Computers in Libraries 2014 - Day 2 - Change in Action

This session was a great followup to the session that came immediately preceding which had covered steps that need to be followed to effect successful change.  In this session there were two presentations from two rather different libraries that had made significant changes to their buildings and cultures.  I was able to see in the descriptions that they gave of their change the general patter which had been described in the prior presentation.

The first presenter was Tod Colegrove of the DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library.  He described the academic library that he had started working in as being quiet and empty.  This troubled Colegrove concerning the library's future and he knew that change was needed.  The dean of the library provided a vision of a knowledge center, and following that vision, in three years they had increased tenfold the amount of the building that was in active use on a daily basis.

A primary goal of the transformation seemed to be changing how students thought about and used the library.  A key concept used was that of changing the space from something analogous to cropland, a highly-organized uniform space, to something analogous to a  rain forest, a space with many different uses and many different kinds of programs and materials.  3000 square feet of library walls were covered in whiteboard paint to encourage students to have meetings and brainstorming sessions in the building.  The library started circulating a lot of non-traditional materials to students that were quite appropriate for an engineering school, such as Lego mindstorms sets and Arduino inventor kits.

For their process Colegrove described seven rules that they followed:

• Breaking rules and dreaming
• Opening doors and listening
• Trusting and being trustworthy
• Experimenting and iterating together
• Seeking fairness, not advantage
• Erring, failing, and persisting
• And a seventh "rule of the rain forest" that Colegrove ended with was "Pay it forward"

Following Colegrove, Nate Hill of the Chattanooga Public Library described some radical changes that they made to their building.

Hill described the Chattanooga Public Library in its pre-change state as a dump, "assessed as one of the crappiest libraries out there."  There was a concerted effort to change it from a dump into an innovative space.  As it happens, Chattanooga is a great place for this since they have one of the fastest Internet access networks in the country (gigabit fiber for the entire city).

The fourth floor of the library was wasted space.  It was unclear to me if there had been books on the floor in the recent past (Hill at one point said "you can do all kinds of interesting things if you get the books out of the way") but certainly there was a lot of junk in storage there that no one had had the heart to throw away.  It was decided to turn this entire floor into a "beta space" where they could try things out.

They contacted a local Linux User's Group and started on a process of converting the space. They auctioned off all of the crap and partnered with the AIGA to redesign the floor now that it was empty.

After the space was cleared out they started coming up with programming to have in it that could utilize the space in many different ways.  They've also added furniture, movable walls, and signage (a huge sign saying "You are in the right place") to make the space customizable to different kinds of needs and to make people feel more comfortable in the space.  So far a sampling of programs they've offered there includes:

• Their first program, a class on HTML and CSS basics
• They worked with an organization called the Company Lab for a program to test small business ideas which 450 people attended
• The held a Maker Day where makers were encouraged to bring their own 3D printers and there was a kind of fair in the space
• A dance program which involved dancers manipulating projected screens by moving them around with their hands and throwing them to a different building across town over the gigabit connection (kind of strange and a little difficult to describe)

Going on from this remodeling of space, they have implemented or are in the process of implementing several other programs and changes.

• They have trained staff in a fashion loosely modeled on the Apple Genius Bar using the term "Smart People" to help the public with certain kinds of computer and technical issues.  
• They are now using the library to serve civic data from data platform in the library.
• A contingent of staff went to SparkFun in Colorado and were hackers in residence for a week, increasing their hacking skill-set.
• They have a program called Arduino Thursdays that encourages Arduino experimentation
• They are currently working on developing a video remixing platform called Hyperaudio as well as the creation of a music lab on the second floor of the library being called Adagio.

Both of these libraries seem to be doing a lot of exciting things and I think we can find models of programs and spaces in what they are doing.