Elisabeth Leonard on Libraries

At a U. of Kentucky Dorm, a Live-In iPad Experience

At a U. of Kentucky Dorm, a Live-In iPad Experience
The university has opened a “wired” residential college, where students are given iPads, take special courses, and get access to interactive classrooms and a super-fast wireless network.

via sn2prd0302.outlook.com

Infographic: Generational Media Usage by Time of Day | Ad Age Stat - Advertising Age

A new study by Magid Generational Strategies breaks down who's using what media at what time of day. We worked with our friends at MBA Online to visualize it for you.

via adage.com

The death of books has been greatly exaggerated | Books | guardian.co.uk

But hang on a minute. Anecdotally, that's a pretty awe-inspiring collection of proofs. But the plural of anecdote is not data. What is the data telling us?

According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years.

But wait, say the gloomy. What about the cash? Haven't publishers been forced by avaricious retail giants into a fearsome downward spiral? Discounting has sharpened, but not as much as you'd think. The standard discount on the recommended retail price of a book in 2001 was already at 17.6%. In 2010 it was 26.7%. We'll return to this later.

Even with this discounting, last year UK consumer publishing drew in sales of £1.7bn, up 36% on 2001. Adult fiction saw an increase of 44%, to £476m; and young adult and children's fiction, realm of all those pesky copiers and pirateers and downloaders, saw sales more than double to £325m.

via www.guardian.co.uk

White House and Universities Tout Programs to Turn Research Into Products - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher Education

As President Obama signed into law on Friday the new patent act, the White House and several dozen universities highlighted a series of program—some new, some not—designed to hasten the commercialization of university research findings.

Among the new: the creation of a center at the National Institutes of Health to assist biotechnology entrepreneurs to develop new products to diagnose and treat diseases. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which has drawn some controversy, will provide scientific resources to researchers to help speed the time it takes to devise medicines and diagnostic tests.

via chronicle.com

eCampus.com Teams Up With the "Mindset List" to Create Visual Snapshots of a College Student's State of Mind

The “Mindset List” was first published in 1998 and has since evolved into a well-known blog, an annual list, and a book. Created by Ron Nief, alongside fellow Beloit College Professor Tom McBride, this innovative index of insights explores cultural benchmarks involving each year’s college freshman class.

It was created to reflect the world view of entering first-year students when the authors first realized how much the 2002 class of college freshmen were shaped by the history and culture they had not experienced in their first 18 years. The list has also helped professors understand where their students “were coming from” by providing insights into the technology and references with which they grew up, and the zeitgeist that helped shape and form who they are. Utilizing the most recent findings from the “Mindset List,” eCampus.com designer Elizabeth Lovejoy has created a series of infographics that illustrate the culture of today’s college student. The eCampus.com “Mindset List” visuals will be featured in the eCampus.com library of college infographics, along with the online textbook retailer’s other highly popular illustrations depicting such relevant topics as the cost of school, the impact of student debt, and alcohol use on campus, to name a few.

“We find infographics are great communication tools when it comes to college culture,” said Matt Montgomery, president and CEO of eCampus.com. “They are designed to resonate with both college professors and students alike, allowing both generations to understand the history and culture that surrounds them and in turn, better understand and communicate with each other.”

via www.prweb.com

The role of life experience in a librarian's work life

I recently was asked what role life experience plays for a librarian.  It's an interesting question, and one I admit I did not expect.  When I teach master's students, I try to get them to reflect upon their "real" life, especially as it may relate to leadership potential.  Perhaps I should also ask them how they could apply those experiences to their potential to solve problems creatively at work! 

I think that when people are allowed (by which I mean not criticized) to leverage their experiences fully, you start seeing librarianship as a profession infused with knowledge that aids in understanding our impact on our social systems in the workplace.  This then happens in a way that if we confine our notions to what is appropriate (by which I mean text book knowledge or tradition) that perhaps is impossible!  Last week, someone at a conference asked "What would you do differently if you were the CEO of your position?" and the question was intended to empower individuals.  What if we each were asked that questions AND we were allowed the unfettered ability to draw into our solutions whatever prior knowledge we might have, as well as to look at other disciplines and the corporate world for possible products or research for ideas?

I think it would help. For example, I used to be an insurance adjuster, specializing in worker's compensation.  If I learned nothing else, I learned how to deal with situations were you had to break bad news to people who were suffering (like telling someone who had lost their hearing that their claim was not compensable under North Carolina statutes).  Believe me, I have never had a job that brought me less joy, but I learned how compassion can help everyone involved...and I learned how to document a situation so that anyone looking at the file could understand what was going on.

What do you think?  Can we be more entrepreneurial because of our past or does that really hinder us?  I can't say that I've ever felt that I had a new solution because of being in insurance...but other life experiences have helped me with creative problem solving.

Have you had prior experiences that you think make you a better librarian?

Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians

I am looking forward to co-presenting later today at the Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians!

 

Innovation and business librarians

View more presentations from Elisabeth Leonard

http://slidesha.re/ex4AsN

My leadership philosophy

Next month, I am presenting at ER&L on leadership. I think one of the things I want to discuss is creating a personal philosophy, something I used to require of my SJSU management students...and something that I haven't looked at for myself recently.  So, here goes!

Throughout my career, I have almost always seen myself as a leader, even when I was not a manager and even though many times my leadership was momentary and informal.  As my career has progressed, my understandings of the distinctions between leadership and management have become more formalized and easier to express.  To me, leadership is fundamentally about creating a shared philosophy or vision for an organization, a unit, or a team.  That vision is based on understanding the organization’s mission, seeing where there is a need for change, and having the creativity to define what the change should look like within the organization’s context.  A great leader can define that vision in such a way that it transforms the organization and the people within it.

An effective administrator needs to be both a leader and a manager.  She needs a compelling vision, a mix of analytical, technical, and financial skills, blended with congenial soft skills.  Management after all is about human potential and how to tap into people’s greatest expression of themselves.  It also is about collaboration and cooperation, getting employees to understand their jobs and empowering them to do it well, while listening to their input and recognizing when the administrator needs to change her own opinions and approaches.

In higher education, a truly effective administrator will embody the leadership and management characteristics above, as well as many of the characteristics of a good teacher. She is then passionate, visionary, ethical, knowledgeable, flexible, and inspirational.  She supplies the necessary scaffolding for the people she works with so that they may learn and grow, while learning and growing alongside them.  I find leadership within such a construct to be rewarding for me and I hope that it is rewarding for those I serve, the students, faculty and staff of my institution.

Why innovativeness matters for managers

In March, Betsy Clementson and I are presenting on the results of our research on innovative characteristics of a small set of business librarians at The Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians.  Innovation seems like it has become such a buzz word that it is losing its meaning.  Want to know why it matters?  From the pen of my favorite innovation author:

"Innovativeness indicates overt behavioral change, the ultimate goal of most diffusion programs, rather than just cognitive or attitudinal change.  Innovativeness is the bottom line behavior in the diffusion process."  Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, p. 268.

Now, I don't care how much it sometimes seems like change itself seems like a goal, the reality for all organizations, including libraries, is that where innovative change is involved, it means by definition that value has been added to the organization (or else it is just change, not innovation).  It means that we are better meeting our organizational missions.  And what that means for managers is that they need to remember that their behavior influences the innovativeness of those around them....and if they can't promote innovativeness, they may be a bottle neck to the survival of their library. 

Are librarians innovative? Does organizational culture matter?

I have spent the last year working...I mean, really working!  I started a new job last Fall and was unable to do that work and also do my research.  This week, a colleague and I launched a survey to determine the innovative characteristics of librarians who work with the top entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. to see how innovative those librarians are. 

My dissertation is intended to examine a corrolary to this research: does organizational structure impact innovation within academic libraries?  I think that while some librarians "go rogue", innovating despite what their managers may support, that many more librarians either are not innovative or feel inhibited because they feel they may not be supported.  Similarly, I think that there are librarians who may not naturally be innovative, but find that their managers support experimentation, so they are then more willing to take a chance...perhaps even that some librarians are more innovative at work than they are in their personal lives!

So, don't be surprised if you start reading posts for the next couple months from me about my methodology or about how existing research resonates with me...and now I am off to start re-examing my methodolgy!