Laughology and Learning Spaces

Laughology - there's a term I hadn't heard until yesterday. It was the final session at INULS, and Stephanie Davies exercised our humour muscles to show us how being in a good humour and laughing can make us see things in a different light and be more positive. An excellent way to finish the day - she had everyone laughing, and made even a room full of librarians go wild and crazy ;-) With a toolset of techniques which can be used in many different situations, Laughology aims to reduce stress and improve performance. As someone who uses laughter a lot, (some might say too much...), I fully subscribed to what she was saying. Laughter can diffuse many situations and help people get over setbacks faster.

This morning began with another excellent speaker (well, I would say that wouldn't I....), as I gave a presentation on the Information Commons. Seemed to go well, and as usual everyone was very impressed with the building. As it's been open for 2 years now, we're able to give a feel for how it's operating, what we would have done differently and whether some of the design decisions we took at the time were right. Following my talk, a couple of designers who've worked on projects including the Saltaire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University gave a design perspective on new learning spaces. Many of their ideas - the need for flexible spaces, solo spaces, silent spaces, collaborative spaces, curl up in a corner spaces - were incorporated into the design of the IC.

The conference is about to come to a close and it's been very enjoyable and informative. I'm also impressed with the University of Limerick which is on a lovely campus with green spaces, lakes, fountains, a wobbly bridge, and lots of public art - I even bumped into an Anthony Gormley in the grounds.

23 things

How do you get people understanding, using, and engaging with Web 2.0 technologies? Well you could adopt the 23 Things on-line awareness and learning system, originally developed in 2006 by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. It's since been used by many libraies round the world, and I've just listened to an account of its implementation at the University of Limerick. Basically staff have to follow a series of short sessions encouraging them to do 23 things - set up a blog, learn about RSS feeds, set up a Flickr account, learn about tagging, podcasts and wikis - any many more. Staff who'd been through the programme had developed a good understanding of the technologies - which to use and those not to use. Also where they could be used in improving services with library environments.

It's an interesting idea - we've been wondering about how to help staff become familiar with these technologies, and this could easily be adapted to be used for different groups of staff, not just those in libraries.

Library 2.0 at McMaster

I'm in Limerick at the moment for the INULS conference - Connecting People to Information. Tomorrow morning I'm giving a talk on our Information Commons. I was rather rather surprised a few minutes ago to read in the programme that PCs are available for delegate use in the Information Commons area of the University of Limerick Library. Must go and have a look.

The first session was given by Jeff Trzeciak, University Librarian, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada on Tough Times, Tough Decisions, Managing change during economic crises. Very topical! McMaster has been through significant administrative changes over the last 3 years, and also and faced a significant deficit. Jeff knew that in times like this services such as libraries tend to get lost, so he decided to set a bold vision for the University Library and institute a major change programme.

It was a fascinating talk, and although about how a Library reinvented itself, the principles could be applied to any professional support service, and particularly IT.

First principle - marketing is crucial. In times of crisis, if people don't know what you're doing you won't get support or resources.

The mission, vision and reasons for change need to be clarified at the outset.

Roles and responsibilities to drive the change need to be established. They set up a transformation team to get to where they wanted to be - Library 2.0. These were mainly staff from "the ranks", not senior managers. They were tasked with identifying what functions could be stopped, and then staff postions lost(voluntarily), and new positions created - all for new functions. They created for example a digital technologies librarian, a digital strategies librarian, and my favourite, an immersive learning/gaming librarian.

An innovative approach to retaining staff was adopted - a 12 week programme was developed and delivered mainly online about Learning 2.0. - how to use blogs, wikis etc. It wasn't compulsory, but all staff were encouraged to take it, and everyone who did complete it was given an MP3 player, and at the end of the 12 weeks there was a draw for a laptop. It seemed to work as 95 completed it and many staff are now blogging, wikis are used for project management, blogs are used to communicate with the academic community, and Facebook groups are in use.

As part of the transformation to Library2.0 Jeff started a programme to make them more visible to the campus community. Major capital renovations and investments created a number of Learning Commons around the campus. Laptops are provided at the circulation desk and are now the biggest circulation item. Of course they then faced the problem we all have which is the provision of power sockets to plug them in. They solved that by putting in drop down cables from the ceilings which provided a cheap and easy solution. Interestingly they have taken out their PCs and put dual boot macs everywhere, with students mainly using MacOS rather than Windows.

There were lessons in the talk I think we can all learn, especially the importance of PR, both internal and external. They focused a lot on "being first" and getting local and national coverage.