things in this world. Those people are making the planet a better place to live. All the time. A lot of altruism is going on in higher education and on campus. Students are doing social and educational events, arrange debates, do bars, board game clubs, campus days etc. in order to create a good study environment and great experiences for their peer students.

I think the academic library has a huge stake in students success and well being in higher education; as libraries we are platforms and spaces who support students studies, learning and collaboration and we lack the evaluation and authority of the mother institution which gives us a position, where we can focus on their success without limits but our own imagination and drive for making them the best students they can be. In this context I’ve been thinking about how the library can support the voluntarily spirits and activities on campus and here is one idea: The Study Environmental Award.

The Study Environmental Award is given to students and student organisations who do activities for their peer students in order to make a greater study environment.

The purpose of the award is two-pieced:

1) To honor those students and organisation who is putting effort, energy and good ideas into creating a better study environment

2) To inspire other students to do the same by putting a positive focus on voluntarily actives targeting the study environment on campus.

The concept is simple really: Just like the Oscars and the Grammy’s are events that put praise and focus on the film and music but also the whole industries, The Study Environment Award is meant to both give a big hug and a high-five to the cool students who make an effort to make study life better for everybody but also to open fellow students eyes for the opportunities to contribute.

Two campuses, two libraries, two student councils, two awards

I’m library director for both Roskilde University Library and Faculty Library of Social Sciences at Copenhagen University Library and we have created a Study Environment Award on both campuses. We haven’t done it alone. Both at Roskilde University and Faculty of Social Sciences we have teamed up with the student councils which have a shared interest in supporting and developing the study environment. Collaborating with student organisations is really awarding: They bring in valuable and highly relevant perspectives which library folks is not able to cover alone, they often have a huge outreach on campus and collaborating with them, creates ownership and awareness of the library activities.

For the actual ‘Award show’ we are aiming a tapping into some of the larger activities going on at campus. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the award are given on the yearly Campus Day in the end of April and in Roskilde at the students yearly Summer Party in the beginning of June.

The Handshake. Emma Bach from the Student Council at the Faculty of Social Sciences and yours truly settling the deal on The Study Environment Award.

And The Winner is…

The award show got everything it takes to be an.. award show: Reading and praise for the nominated students and organisations, an envelope with the winner, the breathless seconds just before the winner is announced, endless happiness and joy and spotlight for the honorable winner, reading of motivation for selecting the particular winner, handover of prize, bubbles and flowers and thank you speech from the winner.

In both case the prize has been money to make new activities for the study environment.

At The Faculty of Social Sciences the award went to ‘Pedalarmen’ (The Pedal Arm) – a space for fixing bikes, drinking coffee and have chats with fellow students across campus. One of the reasons The Pedal Arm won was, that it is not focused on subjects or education – it simply creates a social space, a welcoming, friendly and open get-together, where students can meet with other students (and teachers) from other disciplines (and learn something about how to fix ones bike – Copenhagen is a biking city you know and for many people the bike is like an extra part of the body).

The happy winners of the Study Environment Award 2017 on The Faculty of Social Sciences

Benefits of the award approach to supporting student driven study environment activities

The Award approach comes with different benefits:

It celebrates the cool students and voluntarily spirits that is doing something good for the study environment
By creating focus it can inspire others to do the same
It’s an well known concept, easy arranged, and everybody loves a good award show
Collaborating with student councils and student organizations creates valuable network within the student community for the library
Having The Library name on a popular award is good branding and story telling about the library

This is working for us and can be twisted in many ways. A Study Environmental Award is just one of a number of different ways the academic library can support student driven activities on campus and in higher education. Let me hear yours.

Cheers

Christian

“Facts are real. Sincerely, Your Librarians” and other badass signs from #WomensMarch

January 23, 2017January 23, 2017 / Christian Lauersen / 2 Comments

On January 21 2017, millions of people around the world took the streets to rally for women’s rights at the Women’s March. The first protest was planned for Washington, D.C., and was organized as a grassroots movement that took place on the day after Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration. It aimed to “send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office”. Quickly the rally spread to other cities around the world.

I find the Women’s March a mind blowing and strong statement and I find great comfort in the fact that a huge population of fellow citizens around the world will unite to protect women’s rights and other causes under fire like protection of the natural environment, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, freedom of religion, and workers’ rights.

Lots of library workers participated in the Women’s March and some of them where out there flashing some some really badass protest signs. I’ve collected some of them here for collective memory and inspiration (I’ve tried to located the primary sources for the photos with out much luck. If you know any persons who took the photos please ask them to reach out to me, so I can either make a reference to them or, if they don’t want the photo in this blog post, I can remove it).

“Thank a school librarian if you can tell fact from fiction”

“Librarians against Trump – ‘Book Him'”

“Read and Resist” – Librarians are pissed

“You know it’s bad when Librarians are marching”

“Librarians against post-truth”

“Real news? Fake news? Ask a Librarian”

I’m telling you, kids are the future. This one proves it big time.

Yep, science really is real

Love this one
My fave: “Facts are real. Sincerely, Your Librarians”

Cheers

Christian

The Library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow

December 12, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

Text of my presentation at the Library Connect webinar “Research data literacy and the library” December 8^th 2016. Other presenters was Sarah Wright from Cornell University and Anita de Waard from Elsevier.

Hi all. Land line phones is like a vintage thing around here so I’m calling in from Copenhagen on a cell phone and I hope you will all be able to hear me clearly. I’m gonna be talking about how Copenhagen University Library is supporting data literacy among students and researchers. We started early 2016 by opening 3 physical data lab in 3 different faculty libraries. In my talk I will mainly focus on one of the data labs, Digital Social Science Lab, at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences.

But first I like to ask and answer the question “Why supporting data literacy at all?”. Basically what we are doing in at Copenhagen University Library is a reaction to some of the changes we have seen in higher education in recent years. I like to give you an example on those changes. When I did my master thesis back in 2007 I did interviews with relevant people to collect information and data on my field of interest; I had recorded the interviews, transcribed them and analyze what was said in them. That was my data and the way of handling it. Today students and researchers has other opportunities to explore the world. In Digital Social Science Lab we recently had a master student presenting how he harvested 2.5 million online articles on the crypto marked, analyzed them with a machine learning method called topic modeling and in the end visualized the huge amount of data in one single slide. There is only 9 years between the two papers but they hold a huge difference in the way scholars work. Both methods are valid today and we are not trying to say, that one way is better than the other – we are simply trying to show students and researcher that there are other opportunities today.

The amount of open data available to use in research and studies has exploded. It’s so massive it’s beyond our imagination. It’s good, it gives us new doors to open in order to explore the world, but to get the keys to those doors, to get a benefit of this development, academia need the tools, methods and skills to master it – otherwise the doors are closed. And that’s what we are trying to support in our data lab’s.

In general, I strongly believe, that when higher education and research are changing, libraries should look at themselves and see if it should take some sought of action – a library of status quo is not a good library – and our 3 data lab’s is a direct reaction to the changes we have seen at our University.

The 3 data lab’s is located at the Faculty Libraries at Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural- and Health Science. They don’t function as isolated islands but as a connected network where we coordinate events, staff training, license agreements and so on.

I will now move on to talk specific about one of the data labs and how it works. Digital Social Science Lab is an open platform for education and events on digital methods. It’s relevant hardware and software for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data and it’s a flexible and dynamic physical learning environment.

One of the key elements in Digital Social Science Lab is events and instructions on different tools and methods for data handling to empower academia with data literacy. The library has its own regular courses but what you see on the slide is a faculty member from sociology who is doing a talk on how he uses network analysis tools on various data sets. So in this case the library is not the expert, we facilitate that data savvy folks meet, talk and learn from each other. I get back to that in a second.

On our own part of training and instructions we are trying to cover the whole workflow of working with data: From harvesting, to cleaning, to analyzing and visualizing data. We try to capture both introduction and advanced level on all tools and we have chosen both very advanced and powerful programs like NVivo which takes time to master, and more intuitive and easy programs like TCAT and Netvizz to make sure people new to data handling, is not scared off. The list of software and programs are dynamic and we add new ones to the list over time.

Besides our own instructional program, we facilitated peer-to-peer sessions in the data lab. We have a series of events called Digital Methods Session where students come and present their work and experiences using digital methods in studies to fellow students. We also do data sprints where people bring datasets and collaborate on analyzing them. We find the facilitating approached really really strong because the library can’t cover everything and because we this way help building a community for data literacy where we bring people together interdisciplinary across the whole university. That’s really valuable for academia; we are not only providing skills, we are also building a network.

We discussed how important the physical space was in the beginning of the process. You could argue that the training could take place anywhere but we ended up using a fair amount of energy and resource on the physical lab. We believe that the physical setup surrounding us highly effects our ability to learn and collaborated. So we decided to build a data lab for people and not for machines – there is only 4 workstations in the lab and that’s actually enough because students bring their own laptop’s and they are often powerful enough to handle the amount of data we work with. Everything is on wheels in the lab and can be moved around to fit different settings for learning. We have worked together with a production designer to create a visual story of the lab and we choose a botanical theme, both because the library is located in the old botanical laboratory but also because botanical researchers has always been really keen on exploring the world and collect and preserve data in form of plants and we thought that story would fit god to a library data lab.

With the physical setup of the data lab we also want to create an alternative to the traditional learning setting on campus. The traditional learning situation in higher education is rows of people who are listening to a lecture. We’re created a dynamic and flexible space where stuff can be moved around to fit different kind of scenarios and that have had a huge attraction on students and faculty members.

An important part of Digital Social Science Lab is the network and community we’re created around the lab. We both have internal and external partners who we collaborate with on events, workshops and sharing of ideas. We want to break down the silos between academic institutions because we think that scholars across intuitions and disciplines can learn a lot from each other.

If I should point to one key to success and impact in this area, it’s coffee. We have used a year of coffee drinking with students, faculty members and management. We have been presenting the basic idea of Digital Social Science Lab and gotten a lot of feedback. With the countless coffee appointments we have both created a solid base of knowledge on how to do this, but also a network and an ownership on the things we have been doing. People wanted to use Digital Social Science Lab before we even opened it.

I thought it might be interesting for you to hear a little about some of the challenges in the process of making Digital Social Science Lab. Two questions we have heard a lot doing the coffee drinking with students and faculty members is:

“Is this really a library task?”

And

“If you do this, is it on the benefit of something else?”

Man people have a fairly traditional idea of what a library is, and they are luckily very happy about the core services of the academic library. But the library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow, so we need to be a head of the changes that takes place in research and higher education and also be clear about this to the academic community.

Skill development had been going great but had the potential to be some sought of an obstacle. Some of the programs we work with is a bit aside from the regular library tasks and skills, so we have used a fair amount of time looking at the different programs and making skill development plans for each of them. The most important asset of Digital Social Science Lab is not the hardware or software but the people who connects the dots and it’s crucial that they got the right training and skills to carry out the job.

When you do something radical new I think it’s important that you think about how you talk about it to stakeholders and users. So we have used some time developing our story and get answers to “what we are doing” and “why it is important”. That has been really helpful in all the coffee drinking. We have been able to clearly explain what we plan to do and why.

That also has something to do with how the library position itself in the academic environment. We are moving into new land here and it’s been important for us, that no teachers has been thinking “what on earth are the library doing – it’s my job to teach SPSS”

What we’re learned doing the process is, that it’s absolutely not enough just to fill a room with hardware and software for working with data. It takes skills and facilitation from the library to bridge students and researchers with data literacy.

Skill development is crucial to support data literacy and it needs lots of planning and time.

The facilitating role for the library, bringing people together and building a community around data literacy, is a very strong position to take

In that sense network is key. Get on with the coffee drinking.

And then we found that the support of data literacy doesn’t fit all subjects the same way. We had a huge impact with this in Humanities and social Sciences but we are not having the same breakthrough with natural- and health science. That might has something to do with local context but we also find it hard to make a fit and find the right role for the library because the community of natural and health scholars has been working with data for a long time.

That’s it. Thanks for listening.

Why usability testing should be a part of regular library activity

November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

Guest post from Library Lab fellow and UX ninja, Anneli Friberg, Linköping University Library

The interest for user experience (UX) and usability in libraries has grown rapidly over the past years and now has become an essential tool for developing and assessing a library’s digital services and physical spaces. It is necessary, though, to recognize that UX incorporates much more than just usability. Norman and Nielsen (n.d.) summarize user experience as something that ‘encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products’ and continues:

The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

Furthermore, they state that it is important to separate the overall user experience from usability, since the latter ‘is a quality attribute of the UI [user interface], covering whether the system is easy to learn, efficient to use, pleasant, and so forth.’ (Norman and Nielsen, n.d.).

At Linköping University Library (LiUB) we are slowly moving towards a ‘culture of usability’ where users are being observed interacting with both physical and virtual spaces, the way Godfrey (2015) advocates, but this paper will only focus on the library’s online presence. The main objective with this paper is to argue for continuous usability testing, as a part of regular library activity.

Usability testing per se is nothing new within the library sector, but it is usually done in the process of launching a new or redesigned website/UI or implementing a new library system. Most often it has a distinct focus on web development, and is not so much used to develop other services or physical spaces. This is confirmed in numerous articles and UX-blog posts (e.g. Gasparini 2015; Godfrey 2015; Broadwater 2016; Dominguez, Hamill & Brillat 2015). Sometimes the tests are not conducted by library staff, but by external consultants. Our approach, however, is to use an in-house, continuous process which is applied not only to the library’s website structure, but also to other digital services such as the search box on the library start page and link resolver user interface and the link resolver icon in the discovery tool.

Rettig (2014) asks whether such a thing as ‘grassroots UX’ exists in libraries. She wonders if ‘the UX hopeful, [who] do not have the mandate or team or job title’, can find ‘ways to apply UX methods to smaller-scale, day-to-day work in the library?’ I am inclined to say that it is possible. A UX perspective can and should be integrated in any development project, big or small. The UX philosophy does not have to be initiated as a top-down initiative, and in a sense LiUB’s systematic way of doing usability testing started out as a grassroots initiative.

Context

Linköping University (LiU) is one of 16 Universities in Sweden. LiU has four campuses in three cities (Linköping, Norrköping and Stockholm) and has four faculties: Science & Engineering, Medicine & Health Science, Arts & Science and Educational Sciences. LiUB consists of four physical libraries, one on each campus, with approximately 90 staff members in total.

In order to make sure that LiUB contributes in a useful and valuable way to student learning and research, we have tried to find different ways to understand our users’ needs and behaviour. We use our insights to improve the digital library in order to provide a user-friendly and intuitive way for students and researchers at LiU to access the information they need for their studies and research.

The groundwork for the library’s systematic user involvement was done within a web strategy project in the spring of 2014. Throughout the project we had the opportunity to test different methods for collecting user data. During this time we also formed a usability team at the library. The team consists of five people (of which three are librarians), including myself, with different skills and roles such as system manager, computer programmer, webmaster, UX expert and cognitive scientist. Over the last 24 months, the usability team has gathered once a month to do testing. The advantage of having a permanent usability team is that the library does not have to mobilize a team whenever the need occurs. This approach is also advocated by Nichols, Bobal & McEvoy (2009):

A permanent usability team allows an organization to build expertise and tackle more usability projects than ad hoc teams. Having a usability team already in place makes it more likely that usability studies will be done on projects that may otherwise have been overlooked because of the “burden” of asking staff to be part of another project on top of their already busy schedule.

The LiU Library Experience

The web strategy project in 2014 established usability and user benefits as central to the continuous web development process. In order to accomplish a user-centered library website we decided to find a doable model for user-involvement. The book Rocket Surgery Made Easy: the Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems by Krug (2010) became our inspiration. The workflow for usability testing at LiUB is illustrated in Fig. 1.

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Fig 1.: The workflow for usability testing at LiUB

When we first started, we asked ourselves how many test participants were needed. According to Nielsen (2012) five users are enough when doing usability testing, because then ‘you almost get close to user testing’s maximum benefit-cost ratio.’ Krug (2010, p. 43) on the other hand claims that three users are good enough for ‘the do-it-yourselfer’, considering ‘you’re not interested in what it takes to uncover most of the problems; you only care about what it takes to uncover as many problems as you can fix.’

As we evidently belong in the category of ‘do-it-yourselfers’ we started with three test participants per session during the first year. The previous semester we decided to increase the number to four users per session, since we thought we had the capacity to expand. Although, after our last evaluation we decided to go back to only three users again, since it was difficult for me as facilitator, but also for the observers, to stay focused and perceptive with four users and to get enough time for summarizing and debriefing. Krug (2010, p. 43) made a list of arguments why three test participants are enough, and after trying with four, I am willing to agree. Some of Krug’s reasons are:

The first three users are very likely to encounter many of the most significant problems related to the tasks you’re testing.
Finding three participants is less work than finding more.
Testing with three users makes it possible to test and debrief in the same day.
When you test with more than three at a time, you often end up with more notes than anyone has time to process – many of them about things that are really “nits”. This can make it harder to see the most serious problems – the “can’t see the forest for the trees” effect.

For the tests we use randomly chosen employees and/or students as test participants. In my experience, engaging face to face is the most successful way to recruit users. For example, I usually recruit students I meet in the library. Regarding employees we always recruit research or teaching staff such as PhD students, lecturers, university teachers and professors. My experience is that most students and employees I ask are willing to help us as long as they can find the time for it. They all want to be part of a process that aims to improve the user experience.

When it comes to deciding what to test, we make a preliminary plan at the beginning of each semester. This plan sometimes changes during the semester. What we actually test depends on different projects in progress at the library. We never test systems or interfaces that we can’t alter or modify ourselves to some extent.

We conduct usability testing monthly during each semester, which gives us approximately eight test sessions per year. This enables an agile and iterative approach to assessing the users’ experiences of the digital library as well as helping in the development of our digital services.

On the test day, the usability team divides into two groups in two different locations: a test room (see Fig. 2) and an observation room (see Fig. 3). The facilitator and one observer goes to the test room, while the rest of the team goes to the observation room. Often the latter are accompanied by other observers and stakeholders; sometimes colleagues from other departments within the University such as the division for IT Services, sometimes external such as librarians from other universities.

fig-2-1
Fig 2.: Test room

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Fig 3.: Observation room

We combine different methods like observation, think-aloud protocol and capturing screen activity. By using different practices that complement each other, we avoid the uncertainty of using just one method. One of the benefits of triangulation of data is that we get a more complete picture of the usability issues that need to be addressed.

Each test person is given a specific assignment based on a common user scenario for the service to be tested. The test person attempts to complete the assignment while thinking aloud. If needed, the facilitator encourages the test participant to think aloud and describe what he/she is trying to do. At the same time, the team in the observation room records what the test person says and does. We use Camtasia to record screen activity, and we set up an Adobe Connect meeting to share screens between the test room and the observation room. Obviously we do not record anything without permission from the users. Before we begin the test session, the test participant signs a written consent.

After the test, the facilitator and observer from the test room join the rest of the usability team in the observation room and a debriefing session starts. We then collect and discuss the usability problems we have noticed and put them together in an aggregated list of feasible improvements. We also prioritize the things on the list.

After each test session the usability team starts to improve the things listed. Depending on what the problems are and what has to be done, we involve different colleagues outside the usability team. The recordings have proven valuable for the analyses and development in between the test sessions. They are an essential complement to the observers’ notes.

Another valuable complement is so called guerrilla testing, which we do sometimes in between the monthly test sessions. This type of testing is both agile and flexible. It is a ‘low cost method of user testing. The term “guerrilla” refers to its “out in the wild” style, in the fact that it can be conducted anywhere…’ (GOV.UK n.d.) When we perform guerrilla testing we approach people in the library and ask them to give quick feedback. This fits well with our thinking that some testing is better than no testing.

Outcomes

The improvements we have made as a result of what we have seen during our usability testing ranges from very small terminological changes to more structural changes on our website. One of the first things we tested was the information architecture for a new library website. For that, we used a tool called Treejack. We did one test session with students and one with employees. This enabled us to get valuable feedback on the site structure.

For several years we had a tabbed search box on the library start page (see Fig. 4). Last year we decided to renew the design, inspired by MIT Libraries. Before we launched the new search box (see Fig. 5) we made a prototype which we used to perform both regular usability testing and guerrilla testing. The feedback we got gave us useful input to the design process.

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Fig 4.: Old desgin of the library start page with a tabbed search box

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Fig 5.: The new search box

We have also tested different features and new services for the discovery tool, such as a new search service for e-publications. We tested this service twice – once with undergraduate students and once with PhD students. In addition to getting feedback on what adjustments to do, we also learned that undergraduate students have quite a different attitude to journals than PhD students have. We have seen this in other situations, for instance when doing interviews as part of the web strategy project in 2014, but seeing this again during usability testing confirmed our previous insights.

Things we have also tested and improved are terminology, holdings information and link resolver user interface. Sometimes we make changes and then we do a new round of testing, but more often we get indirect feedback on changes we have done while testing new things.

Conclusion

A vast understanding about our users is the foundation of any user-centered development. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods and applying a UX-perspective we are better equipped to meet our users’ changing needs and behaviour. It allows a more agile workflow. The trick is to keep it simple. We do not consider ourselves researchers. What we do are continuous modifications based on input we get from real users. Our motivation is to enhance users’ experiences of the library’s digital services.

Based on our experiences from the last 24 months we have found that systematic usability testing can and should be a part of the regular library activity and that it can encompass so much more than just the website structure. The key to success is the model itself, particularly when it is carried out monthly during the academic year. By involving real users continuously, we avoid getting stuck in our own internal assumptions of how users interact with the library’s digital services.

Additionally, usability testing is an excellent way to make our services more visible to users.

References

Broadwater, T 2016, Why am I doing this to our users? A case study about the wrong turns taken during a redesign project and the impact of design-by-committee on team morale, viewed 11 July 2016, < http://libux.co/why-am-i-doing-this-to-our-users/>

Dominguez, G, Hammill, SJ, Brillat, AI 2015, ‘Toward a usable academic library web site: a case study of tried and tested usability practices’, Journal of Web Librarianship, vol. 9, issue 2-3, pp. 99-120.

Gasparini, AA 2015, ‘A holistic approach to user experience in the context of an academic library interactive system’. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9188, pp. 173-184.

Godfrey, K 2015, ‘Creating a culture of usability’, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, vol. 1, issue 3, viewed 8 October 2015, <http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/weave.12535642.0001.301>

GOV.UK n.d., Guerrilla testing: getting input into products and services, viewed 27 September 2016, <https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-design/user-research/guerrilla-testing.html>

Krug, S 2010, Rocket surgery made easy: the do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability problems, New Riders Publishing, Berkeley, CA.

Nichols, J, Bobal, AM, McEvoy, S 2009, ‘Using a permanent usability team to advance user-centered design in libraries’, Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, vol. 10, no. 2, viewed 13 July 2016, <http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v10n02/nichols_j01.html>

Nielsen, J 2012, How many test users in a usability study?, viewed 8 July 2016, <https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/>

Norman, D and Nielsen, J n.d., The definition of user experience, viewed 8 July 2016, <https://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/>

Rettig, M 2014, ‘Grassroots UXD in the library: a review essay’, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, vol. 1, issue 1, viewed 1 April 2016, <http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/weave.12535642.0001.103>

Towards Rubicon: A Story About Libraries That Turn And Face The Strange

November 22, 2016November 22, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

Text of my talk at Asamblea REBIUN 2016 in Palma, Mallorca, Nov. 9th 2016 (slides in the end of post)

The combination of libraries and Spain has been real good to me in 2016. Back in March I had the pleasure of attending the OCLC EMEA Regional conference in Madrid and do a little talk on how to tell The Library Story with LEGO and now I’m here, in Palma de Mallorca with you guys. I feel very blessed to get an hour of talk with 110 university library leaders.

I was asked if I would do a talk on current struggles and challenges for academic libraries but I find that a theme in lack of some important elements and aspect in the discussion of the future of libraries. Where does challenges come from? Where does opportunities come from? They are mainly driven by changes in our surroundings and changes, if we like them or not, are here to stay. Not much in this world are static and in order to develop and grow I strongly believe that libraries needs to embrace the change and face the strange. Not ignore it or fight it. So my talk will be about that.

Changes are very real: Trump just got elected the most powerful man in the world a few hours ago and today it is 27 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall – stuff that are changing the world. With this talk I will not give you the key to the future of libraries but hopefully it will give you some reflections and fuel for thoughts on how to navigate your libraries and institutions forward, asking the right questions as you go along.

I like to start off with a little story. It’s a story about Caesar, a river and the importance of making choices.

The calendar says the 10th of January in the year 49 BC. We are in the Italian city, Ravenna, and the General and Governor of Gaul, Julius Caesar, has a problem. The Senate in Rome has given him an ultimatum: Either he’ll give up his province and his army or he will be declared an enemy of the State. Like any man or woman of power, Caesar is not very pleased about this. Though he seems not to care: he eats dinner with friends and goes to the circus. But at nighttime he leads a single legion into the dark towards the River of Rubicon. Rubicon is the boarder river between his North Italian province and the State of Rome. Caesar reaches Rubicon in the early morning and looks out on the water. Now it get’s interesting. He has to make a choice: If he don’t passes the river but returns to his province of Gaul, trying to maintain status quo, he will over time be marginalized in the Roman Empire and be defeated by the powers that is gathering around him. If he crosses the river there is no turning back. It would be to declare war against Rome. He will put himself in great danger but, and this is very important, will remain the initiative on his own hands.

As many of you may know, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and he succeeded with his mission and his empire lasted for many years on.

What’s the point of telling this story? Well, Caesar looked at his surroundings and the conditions for his empire and life was changing. Pretty dramatic I would say. And Caesar made a choice of action. He faced the strange knowing he might fail but certain that he 100% would fail if he did not acted. If he had chosen status quo and stayed in his province he would have lost. When the conditions for libraries are changing we should always ask ourselves if it’s time to cross Rubicon. Libraries that remains status quo in a changing world jeopardize the value of libraries. Leading a library of status quo through tides of changes is a bad trip and will in the end result in a library out of sync with it’s community and the needs it serve.

Not much in this world is static and the conditions for higher education, research and libraries are certainly not. And just to make it clear, changes is not a bad thing, it’s a condition, like love – it can be fantastic and it can be hurtful but you can’t escape it. My hope with this talk is that you in the future, whenever you face changes, got the fantastic David Bowie song Changes in your head and feel ready to turn and face the strange with your libraries.

I love questions. I think they are an excellent tool for challenging status quo and in order to face the strange we need to ask the right questions. Here is my bid on which questions that could be good to ask when we look at libraries that needs to turn and face the strange:

What’s the purpose of higher education?

We don’t make academic libraries for their own sake. We make them to support research and higher education. So in order to frame development and changes in libraries we need to look at higher education. I will return to the purpose of research and higher education.

What changes effects higher education?

Plenty to go around. I will return to that too.

Which challenges and opportunities do those changes bring to higher education?

Good stuff and not so good stuff is, as you know, often a consequence of changes.

To which challenges and opportunities in higher education is The Library the answer?

And enter The Library. It’s in the changing landscape of research and higher education we find the key to the libraries of the future – the libraries that continuously bring value to our institutions, communities and society.

And to the basic question: Why are libraries here? I like successful libraries but that is not the end goal. The end goal is to make higher education succeed. To make learning, research, education, students and researchers succeed. If you accomplish that then you got a really great library.

Let’s go further into that. Why should we make higher education succeed? Why do we even use money and time on research and higher education? Because research, education, learning and enlightenment is the answers to a better world. The world we see on this fine day in Palma is not a great world. We are struggling with poverty, refugee crisis, hunger and an extreme high degree of inequality when it comes to both gender and race issues. I don’t find that we are doing that cool on this planet.

Research and higher education can help fix this. Let me give you an example: In Pennsylvania there are to cities only around 30 miles from each other, Monessen and Pittsburgh. Both cities experienced glory times in the industrial area due to huge markets of steal and coal. Suddenly, in the beginning of the 80’s, globalization and the rise of the knowledge society changed that: Companies could get steal and coal for a cheaper prize abroad and new materials for fuel and building stuff saw daylight. Pittsburgh alone lost 55.000 jobs in steal and coal from 1980 to 1984 – over half of the workforce.

The two cities reacted very differently to this change: Monessen tried to remain status quo sticking to the steal and coal industry and Pittsburgh turned to partnerships between higher education and entrepreneurship and cooperate companies. The partnership between the two universities of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University, and entrepreneurship turned out very fruitful and quickly generated new products, companies and jobs. Pittsburgh blossomed into the city we know today where higher education, urban culture, start-ups, creativity and cooperate companies swim along like fish’s in the water. Monessen has slowly turned into a ghost town with closed industry, unemployment and empty houses.

Technology and globalization happened to Monessen and Pittsburg. It also happened to higher education. Let’s look at some of the game changers in research and higher education that has taken place over the last decades.

First of all information has to some degree been liberated from time and place. Here I’m talking about the digital migration of scientific books and journals. A scholar can easily go to Burkina Faso or Birmingham and still access all the relevant online journals he or she needs. This is obvious a very good thing but information also comes with huge limitation. Yep, I’m talking about paywall’s, about single use deals on ebooks, about the fact that tax money pay for research, research is published in commercial journals and is then bought back with tax money through libraries.

Another change is the way scholars collect and work with information. Today it’s possible with some pretty simple tools and methods to harvest terabits of data, could be all the tweets from the election last night, clean them up, analyze them and visualize the results.

Education and learning has escaped the classroom years ago. Both on a formal level but to a high degree also on an informal level. All universities and institutions of higher education nowadays have learning management systems for learning, sharing of resources and so on but students also make Facebook groups for sharing notes, discussions on courses, peer-to-peer help on Zotero etc. To some extent learning has always taken place outside the classroom but like information in general the technological development has made time and place insignificant. “Didn’t went to the lecture? Here is a podcast or I can share my notes with you through Evernote.”

Many of the changes I just mentioned have to do with technology and technology does not only change stuff we work with, it also changes our behaviors’ and our culture. And obvious it’s not only changing students and researchers of today but also those of tomorrow. My son is born in 2010. When he was 2 years old he was pretty confident with navigating on an iPad. So confident that, when he was watching television and he wanted to switch the channel, he went to the screen and swiped it (and got pretty upset when the channel didn’t change). At the age of 2, technology has already changed the way he behaved towards a medium I at the age of 33 took for granted. Imagine when he starts at university.

So I’ve talked a bit about how our world is not in such a pretty great shape and some current game changers in higher education. Is The Library the answer to any of this? Yes it is and I believe the overall answer too many of those changes is “Open”. Open access, open data, open science, open spaces and open systems.

I find open access beautiful and I truly believe that open access to digital scientific content will make a better world. Open access to information, data, thoughts, knowledge and insights is a driver for enlightenment, learning and education and that is a crucial platform from which we could all start to go towards a better world. That’s my basic believe in open access but reality is something else. It’s a fuzzy and complex battlefield with strong commercial powers involved and I don’t know how the setup is in Spain but in Denmark we don’t see many universities in front of the bus of the open access fan club. I see librarians in front of that bus.

If we just take a leap from the open access discussion and look at library collection management I like OCLC’s Lorcan Dempsey’s excellent “Inside Out Library” idea. For many years libraries has been focusing on collecting information from the world to provide it to students and researches at their universities. That is and “Outside In Library” approach which by the way of course is still valid and important. A few years back Dempsey introduced the “Inside Out Library” which is focusing on gathering and organizing the output of our own institutions and to be a great repository of the knowledge created there. The knowledge that in many cases are building blocks for a better world.

As you all know the only information going around in higher education and research these days is not only to be found in books and online journals. Data is a thing and there where times a year or two ago where the endless discussion on “Big Data” made me kind off sick to my stomach. Anyway, this stuff is very real in two areas: Talking data and higher education I like to distinguish between data literacy and data management where data literacy is the skills and competencies to harvest, clean, analyze and visualize data in order to get wiser on the world and data management is a crucial part of the research flow when it comes to storage of data during projects, and how to share and deposit the final data at the end of a project. I think libraries plays a big part in both: Data literacy is an obvious extension to the great work libraries do in support of information literacy and librarians are born badass data management consultants due to the meta data skills and position as supporter of research.

“The most important asset of any library goes home at night – the library staff” Tim Healy ones said. I agree so now let’s take a look at the librarian. First of all I like to challenge the believe I meet in many places that librarianship is neutral. We promote open access and open science. That’s not neutral, that’s active. We advocate and teach information and data literacy skills that we think a crucial to make students and scholars succeed in higher education. That’s not neutral, that’s active. We build collections, services, infrastructure and communities. That’s not neutral, that’s active. I think it’s important that we take on a role as active partners in creating an open environment in academia for literature, data, education, research and spaces for open and unjudgemental dialog.

To take on the role of an active partner in higher education moving towards more open environment we need a diverse set of skills and mindsets. The library really is nothing without people and diversity is king when it comes to making a great library: we need people with different background when it comes to education, age, race and gender to create a dynamic workforce that together contributes to an academic library that can meet the needs of a community in change. And we need bold leadership who are not in the game because they want to save libraries but because the want to make research and higher education succeed.

The physical space of the library has changed over the years as you know. We don’t build libraries for books anymore, we build libraries for people. And I think it’s fair to say, that our library spaces plays a crucial role in creating and openness in academia. First of all, the whole idea of the library is to be an open platform for everybody – every student, scholar, researcher despite subjects, courses, seniority, gender and race. The Library is common ground for interdisciplinarity and sharing of ideas and point of views across campus but also between academia and entrepreneurship. The Library is an unique platform for this and the librarians are in an obvious position to facilitate it.

Also the library space is a place that lacks evaluation and authority when it comes to student’s performance. We don’t give them grades and the library staff is not considered an authority the same way the teacher is but more of a support and partner in making them succeed. Our job is to make students succeed. We do that in many ways, both the traditional ways like access to relevant literature, information seeking and reference management courses, study and learning spaces but also in more untraditional ways like de-stressing dog therapy or as we do in Copenhagen, Library Candle Light Dinners to support the integration of international students.

An open space for studies and learning and with a staff that is focused not on grades but on students succeed is an important answer to both quality in studies and quality in life.

So I have been talking about some of the problems of the world and some of the changes in higher education and how libraries in general can be an answer to some of this. Now I like to be more specific and talk about a case where the library has turned and faced the strange. At The University of Copenhagen we have felt a raising interest in working with data within studies and research. Students has been looking for skills and support to work with data to use in their studies and researchers has been looking for a platform or an organization where they could work together on data heavy project but also where they could bring students together with tools and methods for working with digital methods. Our responds to this has been Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) that we opened in February 2016 at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences. DSSL is an open platform for education and events on digital methods, it’s hardware and software for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data and it’s a dynamic and aesthetically inspiring learning environment but most of all it’s a community for shared interest in using data to get to explore the world. I see “Open” in many of the element of DSSL: We curate Open Data Sources, we facilitate open events and workshops on data handling and data analyzes, we operate in an open space where we invite not only scholars from social sciences but from across the whole university and also from other universities and institutions of higher education, relevant government institutions working with data and innovation and entrepreneurship hubs. With it’s functionality and flexibility the physical setup offers an open alternative to the classic learning situation with rows of students that faces a teacher. We offer an open and flexible platform that quickly can be rearranged into different settings.

The success of DSSL has been remarkable: We have crossed 35 events on data and digital methods in the first half year, students are arranging study groups on STATA in the lab, we have been nominated for Study Enivirontment of the Year 2016 at University of Copenhagen and the network and outreach to students, researcher and institutions are evolving rapidly.

On an overall note regarding the library of the future I like to point you to the newly released Future of Libraries Task Force Preliminary Report from MIT Libraries. It brings some excellent reflections and recommendations for the direction of the future academic library. Head for your favorite chair and read it.

Finally I like to talk a little about how we as institutions can work with a sound culture that makes our libraries and the people working there ready to face the strange.

Why is this important? Well as managers and leaders we point out directions through strategies. That’s great, I love strategies, but Culture eats Strategy for breakfast. If you don’t have the right culture to embrace and follow the strategy you have just outlined a dirction but is not going anywhere. It’s important we think about the culture in our libraries when we make our strategies. If they don’t go well hand in hand you will not cross Rubicon. You would probably drown halfway over.

If you want to die, isolate. If you want to live, collaborate. It’s extremely unhealthy for human beings and institutions to isolate from the surrounding world. Almost any group of people who had tried to carry out this strategy has suffered from extinction. Europe is closing their boarders, I have to show my passport to get into Sweden and those are steps in a very wrong direction. In libraries we have a healthy tradition for collaboration and I think to some point we can talk about global librarianship and shared values. We should continue this collaboration, learn from each other and make sure libraries worldwide share the same values. On this matter I like to point you to International Librarians Network which is a really awesome peer-to-peer network for librarians staff across the globe. A great way to connect and learn from other librarians in the global community. Go home and introduce it to your staff. The time used on this will come back tenfold in more insightful, inspired and open minded library staff.

Let me move on to the power of storytelling. I strongly believe that the ability to tell a good story is more powerful than the ability to serve cold facts. Cold facts served in the wrapping of a great story and the world is at your feet. In a forever changing landscape libraries should be extremely sharp on telling the story about why libraries matter. What we do and how it creates value. And that is not only a management job; everybody from the library director to the clerk that shelves books should be able to tell the story about the importance of libraries. And believe in it too. Everybody is an ambassador. I like to tell you a story about a man, we could call him Jim, who worked in the cleaning unit at NASA. One day he is cleaning the floor, a group of visitors comes by and a woman asks Jim, “What is your role here?”. Jim replies, “I help sending mankind to space”. That is the right attitude. Everybody working in libraries contributes to the greater goals and everybody should be aware of this, believe in it and be able to tell the story. To get to this you need a culture in your library that recognizes this but a very tangible starting point is the Value of Academic Libraries Statement from ACRL. It’s a short and precise overview of the areas in which academic libraries provide critical direct and indirect value to institutions in higher education. A good and concrete fact sheet for institutions to work on but again, if the culture doesn’t back this it doesn’t really matter. Library staff and stakeholders really need to believe in the values of libraries in order to tell the stories with impact (or to tell the stories at all).

I like to move on from speaking of value to measuring value. In Denmark we do reports with a lot of numbers from academic libraries every year. It is numbers like circulation of books, downloads of online articles and foot traffic in library buildings. Does these numbers say anything about the value of libraries? Sure they say something about the use of libraries but we don’t know if the student learned anything from reading that library book. Actually we don’t know if they read it at all. In order to measure the value of libraries, and yes, we need to measure and prove that from time to time, and in order to continually develop better libraries from what we know, we need to look at different indicators of library use, value and impact than the traditional ones. I like to present you with two approaches; a quantitative one and a qualitative one. The quantitative approach explores the huge of amounts of data on library use available today crossed with other relevant data. A great example is from a recent study at Roskilde University Library where they have tried to measure the impact of Book A Librarian sessions. They crossed students that had attended a Book a Librarian session with their grades and then compared them with students who hasn’t. Luckily it shoved a quiet significant difference in favor of higher grades to the students who had a Book a Librarian session before writing there paper, but that is not the point. The point is that with this case you are actually looking at a library service that we just have a feeling is creating value in higher education and moves on asking how can we actually measure this and then find valid indicators to work with. I love it and we need more of this.

The qualitative approach is an ethnographic approach. It’s about seeing the library in the bigger picture and not only focusing on library use but acknowledge that there is a lot outside our library field of vision. To uncover this we should continuously talk, listen, observe and record students and researchers behavior. Also those who do not use the library. With an approach like this we got a chance to uncover the blind spots in higher education activities where libraries could make a difference. For more on this I like to point you to the excellent work of Andy Priestner and his crew on the FutureLib project at the University of Cambridge.

To wrap up I think it’s important to make clear, that libraries are not an information or knowledge business, it’s a people business. And great libraries are not defined by collections or buildings – they are defined by the people working there. Those people are the key to turn and face the strange.

See you on the other side of Rubicon, vaya con dios

Slides from the talk

Upcoming talk at #REBIUN2016: Towards Rubicon: Libraries that turn and face the strange

November 5, 2016November 6, 2016 / Christian Lauersen / 1 Comment

Towards Rubicon: A Story About Libraries That Turn And Face The Strange. That’s the title of my keynote at the annual REBIUN conference at Palma de Mallorca, Spain, November 9th to 11th.

The title reaches for both history and Bowie – two things that I find great for explaining and framing stuff.

I was asked if I would do a talk on struggles and challenges for academic libraries but I find that a bit to gloomy a subject for my taste (I’m a LEGO playing library director after all) but also a theme in lack of some important elements and aspect in the discussion of the future of libraries. Where does challenges come from? Where does opportunities come from? They are mainly driven by changes in our surroundings and changes, if we like them or not, are here to stay. Not much in this world are static (except maybe the magic of David Bowie) and in order to develop and grow I strongly believe that libraries needs to embrace the change and face the strange. Not ignore it or fight it. So my talk will be about that.

Changes

Changes often comes with uncertainty and I think many human beings and institutions even if they will admit it or not, really are fans of status quo (myself included on many days). You know that you got but you don’t know what you gonna get, right? But it’s an unhealthy position to take in order to navigate libraries wisely through changes and it often brings out The Let’s Save Libraries Ghost. The Let’s Save Libraries Ghost is not saying boo because of governmental cuts on library budgets (that’s a different kind of change) but it’s scares us to a place where we look at changes in technology, infrastructure, culture and behavior and thinking how do I save the library I know in all this. But that is wrong – leading a library of status quo through tides of changes is a bad trip and will in the end result in a library out of sync with it’s community and the needs it serve.

The Burning Platform methafor and attitude is an evention of The Let’s Save Libraries Ghost

Ask the right questions

In my talk I will address the following questions which I think is crucial for libraries to navigate and continuous create value in research and higher education.

What’s the purpose of higher education?
What changes effects higher education?
Which challenges and opportunities does those changes bring to higher education?
To which of these challenges and opportunities in higher education are the library the answer?

My talk looks at those questions and will pinpoint some ways to face challenges, opportunities and changes but most of all, I hope it will offer reflections and a direction on how the culture of libraries can deal with changes.

I’m looking forward to walk towards Rubicon with the REBIUN participants, hopefully cross it, and go back to our institutions ready to embrace the change and face the strange.

Hopefully the REBIUN 2016 participants will be all be dancing like Bowie after my talk

The Library Lab

libraries, learning and lego

“Facts are real. Sincerely, Your Librarians” and other badass signs from #WomensMarch

Why usability testing should be a part of regular library activity

Context

The LiU Library Experience

Outcomes

Conclusion

References

Upcoming talk at #REBIUN2016: Towards Rubicon: Libraries that turn and face the strange