Over the course of the past two decades, some academic libraries have been transformed from silent study spaces to bustling information commons – open areas where students, faculty, and staff can come together to access services and technological tools in order to exchange, manipulate and create information.
I will consider the possibility of transforming a traditional reference desk at a liberal arts college into a small-scale information commons. Such a change involves much more than the repositioning of furniture and the purchase of some new technological tools. A host of issues need to be examined. They include:
· What we do now – Who are our current “customers” – students, faculty, staff? How do we most often interact with them – in person, on line, via text? What kinds of services do they want – traditional reference help or assistance with new technologies? How do they like to work – alone in a quiet space or collaboratively?
· Who are the stakeholders – Many people, in addition to library staff members, are impacted by any changes we make. Among those affected are the students, faculty, members of other academic departments that share library space, personnel in departments that provide technical support to the library and members of the surrounding community who use our facility.
· Funding – What financial impact will any proposed changes have on the library’s budget? Are there ways that the costs of any improvements and alterations can be shared among departments that reap the benefits of those changes?
· Sustainability – The library currently in in a state of flux. The collection is shrinking as more materials are available electronically. In the wake of the retirement of the long-time director, a search is ongoing for a new administrator. We are not proposing, at this time, large scale changes to the entire facility but are focusing solely on the reference desk functions. We want to ensure any changes to the reference desk can be sustainable and incorporated into any future, larger-scale changes.
This project will require a number of leadership skills be put to use, specifically - the ability to articulate the particulars of the project and explain why it is warranted, the ability to build a shared vision of that project and to motivate people to rally around that plan, the ability to address any institutional politics that might impact the project, and the ability to gather outside resources to help bring the project to fruition.
This blog contains information about how I intend to address the questions listed above and describes what additional work needs to be done before a clear vision of our reference desk/information commons can be formulated.
Use the links at right to access information about the information commons model, our facility, factors that are at play when considering altering our reference desk, and recommendations of where we should proceed from here.
