Do libraries innovate?

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Do libraries innovate?

Library Leadership Network Peer Panel, September 2007

Edited by Frank Hermes, published October 2, 2007

While recently blogging around, we came across an interesting recap of an ALA/LITA session entitled “The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate?” This panel, moderated by Andrew Pace, featured Karen Schneider (FSU), Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix), and our own Joe Janes (UW). The blog was essentially a write-up of the discussion, and well done (by Julie Bauder, a student in the MLIS program at Wayne State). One paragraph in particular jumped out at us:

Throughout the debate, Karen and Stephen emphasized two overarching theories for why libraries have trouble innovating. For Karen, the problem is that libraries don’t have the resources to be able to support failure, and if you can’t accept the possibility of failure you can’t innovate: innovation is risky and uncertain. For Stephen, the problem is within the culture of librarianship, which he says is a culture of victimization. Libraries share disaster stories and commiserate over low salaries and other challenges, and then they come to believe that these disaster stories are the reality of all of librarianship and don’t even try to change it.

Thus, we asked the Peer Panel the following questions:

  • Do you agree with either (or both) of these theories?
  • If so, what can be done to foster much-needed innovation in libraries?
  • If not, what are some good examples of library innovation (yours or somebody else’s) and what can librarians learn from it?

The responses of the LLN Peer Panel were very interesting, and not necessarily in agreement.

Joe Janes (after the event)

Since the debate, I’ve had a chance to ruminate on both of these theories, and I have to admit they both hold water, at least on some level. True, most libraries are small and have little if any excess capacity for experimentation and innovation, and small margins for failure. And true, many in our profession do have a shoot-down-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude about things that are too new (present poster children for that are of course our friends at Maricopa).

It would be lovely to think that there could be ways for libraries to work together to pool those scarce resources and try new things. (Didn’t we try that a few decades ago, somewhere in the Midwest? Some sort of catchy acronym, started with O, I think…right on the tip of my tongue. Pity that didn’t work out better.) It would also be great if we had a greater willingness to share the stories of the things that are tried which succeed, and also those that don’t. How many blind alleys could be avoided by presentations, articles, blog entries, etc., that say we gave this a shot and it just didn’t work out....maybe somebody else has a better idea?

As I’m fond of saying, librarianship is inherently a conservative profession, by its very nature. We all know that too much of a good thing is too much, and conservatism for its own sake, or in the face of great opportunity by change and innovation does nobody any good.

Loriene Roy (from IFLA in South Africa)

I think that librarians respond to adopting innovation pretty much like others do--responses are distributed normally (bell shaped curve distribution). There will be some early adopters and some laggards. Most will be grouped in the middle of the distribution, waiting some time and then taking steps to adopt innovations. Now, the creation of innovation may be another story--how do we support creativity in our field? What are barriers to creativity--packed schedules, overabundance of routine tasks, lack of funding.

I was just at a radio station here in Durban. The host was very impressed by the willingness of American citizens to take the initiative, to consider ideas, test them, and launch initiatives. I don't really buy into the victimization attitude. Sure, we do complain--but often to ourselves. Perhaps Steve is a listening ear! I think we're also pretty good at sharing our good messages of accomplishment. (the glass half full argument).

George Needham

Personally, I think there is truth in both Karen and Stephen's statements, which can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies. Elected officials are loathe to watch public money being expended on experiments, and I can't think of many non-governmental funding groups that are interested in underwriting library experimentation. Library solutions are not big money makers, and until recently, there was almost no private venture capital coming into library solutions. So there's much truth in Karen's statement.

Stephen is also correct that we keep blaming the rest of the world for this problem of intellectual stagnation instead of looking at ourselves. People with a knack for raising venture capital don't generally become librarians. Or if they do, they figure out a niche in the library world and then start a company that can fill that niche. But you can probably count the people who've made a comfortable career this way on your fingers. (I omit consultants from this group.)

If we want to foster much-needed innovation in libraries, we must be willing to bring in people who have not been indoctrinated into our way of thinking. Innovation doesn't come off an assembly line, it comes from the person who looks at what we're doing and says, "Have you ever thought about doing it this way?" We listen to these people only occasionally, and the listservs for new librarians are full of horror stories about the unpleasant professional ramifications of trying something new in a system that isn't ready for change.

Much of the most interesting innovation in libraries today is coming from people who have nothing to do with libraries. Look at what Tim Spaulding has been able to do with LibraryThing.com. Here's someone who has come into this field from the outside (Tim is a web designer)and has created a site where anyone can catalog and share information about books. No intermediaries, no cataloging rules, and 275,000 members already. We're way behind the curve in offering people that kind of fun with books. After all, we generally stopped seeing books as fun in our first job out of library school.

The search engines generally emerged not from reference librarians but from people who wanted to get information from point A to point B as seamlessly as possible. There was never an intention to instruct the user, or to provide only the "best" sources. As the search engines have evolved, they have grown stronger through the network effect of multiple users providing input and through continuously sharpened algorithms. There is an acceptance of the constantly changing, perpetually "beta" nature of the online world, an acceptance that flies in the face of a profession dedicated to building permanent, dependable, bullet-proof systems.

Until we are ready to change, all the money and all the fresh ideas won't make an iota of difference.

Bill Crowe

In my days at Indiana University, I spent many an hour listening to--and later reading--Prof. Herb White take librarians to task for their relative passivity, their tendency to accept the status quo. He grumbled about our ready acceptance of the nature of the library itself, about how libraries should operate, and especially about the too-ready willingness of many librarians to accept crumbs from the table--for the library or for their own compensation. I doubt he used the term "victimization," which strikes me as one we have adopted in the last decade or so, but he would have recognized its meaning at once.

White made his points strongly --he never lacked for conviction on THIS topic-- because he saw many librarians doing important work and doing that work with some imagination and skill. He often pointed to anecdotes about the readiness of many librarians to explore the theories and practices of other fields to adapt them to our work. This seems like at least one sign of a capacity by some of us for innovation.

In short, the hypotheses advanced for this panel are just that: they are issues that warrant research.

I did some of this research myself, half a career ago, when I examined for my doctoral dissertation changes in how libraries considered the issue of preservation of library material during the middle of the 20th century. I did this examination through the lens of the career of the great Verner W. Clapp (an innovator par excellence, known to a diminishing number of librarians). Because of this work, I had the benefit of studying the phenomenon of "innovation," especially how innovation is defined and then how it spreads, i.e., how it is "diffused." I heartily suggest that anyone who is curious check out Everett M. Rogers' classic book (now in its fifth edition), Diffusion of Innovations . . . .

The key point is that innovation is often thought of as some transformative event, some great disruptive technology, or some large bend in the road. We have had our share of these innovations in North American librarianship, often associated with "great men" (and not a few great women, too!), whose names almost all of us would recognize. But more often innovation in libraries, by librarians, has the hallmark of innovation in many other fields--it is small things taken in small steps by hard-pressed front line people who simply want to do something better or to do something "new," which is more often than not truly the product of something seen in another organization (thus, "diffusion").

So, rather than share my own anecdotes --of savvy, smart people at work in school libraries or small public libraries especially-- I suggest that we step back and look at the literature. Much of the story is there.

Jamie LaRue (after earlier responses appeared)

Lately, I've been thinking that there are two issues: willingness to experiment, and the ability to deal with the results. In the responsive library, the process should work like this:

  • somebody - anybody in the organization - has a cool idea
  • the idea is voiced, and it is addresses some important library needs, is encouraged by supervisors
  • an experiment, small-scale, quickly stage-able, is set up, with in-house champions
  • the experiment is communicated to others ahead of time
  • the experiment is conducted
  • there's some feedback, some tweaking, some further experience
  • conclusions drawn
  • conclusions disseminated
  • and the experimenter praised /regardless of the result of the experiment./

What passes for innovation is often nothing more than actually putting into place things that have been pretty well known in the universe for some time. One of my favorite employees, now a director herself, was famous for trying all kinds of things, many of which fizzled. But the ideas were always so interesting, it was hard not to root for her. And when she hit on something that worked, it spread swiftly throughout the organization, with this line: it's not speculation -- it works. We tested it!

I remember reading about two studies. The first was about risk takers. Their success rate for new things was about the same as for people who approached new things reluctantly. The difference was, the risk takers got in more experiments in less time.

The second study had to do with grocery stores, looking for a winning formula. All the big chains did similar experiments. They all found the same thing: customers wanted bigger stores, broader aisles, more stock. And then HALF the grocery stores adopted this new model.

All of this suggests that innovation doesn't require greatness. It just requires a willingness to try something, and enough honesty and integrity to call the result honestly and act on it.

Loriene Roy is right: it's a bell curve. But I think any librarian would have more fun sliding to the right!

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