A human chain around a true community friend: The library staff

October 26, 2018November 2, 2018 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

September 15 is The Roskilde Libraries birthday and every year we celebrate by inviting old and new employees for cake and coffee. This year we celebrated on October 22 and at this occasion I did a little birthday speech about The Arab Spring, a human chain in Alexandria and how staff is the single most important asset of any library.

Welcome to The Roskilde Libraries birthday. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a story. It is a story that in its turn is both cruel and poetic. It’s December 17 2010 and we are in the Tunisian city of Sidi-Bouzid. Here we find a man named Mohamed Bouazizi. He makes a living of selling fruit on the street, but since he has no license to sell fruit, the police seize his fruit truck. Bouazizi is a desperate man and when the police seize his fruit truck they deprive him of his livelihood. Bouazizi does something very radical. He sets fire to himself in protest against the police, the system and the regime and this act gives spark to The Arab Spring and the entire Middle Eastern world is hit by series of pro-democracy demonstrations.

The demonstration came to clashes between citizens and police and military, the existing systems collapse and in continuation of the violent demonstrations and increased pressure on the established systems, lawlessness prevails. Robbery and vandalism of public buildings, museums, hospitals and schools are taking place. This is also the case in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Everything is chaos and the city is being completely torn apart. Out of the chaos, a group of people gathers, they take each other by the hand and form a human chain around a particular building. The building is The Library of Alexandria. In the two weeks where the riots are on, the human chain stands tall and when the disturbances drive over, not a single window is broken in the library, not a single book is stolen.

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The human chain around The Library of Alexandria

This is a very powerful story to me and I think there are two things in this context that are important. The first must be found in The Arab Spring as a revolution. The Library stands for all the achievements of The Arab Spring: Democracy, Freedom, Transparency, Inclusion, Diversity. For me, the human chain in Alexandria is the ultimate tribute to the library’s function and justification in a society. And then it’s important to remember, that the human chain that formed around the library was a guard of the building, the collection, but very much also a guard for the library’s most important asset; The people who work there. The people who make a positive difference every day to the communities they earn.

So when we celebrate The Roskilde Libraries birthday today, it’s in fact the celebration of former and present employees who all have made and make a difference for the citizens of Roskilde Municipality and made it a better place to live. And if we were ever to be hit by a Zealand Spring I’m confident that a human chain would form around our libraries to protect the institution you have helped created.

Thank you

bib3_0 Happy birthday, Roskilde Libraries! You are an magnificent friend to the community

Be Like Brando: The Library as arena of co-creation and belonging

September 26, 2018September 26, 2018 / Christian Lauersen / 1 Comment

Text of my keynote at the annual ChALS conference in Gothenburg, Sweden September 26 2018. The theme was learning (in a brought sense).

This conference is about learning so I thought it would be relevant to start asking the question, ”Why is learning important, why do we even care about learning”.

[a number of responses came from the audience: learning liberates, learning makes us grow, learning developes us]

To me learning is important because I feel my world is expanding when I learn something new. My opportunity and ability to influence and understand my surroundings, my friends, my family, my libraries, the society we serve grows with every little new thing I learn. Learning is significant to make the world a better place to be. And then it is just a whole lot of fun to learn new stuff.

So learning is great. Is the library a place for learning? I would say that is a big yes any day but not everybody thinks so…

This is a picture of a slide from a talk at a conference in Vienna I attended earlier this year. The talk was about the fairly new WU Library & Learning Center at Vienna University of Business and Economics and what it says is, that there is a difference between what they see as the library function and what they see as the learning center function. A library is a place for reading, a place where shelving is the main focus (sic!), a place with ideal climate for paper copies and where collection is the most valuable part. Then, on the other hand, The Learning Center part is a place for learning, where environments for learning is important and with ideal climate for students. In short you could say that the library is a place for books storage and the learning center is a place for people and learning.

I strongly disagree with this approach and I have some really big issues about the term ‘learning center’ used in library context. To me libraries are very much about learning and about people meeting, collaborating and talking. The library is also about collections for sure but a collection in itself is not the goal, the goal is to support learning, education and research and libraries are great at that so let’s just call it a library.

Supporting learning is what is what we do. That is why we are here. Really nothing new to this, it’s not unique 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.

Be like Brando

So we agreed that learning is important and libraries are great places for learning. Now I like to tell you a story about Marlon Brando, the American actor. When Francis Ford Coppola was casting for the leading role as Don Corleone in his iconic film, The Godfather, many actors signed up for addition. Both Dustin Hoffmann and Warren Beatty was casting for the role and also Marlon Brando. And Brando had been reading the screen play and he got this clear idea on how he would play Don Corleone and in his mind The Don should be a man of big format, he should be hoarse and look like a bulldog so Brando comes to the set and he takes some klenex and put in his mouth like this (at this point of the talk I actually filled my mouth with klenex) and he started acting; “I’m gonna make him and offer he can’t refuse.. revenge, is a dish best served cold” and it was in that very moment he defined the role of Don Corleone, he gave life to the charactor. And I find that so inspiring. You could not imagine someone else playing that role – Marlon Brando defined The Godfather, he made it his own and just like that I want us all to be like Brando when we talk about learning in libraries; I want us to be aware of our responsibility as learning arenas in our communities and to define the learning activities we carry out and to take ownership of the output. I want us to be like Brando.

Be like Brando, define and shape your learning activities in the library

So now I will show you an example of how to be like Brando. You can be like Brando in many ways but I will show you 5 ways of defining and shaping learning using Digital Social Science Lab in Copenhagen as a case.

Context: Digital Social Science Lab

First a bit of context. At The Faculty Library of Social Sciences, we opened Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) 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. What we were seeing was students and faculty members turning to other resources than books and journals when they wanted to get insights on the world and carry out studies and research. They started collecting digital data. Students and researchers of higher education has always used data in their work; Collecting rocks, doing interviews, observing human behavior is all collecting data. But we experienced that they also started to deal with other kinds of data; harvesting social media data and use open data sources like Airbnb location or digitalizes maps of Greenland. They also started asking us if we could help them, for instance visualization of data or analyzing of huge amounts of text. So we moved on that and created Digital Social Science Lab to support data literacy in social sciences.

DSSL is a physical space for education and instructions for data handling within social sciences, it’s software and hardware for harvesting, cleaning, analyzing and visualizing various kinds of data, it’s a building a community around this but most of all it’s a reaction. A reaction to change.

Digital Social Science Lab, est. 2016

In DSSL we have initiated some activities in order to create a bridge between the students and 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. To break it down you could say that the learning aim for DSSL is to foster awareness and skills on digital methods and data literacy in the academic community and since academics luckily often go out into the real world after studies, the aim is also to support data literacy in our society.

Digital Social Science Lab is a huge success, we do around 80 events on data wrangling a year and the space has been nominated to the University of Copenhagen’s Yearly Study Environment and we have acted like Brando and used 5 principles for making learning impact as great as possible: Why, Trust, Place, Humans and Belonging.

Be like Brando #1: Why

To me ‘why’ is the single most important question in the world. Please, never ever stop asking ‘why’. In a learning context why is also significant. Think about yourself at work; Your boss ask you to go to a conference to learn about makerspaces in academic libraries but your boss don’t tell you why you have to learn it and what your newly gained knowledge is to be used for. Feeling motivated to learn something? Being totally clear on why your library’s learning activity is important for the individual and the community and communicate it clearly will be motivational for your users and will support their ability to learn. So in Digital Social Science Lab we have been using a lot of energy on explaining why learning digital methods in social sciences is important.

We have been using storytelling as method, we created stories around DSSL to explain and answer why it was extremely important to get engaged with DSSL and the story simply was, that learning digital methods was a new opportunity to learn something about the world. We didn’t say that the methods where better than the traditional ones, we simply just said that we could help them expand the world they knew; instead of only reading about Brexit they could harvest and analyze Twitter data about Brexit. So tell the story about why your users should care about learning something from you or each other.

Be like Brando #2: Trust

I find trust to be the single most important value in my personal and professional life. I find it extremely hard to deal with people I don’t trust. Trust is a precondition for societies to function. And trust is a precondition for learning. Try to imagine somebody that you don’t trust. How many is thinking about a politician? [a lot were]. Try to imagine your relationship and feelings towards that person. Now try to picture yourself in a situation where you have to learn to skydive from this person… Or from an institutional view think about Puma that accidental leaked 2 million shoe sizes. It’s shoe sizes, not governmental secrets but still Puma’s sales went down dramatically. Why? Because how can we trust them to make great shoes if they even can’t handle something as simple as shoe size data?

In DSSL we have actively used the library brand to create a learning environment of trust. And that is because The Library is a very trustworthy institution. Think about it, libraries has been around for almost 5000 years and has since the introduction of public libraries during the Enlightenment era been associated with spaces for learning, education, research and cultural activity. Our values are openness, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (or at least that the values I like to be floating through my libraries). We are democratic institutions (but not neutral!). The book itself, which many link with libraries (for good reasons), are one of the strongest brands in the world. Recently there was a huge survey in Denmark on which job professions the Danes found most trustworthy. Librarians came in as number 5 only beaten by the healthcare sector and the police but far above journalists and politicians. As a profession we are extremely trusted. It’s a gift, cherish it and use that actively to support your learning activities.

Be like Brando #3: Place

In highly digital world I find physical places more significant than ever. And in order to thrive, learn and develop the places that we created in our societies are important.

I’m always in a search for great places and whenever I’m in a place where I really feel good, where I feel that I belong, I think about what it is about that place that make me feel like that. And then I start thinking that about how to take some of that and maybe transfer it into the library space. Chances are that I’m not the only one who feel that way about that place.

I believe that a place – both the physical setup but also the feelings and emotions you connect with a place – has great impact on our ability to learn. I find great inspiration in Project for Public Spaces that is a is a nonprofit planning, design, and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. They have identified 4 key qualities that makes a great place:

It is accessible and well-connected to other important places in the area.
The space is comfortable and projects a good image.
People are drawn to participate in activities there.
It is a sociable place where people like to gather, visiting it again and again

If you got a good and relevant library you got all four of those and then you got perfect conditions for creating a great learning environtment. If you then add the trusthworthy brand of the library you got a good deal going.

But a place dosen’t create learning by itself. In the context of library learning environments I’ve seen many attempts at creating new spaces at libraries to facilitate learning; Fab Lab’s, Makers Spaces, Data Labs, Learning Commons. Some were great and some failed and I really love failures, we should embrace failures and learn from them. When we fail we take a room and fill it with some nice furniture and some state-of-the-art hardware and software and stand back, excitingly waiting for people to start learn something. What happens in those cases is that students come with there own lab-tops, sits down and stats working like they have always done. And that makes a nice bridge to the next Be like Brando: Humans! Humans are the median that will spark learning in a library, not furniture and hardware.

Be like Brando #4: Humans

Humans drive learning, not books or buildings. No doubt in my mind the most valuable asset of any great library place is the library staff. We need to take ownership of the library space, we need to facilitate learning processes, we need to tell stories about the library and the learning that we want to support. Architects can do the buildings, authors can write the books but it is our responsibility as library professionals to provide the content.

One way we take ownership of the space and the learning we want to support in DSSL is to facilitate education and events to support data literacy, we are not the experts, we set a scene where people meet and learn together. 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.

Another facilitating activity is Data Sprint’s. A data sprint is a time-limited 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 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.

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 were 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 worker be course they are more often to use it on tasks in their academic life and not only as an instructor.

Then there is the actually learning situation. What we are doing right now is a pretty traditional learning setup: I know something, I talk and you listen. Not much interaction going on. When we as library professionals teach we 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 great 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 I think that students who learn from other students are more likely to think “hey, if Joe from sociology can do this Gephi data visualization for his paper so can I”.

When we set up our facilitating events 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. Small thing, we always serves a glass of wine and some snacks at the end of our sessions because we want them to stay and talk and network. Peer-to-peer learning seems to be really great at that.

Be like Brando #5: Belonging

Some of you probably know Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs; Human beings have some basic needs like food. water, rest etc. If we don’t get them we die. We also need to feel safe and secure in order to function. And then we have some psychological needs: We need to belong and we need to feel loved. We need friends, and lovers, we need to care for others and we need to fell that others care for us.

Maslow’s hierachy of needs (1943)

Students and researchers at institutions of higher education are no different from that. For many students the study is a huge part of there life and I think it’s crucial for there well being and ability to perform that they feel that they belong. Same go with researchers and teachers. As an open space, not focused on administration or grades, I think the library can help students with the feeling of belonging with stimulating their academic identity and create and facilitate spaces where they can connect with other students (and teachers and researchers).

In DSSL we have actively tried to foster a sense of belongingness (not sure if that is a word) by facilitating and creating a community around the work and learning of digital methods within social sciences. It’s hard to measure a sense of belonging but I know it’s there and that it matters.

So to rap this up I think it’s important to aknowledge that libraries are about learning and we have an obligation to actively support learning activites in order to effectully make our communities succeed; Libraries are trusted, great institutions and that comes with a responsibility.. so be like Brando: Take ownership, shape and define your learning

Cheers

Christian

Be Like Brando: The Library as arena of co-creation and belonging from Christian Lauersen

A Library Data Lab is for people, not machines

July 20, 2018 / Christian Lauersen / Leave a comment

In a short while I will leave the well-known world of academic libraries to take on the position as director of libraries and citizen services in Roskilde Municipality. I’m looking very much forward to work with public libraries but I will also miss working with education and research, students and researches in universities. Looking back, one of the things that I am utterly proud of is the making of Digital Social Science Lab that we opened in February 2016 at The Faculty Library of Social Sciences in Copenhagen. To give a proper farewell and hat tip to something that I have invested much energy, time and passions in, I have translated an article I wrote a while back for Danish LIS journal REVY together with DSSL partner in crime, Mads Korsgaard. Links to other writings on Digital Social Science Lab at the bottom of this post.

A Tuesday evening 25 students has showed up to Digital Methods Sessions in Digital Social Science Lab (DSSL) in the basement of the Faculty Library of Social Sciences. Digital Methods Session is a recurring event where students share their experiences about their work on digital data handling and analysis methods in small TED Talk-like presentations. Rasmus, studying sociology at the University of Copenhagen, tells about how he has collected 2.5 million blog posts and online articles in his master thesis about the crypto market (the deep and dark web of drugs and weapons) to perform a topic modeling on the incredibly large amount of data. Through topic modeling, he has managed to extract the most commonly used concepts, analyze how they relate to each other, and demonstrate how the discourse online follows concrete events in the “physical” world. Finally, he demonstrates how he has conducted data visualization that illustrates the online debate about the crypto market and its evolution over time. Rasmus’ method differs from the classical social science empirical collection through, for example, questionnaires and interviews, and it is a good example that research, education and learning have changed in line with technological developments. In DSSL, we are not trying to tell students and researchers that one method is better than the other, but we want to show them that there are options for exploring the world around us than just a few years ago. Functioning as an open platform for working on digital methods DSSL is thus a response to the significant changes in our technological capabilities to become wiser on the world. Students and employees of today’s education and research institutions use new resources, methods, skills and tools in their work, and libraries can not afford to ignore this if they continue to create value.

Student presentation at a Digital Methods Session

The library of today might not fit the reality of tomorrow

One can respond to this development in many ways, and DSSL is just one of those. One of the core thoughts behind DSSL is the facilitating aspect, where the library, like Digital Methods Sessions, facilitates students, researchers and other stakeholders to meet and work together, exchange ideas and learn from each other. Another example of facilitation could be the so-called data sprints, where students and researchers meet and jointly work, play and explore larger datasets in the framework offered by DSSL. The facilitating approach is a strong strategy for the academic library, which takes advantage of its position as an open and interdisciplinary platform, but also recognizes that it is an area where the library’s competence and resources do not have the power to independently lift the task with optimal effect. In addition, the library, under the auspices of DSSL, also offers courses in various programs and tools for data handling and analysis. The ambition is to offer something in all aspects of the workflow with data: Harvesting (eg Netvizz), cleaning (eg Open Refine), analysis (eg NVivo or SPSS) and visualization (eg Gephi)

Visualization of the data workflow we are covering in DSSL

An alternative to the classic learning situation

When thinking about a data lab, one would typically imagine a space filled with computers, but the first thing that strikes one when entering DSSL is that here has been made some quite different choices compared to the traditional data room. Rather than being a local stationary computer, DSSL appears as a small-futuristic botanical landscape with rolling cushions and plants in all shades – as a blend between a Starbucks-style café environment and a Silicon Valley-inspired innovation lab. This has been a very conscious choice, based on the experience that today’s students almost always work from their own laptops and that these machines are gradually powerful enough to settle the vast majority of social science projects. The focus has therefore been on creating a facilitating framework for student learning processes rather than filling up the room with hardware. However, DSSL contains 4 stationary workstations located under a palm tree in the corner of the room if you need additional processor power for a project. In order to create a functional and aesthetically inspiring physical framework, we engaged production designer Helle Egsgaard to create a unique design and narrative of the room and it’s interior. The Faculty Library of Social Sciences is located in a building on the corner of the Botanical Garden, which previously housed the old Botanical Laboratory. This became a continuous inspiration element in the design process, and the botanical themes of DSSL are therefore a tribute to the history of the site in the meeting of the organic plants and the more sterile work with data. The purpose of the alternative arrangement has been to create a form of “otherspace” with surroundings that invite creative thinking and innovative knowledge production.

Data sprint on fake news in DSSL

Conceptually, a lab is a place that differs from the living room – it is a place where you go to experiment, to try out new combinations and to “invent” new products and processes. The idea of DSSL has thus also been to offer an alternative to the lecture hall, which is the most common learning room at most educational institutions. The lecture hall as a venue is suitable for many things, but the physical space framework limits certain social learning processes, and the students usually operate as passive recipients of knowledge. The idea of DSSL, on the other hand, has been to create a physical framework for the students to be active knowledge producers. The room is therefore designed to be dynamic and all furniture is on wheels so that the room can easily be changed depending on the learning process to be supported at a given time. For example, you can quickly go from a lecture situation to group work with laptops and data visualization on the room’s three projectors. Still looking for the limits for DSSL The library is working to fill the frameworks with a lot of relevant content and create an engaging environment around DSSL, and this is where the two main elements come into play: In part, as mentioned, the library constantly develops and offers different courses on digital methods and data handling, and partly focus on the facilitating element, where the DSSL platform functions as an open-source hub that can connect committed students and researchers across institutions and support externally driven events. The interest in the project has been high from the outset, and DSSL has set up more than 80 different workshops, courses and events before the end of its first year of living and the development has been steady ever since.

There is now doubt in my mind that Digital Social Science Lab is creating significant value to learning, education and research. Key to success? The focus on people instead of machines

Cheers

Christian

Links to other writings on DSSL:

The facilitating approach: https://christianlauersen.net/2018/04/20/beyond-tables-and-chairs/

Curation of open data sources: https://christianlauersen.net/2016/08/25/libraries-curating-open-data-sources/

The DSSL Declaration: https://christianlauersen.net/2016/01/27/digital-social-science-lab-declaration/

Thoughts on the DSSL decor: https://christianlauersen.net/2015/11/23/to-work-with-data-is-to-travel/

On where it all started: https://christianlauersen.net/2015/03/14/bringing-technology-and-academia-together-the-making-of-digital-social-science-lab/

Why do they come? The Library as place and brand

October 17, 2017October 30, 2017 / Christian Lauersen / 13 Comments

You probably all know the scene: A library reading hall with endless rows of students working, studying, learning. Alone together. A nice view. Makes me happy every time I cross it. But we should never stop question our services and our users behavior (also when it’s a very positive behavior) and I often ask myself: “Why do they come? Why don’t they sit at home and study?”. Some of them for sure because they are gonna pick up a book or need library help or instruction and don’t get me wrong: I love a library filled with working students and I think we do an awesome job giving them good conditions but still, why do they come just to sit and work? I find the question important because it might be a window to both insights on the library and the people using them.

hum Why do they come? Students working at Faculty Library of Humanities, Copenhagen University Library

I think the questions holds several answers. Sometimes, when I ask the question out loud, I get the answer from library professionals that it’s because we, as libraries, are excellent at creating learning and study environments. I will not argue that is not a part of the answer but if we break that part down, what we do, are providing our libraries with tables and chairs so our users have places to work. Other institutions, for instance the universities themselves, can do that pretty well too I guess and I don’t believe it’s the only or most significant answer to the question

I think the answers should be found elsewhere but before I dig into that I like to tell you a story from one of my libraries.

Case: Thrashed campus, neat library

At the Faculty of Social Sciences at The University of Copenhagen we have two physical library sites: The Faculty Library and a smaller Study Library at the center of campus. The Study Library has a small reference desk that are staffed from 10 am to 3 pm on weekdays and 3 large reading halls which are open from 8 am to 10 pm which means, they are un-staffed every day for 9 hours. I meet with the provost at the faculty ones every month to deal with cases evolving the library. He often complains about the way the students treat campus; Trash everywhere, a trail of parties, broken stuff etc. For some reason we never experience this at the Study Library even though it’s un-staffed many hours everyday. Why is that? Why do they trash campus but cherish the library? I think the answer to the question “Why do they come?” could be found in this pattern of behavior and I think it has to come with both the library as brand, development of the library as place and the life of the student in 2017.

The Library: A trustworthy brand since 2600 BC

I would argue that a part of the answer to why students flock to academic libraries to work has to be found in the library as a brand. In my whole professional carrier I have been hearing voices inside the profession who calls libraries and librarians ‘traditional’ and ‘dusty’ and is arguing that we need to re-shape the brand of libraries. I don’t mind taking a discussion about re-shaping the brand but what if the library in the head of the users are just what they need? Thinking about it, libraries has been around for almost 5000 years and has since the introduction of public libraries during the Enlightenment era been associated with spaces for learning, education, research and cultural activity. Our values are openness, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (or at least that the values I like to be floating through my libraries). We are democratic institutions (but not neutral!). The book itself, which many link with libraries (for good reasons), are one of the strongest brands in the world. Looking at the example with The Study Library at Social Sciences I would not conclude that students love libraries but they for sure respect them.

Libraries don’t want people’s money – libraries want them to succeed, want them to learn, to explore, want to give them access to a bigger world.

In a highly commercial, capitalistic and digitized world, I think many students in higher education connects with that. So what if our brand is a bit traditional? It’s strong and it’s trustworthy and we should acknowledge that and use it in the future development of libraries.

19a8ff0760f0904dd9cb1a4e4e03226f--peterborough-the-library Peterborough, New Hampshire Town Library. First free public library supported by taxation founded April 9. 1833

Discipline, identity and belonging

The conditions for Danish students in higher education has changed pretty radical over the last couple of years: There are clear limits for your time of being a student, you got 5 years to finish your study or you are out. You can take on education and then decide to switch to another. The weekly hours students has access to there teachers and supervisors has been limited. It’s harder to get into most studies, the demands for good grades are bigger than before. I will not go into a discussion on how this development is good or bad in the bigger picture for higher education but I think it has forced our students to take on a more professional and disciplinary approach than before. They discipline themselves with going to the library to work. They make a work day of it: Waiting in front of the library in the morning till it opens, find a good spot to study and finish around 3 or 4. Couldn’t they just do that at home? Sure but we all know that you often rather do the dishes than reading Foucault. To many distractions at home. The library gives them an opportunity to separate their private life from there study so they can be more relaxed while at home.

It can be hard being a student. And lonesome. The social aspects of students life is crucial for there ability to be the best students and human beings they can be. Look at remote students: The drop-out rates are way higher than regular students studying at a physical university with other students. With the decreasing hours in class and supervision students are looking for other places to boost there academic identity as students, as learners. They probably find that in different places but one of the places are The Library. Alone together sure but every time they look up they see that they are not alone. That is important and closely connected with the last aspect of why students come to work at the library: Belonging.

We all need to belong to something; a family, a job, a football team, a nation. If you tell me you don’t need to belong I say you either a psychopath or a liar. Students and researchers at institutions of higher education are no different from that. For many students the study is a huge part of there life and I think it’s crucial for there well being and ability to perform that they feel that they belong. Same go with researchers and teachers. As an open space, not focused on administration or grades, I think the library can help students with the feeling of belonging with stimulating their academic identity and create and facilitate spaces where they can connect with other students (and teachers and researchers).

Looking at disciplines, identity and belonging one could argue that the university or Starbucks could also created those aspects in student life. Maybe, but not so successful as the library I would say. Why is that then? Because the library, as I pointed out in the beginning, is a 100% awesome brand and place. It’s solid, it’s open, it’s there to help you not because it want you money but simply because that’s the job of the library, it’s a place for learning and enlightenment, it’s a space that want you to succeed and don’t give you grades or mark you as a good or bad student, it’s simply a wonderfully place and a very powerful brand. Let’s acknowledge that as library professionals and not try to make the library something it’s not.

Perspectives: Is a library without books still a library and the perfect jungle for social animals

So we have students flocking into our libraries and I’ve tried to answer why they come with different perspectives as outlined above. That’s nice but so what? Should we just sit back and be happy about our foot traffic stats?

No. First of all I strongly believe that the library as place is a potential cornerstone in students well being and success if we acknowledge that physical spaces is not getting less significant in a world that is getting more digitized – I believe we will experience the opposite. We are human beings and social animals. We need to be around other people to function, explore, develop, be challenged, have fun, be alive, learn, do good. ‘Online’ will not replace that. Ever. That goes in general and for higher education and research.

I want us to embrace this and actively use the critical mass of working learning minds in our spaces to create value, network, diversity and inclusion in higher education and research. I want us not just to focus on chairs and tables but to take on an active approach to the library as place and facilitate cross-disciplinary activities. When we bring people together from different backgrounds great things happens. People who thinks alike accomplish nothing. Let the library be the social and academic jungle for people of different race, gender, age, political views, cultural and economic capital and subjects of interest, study and research.

At a talk a while ago I asked the question “Is a library without books still a library” and my own answer was yes: If we . Link to blog post: “Is a library without books still a library? Some thoughts on The Library as place”.

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.

Let’s use that space that’s left when the books leave the library to make a jungle to make the wildlife and diversity of higher education flourish.

Final note: Track the behavior

In the above I’m kind of guessing on why students come to the library in 2017 if it’s not to get a book or get professional help. I don’t take a big swing in the dark, I take in what I see, observe and believe and make conclusions from that, but it’s not a study. I don’t have a quantitative or qualitative data set at hand.

It’s important that we don’t just take light swings in the dark when we talk about the use and non-use of libraries and the life of our users and non-users. So my Final note on asking ourselves questions on why and how users use (or not use) libraries is: Don’t just guess and don’t just ask them. If you ask them you only get an answer to what you ask and that might no be the whole picture. If I ask 10 students if they would like 24 hours access to the library they are likely to all answers “yes, sure” but it’s not the same as they would actually use it. User Experience (UX) methods and research holds an important key to understanding our users behavior and needs in the present and developing libraries for the future.

Huge shutout to UX heroes like Andy Priestner and Anneli Friberg and other #UXLibs folks who in theory and practice advocate, support and empower the library community with UX tools, methods and awareness. Keep it up.

An remember: “The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food” – Dean Ornish

Comments on this matter is highly appreciated

Cheers

Christian

“You know it’s bad when librarians rally”. Praise to a non-neutral profession

August 26, 2017 / Christian Lauersen / 2 Comments

Let me start to detach from the heading: “You know it’s bad when librarians rally”. I’ve heard it quiet a few times in different versions and sure it’s funny to some extend because it plays on the stereotypical view on librarians as quiet introvert people with cardigans, glasses and buns, driving round book trolley’s, never raises their voice or interfere in other peoples business (unless someone is to loud in the library and has to be shushed). I don’t find that to be true. Over the last couple years I been hearing a voice among the library community who has been more and more concerned about social justice, inclusion and diversity in society. Especially in North America. I like that voice. It’s an important voice. And that is because I believe that libraries – both public and academic – are important institutions in building an open, equal and diverse society. To fulfill that role we need to be active in our choices and take part in the debate. We need to take a stand and say it out loud when something is wrong. I don’t believe in such a thing as ‘neutral libraries’ or ‘neutral librarianship’. When public libraries do programs for homeless people in the community they are not neutral or indifferent – they act on a problem. When academic libraries advocate for open access to academic literature and research data they are not neutral – they take a stand that open access to information and data can help create a better world. When librarians march in protest because of budget cuts in higher education or closing of school libraries they are not neutral. They act.

I think librarians has been focusing on social justice issues for a long time but the voice I’ve been hearing is getting louder and louder. I hear it especially on Twitter and in Facebook groups but also out on the streets in various demonstrations and rallies around the world.

The Library – public, academic, special etc. – is a crucial institution in building a healthy democracy; libraries are open and inclusive spaces. They care about you, not your money. They educated people and bring them together. They create healthy and smart communities. They don’t flunk students, they focus on how they can help them succeed. Librarianship is the key to all that. It’s important that we are aware of this and that we take our responsibility as an institution and profession serious and act when things are not right.

So, let’s talk about this and let’s keep be that active institution that care about our communities and raises our voices when something isn’t right. And in the mean time I like to dedicate this blog post to all the badass librarians, library workers and library lovers who spent time and energy on advocating for social justice, inclusion and diversity by bringing the best librarian/archives rally sign I could find (I couldn’t find courtesy for all the photos so please write me if one of these are yours).

Enjoy and keep on believing that you can make a difference.

Cheers, Christian

Librarians against nazi shitheads. Gayle Lauren at the Boston Free Speech rally 2017. Photo courtesy: Gayle Lauren

Read and resist. The Women’s March in Washington 2017

Facts are real. Sincerely, your librarian. The Women’s March in Washington 2017

A school librarian is a right. Not at privilege. Rally to restore Illinois School Librarian 2017

Libraries gave us power. Cardiff Library cuts ‘read-in’ protest 2015

The Internet can’t replace a trained librarian. Save Carnegie Libraries rally 2016

I [heart] librarians and books. Librarians to be at Save Carnegie Libraries rally 2016

Z682.4.G39. Boston Pride Parade 2006. Photo courtesy: Lana Mariko Wood

What do we want? Evidence based science. When do we want it? After peer review. Women’s March in Washington 2017

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

librarianship

A human chain around a true community friend: The library staff

Why do they come? The Library as place and brand

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