Chapters

Chapter 1: Planning, Advocating and Fostering Creativity and Innovation - Elias Tzoc

In times of unprecedented changes and transformations, library leaders must continue to plan, advocate and foster creativity and innovation efforts at their libraries, especially those efforts and initiatives that support effective, emerging, and multidisciplinary learning and teaching environments. Creativity and innovation have always been integral elements of personal and institutional success. For academic libraries, it is imperative to constantly assess how their services align with their institutional goals and priorities -especially during times of quick changes and uncertainty. In this chapter, we will have four main sections. First, I will start with a brief overview of the transformation of learning - from reflective to active - and its impact in the evolution of library services. Second, I will discuss the role of leadership in advocating and implementing innovative services in order to further support emerging learning needs in higher education. Third, I will share my leadership journey, from professional development opportunities to the ongoing work of identifying and building networks of allies on campus and in the profession. Fourth, I will talk about specific examples of creative and innovative services that we have implemented at Miami University in the recent past. Finally, I will conclude this chapter with some final reflections on the future roles of academic libraries in a post-COVID learning environment.

Chapter 2: Unlocking innovation through leadership - Bohyun Kim

This chapter will discuss how frontline librarians, middle managers, and library administrators in senior leadership roles can use leadership to facilitate innovation and also support and sustain it over a long term. It will consist of the following four sections: Elements of successful leadership, Challenges to innovation, How to facilitate innovation, and Sustaining innovation. In the first section, Elements of successful leadership, I will provide an overview of what successful leadership looks like both in general and in the library context. In addition, this section will highlight the importance of leading and supporting innovation in the times of rapid changes where there is much uncertainty. In the second section, Challenges to innovation, I will discuss various challenges to planning and implementing innovative services and programs in the library context. These challenges will be broken down into different categories – such as budget, staff expertise, space, and organizational culture – with detailed description and examples to deepen readers’ understanding on these issues. In the third section, Hot to facilitate innovation, I will present a variety of strategies that can move forward the library’s innovative agenda while dealing with challenges mentioned in the previous section. This section will focus on ways to foster and drive effective changes from small to large in the ways the library staff work. Those strategies will not only increase the overall number of innovative ideas put forward for the library to consider but also ensure those innovative ideas to be incorporated into the library’s routine work. In the fourth section, Sustaining innovation, I will focus on issues related to (i) how to transition innovative projects that succeeded in the initial phase into a longer-term operational stage and (ii) how to appropriately evaluate, revitalize, or sunset those innovation-focused projects, services, or programs. This section will also highlight the key role of leadership in maintaining the momentum and ensuring the long-term success and sustainability of innovation in the library at the same time.

Chapter 4: Leading by Design: Building an Experiential Studio to Support Interdisciplinary Learning - Emily S. Darowski, Matt Armstrong, and Leanna Fry

Background. As the information and technology landscape has shifted, academic libraries have been called on to dedicate resources and personnel to innovation (Yeh & Walter, 2016). Libraries have responded to this call by creating innovation commons (Colegrove, 2015), makerspaces (Balas, 2012; Davis, 2018; Wong & Partridge, 2016), technology lending programs (Cross & Tucci, 2017), and dedicated creativity and innovation spaces (Bieraugel & Neill, 2017). Libraries have become leaders on campus by creating interdisciplinary spaces for entrepreneurship, prototyping, innovation and creativity (Edens & Malecki, 2020). Developing these spaces requires advocacy, planning, implementation, and support.

Advocacy. Understanding this changing information landscape, a group of library and teaching faculty advocated for a new interdisciplinary space within the Harold B. Lee Library. A pilot space was fashioned with temporary walls, surplus furniture, and low fidelity prototyping supplies. Faculty applied to teach semester-length courses in the space that focused on creativity, innovation, and design thinking. Although visions of a more permanent space met timeline and funding setbacks, a formalized steering committee emerged.

Planning. This steering committee—composed of library personnel and teaching faculty—took on the role of advocacy and long-term planning. Through various assessments (e.g., Zaugg & Warr, 2018), they established the value of the space and the need for expansion and permanency. The team ensured various interests and needs were taken into consideration while formalizing the floorplan and associated services. For example, the committee decided courses taught in the space should not be limited to innovation or design thinking (Smart, Darowski, Armstrong, 2019) but to any interdisciplinary course focused on experiential learning.

Implementation. Ultimately, a partnership with an existing library donor resulted in securing funds to create a permanent Experiential Studio. The layout includes an active classroom with a makerspace and two adjoining breakout rooms. In parallel with the construction, the steering committee transformed administrative processes related to the studio. Several outcomes of this process included improving outreach, strengthening library and campus partnerships, establishing support services, and revising studio use applications and policies.

Support. With the new studio, various processes and resources are in place to support each class and increase the amount of collaboration between faculty and librarians throughout the semester. Significant areas of support include a) structuring the application process to position the library as an active participant in each course, b) expanding co-teaching opportunities with library personnel in design and soft-skills training, and c) providing raw materials for students to prototype projects. These efforts continue to evolve as feedback is received from students and faculty each semester.

Conclusion. Libraries can maintain and increase their impact and relevancy by partnering with other campus entities to offer experiential learning opportunities. BYU Library’s Experiential Studio exemplifies the role of innovation and leadership when creating new spaces that support active, interdisciplinary learning.

Chapter 5: Creative Deconstruction: Using Zines to Teach the ACRL Framework - Stefanie Hilles

When ACRL replaced the prescriptive Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in 2016, it created new opportunities for librarians to engage with information literacy in nontraditional ways. Instead of a checklist of skills to master, there are now core competencies that both encourage and allow librarians to go beyond the database demo and teach students information literacy through creative making and experiential learning. This chapter will investigate how an art librarian at an academic library uses one-shot zine-making workshops to teach students the ACRL frames Authority is Constructed and Controlled and Information Has Value. Through the lens of critical theory, it will focus on the ways in which zines, in conjunction with these frames, can teach students about power and privilege in information literacy.

Workshops begin with the library’s zine archive. Students participate in a think-pair-share activity where they discuss their observations on zines, whether that be their content, their intended audience, their construction, or something else. After discussing their initial ideas, students learn more about zine history and aesthetics in a short lecture. Finally, students make their own zines, often specifically centered around a question or activity that asks them to deconstruct power narratives. Once their zines are complete, students have the option of having them scanned and added to the student portion of the library’s zine archive.

So how do zines relate to the ACRL framework? Zines question authority, and thus call attention to the fact that Authority is Controlled and Constructed, in numerous ways. First and foremost, zines are countercultural, recording the thoughts and viewpoints of people outside the mainstream. Second, zines don’t participate in standard capitalist publishing power structures as they are independently published and distributed and not intended to turn a major profit. Finally, zine aesthetics often appropriates from mainstream sources as a means of subversion and flounts traditional design principles, questioning dominant power narratives in visual ways. Two specific assignments that ask students to engage with zines as a medium for questioning and deconstructing authority will be discussed: Feminist Remix, where students in a women and gender studies class used old Vogue magazines from the 1940-70s and overturned their patriarchal and heteronormative messages by making collage-based zines from their contents and Deconstructing Disability, where students taking a disability in literature class made zines from the perspective of one of the disabled characters they read about in their course.

Like Authority is Constructed and Controlled, the frame Information has Value is also concerned with power. By using zines in class, librarians can feature marginalized voices and ask questions about why we value certain voices over others. Students also determine the value of their own work when they are asked to donate their zine to the archive, and sign copyright permission forms, at the end of the workshop. Thus, the creative process of making zines proves to be an excellent way to teach students important concepts of information literacy from the ACRL framework.

Chapter 6: LEGO(TM), the Library, and a Mastodon Tusk: Undergraduate Research Partnerships in Chemistry - Anne Marie Gruber and Dr. Joshua Sebree

University of Northern Iowa’s Rod Library, UNI Museum, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have formed a unique and ongoing partnership to support undergraduate student research in an upper-level course, Instrumental Analysis. The students, with the help of the instructor and the liaison librarian, write individual research proposals based on the current scientific literature. After both peer review and review by the instructor and librarian, students revise their proposals and perform the proposed lab work. The project is designed to show students what life as a research primary investigator is like.

Students gain valuable hands-on experience working with lab equipment and are able to use the research instruments themselves (with some training), rather than just being provided with existing data acquired by the professor. Proposing and carrying out an original research proposal increases the students’ scientific literacy. Past projects have included chemical analysis of collections housed by the UNI Museum, located within Rod Library, such as a mastodon tusk, historic textiles, and World War II-era brassworks. The class is important in providing students with a hands-on research experience that does not require an additional course enrollment.

This course has a stronger emphasis on writing compared to the average chemistry course. Students expand their skills in using published literature to support primary research and traditional lab reports, giving professional poster presentations to a primarily non-chemistry audience, and revising submitted work based on reviewer feedback. Students conduct literature reviews and design research projects to answer novel questions, developing formal research proposals. They conduct the research and present their final research in a public poster presentation. Library involvement includes the liaison librarian providing in-class information literacy instruction, meeting with students for required consultations, and serving as an “external reviewer” on student proposals and final posters. Additionally, Rod Library archives students’ work and data sets in the institutional repository and hosts the poster presentations and reception, open to campus and the broader community.

Students enrolled in the course report positive impacts on their learning, confidence, and career preparation. They feel a sense of ownership and understand the importance of their work since it has real-world implications for the community partners. One student shared, “It’s given me a better picture of where I want to go...It’s really showed me I want to go into analytical chemistry.” Community partners such as UNI Museum report that students’ research has improved their ability to maintain and understand their collections and services, without requiring additional resources or funds. Components of this project could be adapted to other institutions, courses, and disciplines. Often faculty in science disciplines need ideas for how and why to invite library involvement in primarily lab-based courses. This case study provides one example for how to integrate the literature as well as science writing within an upper-level lab-intensive course that prepares students for graduate school and/or work environments.

Chapter 7: Out of the Archives: Making Collections Accessible through the Implementation of a 3D Scanning Lab - Kristi Wyatt and Zenobie Garrett

Academic libraries are evolving into places not just where knowledge is retrieved, but where it is also actively created in an interdisciplinary atmosphere. At the University of Oklahoma, the emerging technologies team has worked closely with researchers in a variety of departments to implement 3D scanning in both research and teaching environments. These departments include Anthropology, Geology, Architecture, English, and Fine Arts as well as the History of Science Collections and the Law School. The success of these projects and the increasing demand for 3D scanning across multiple university departments has led us to develop a 3D Scanning Lab within the Bizzell Memorial Library. This innovative space goes beyond the library’s traditional role of providing support, and instead repositions the library as an active partner in research production. Focus in the lab is on teaching students, faculty, and staff technological and methodological skills grounded in a robust theoretical and ethical perspective. Our efforts have created a space for experiential learning that facilitates new research at all levels. By reducing the financial and mental load for departments looking to expand their research and methodological skillsets the lab also encourages new campus-library research partnerships. This chapter will look at our efforts so far building this program and discuss how our efforts have repositioned the library as a central space and collaborator in institutional research development.

This chapter will begin by first laying out the background to how the 3D scanning lab came to be. This will look at how faculty requests for 3D models highlighted the potential for this to be a new service within the library. We will then layout our development plan which will provide practical information on how a library can implement such a space. We will focus on why we focused on photogrammetry, what start-up costs to consider, and how we phased development to build on success while maintaining high performance. This section will also include a discussion on how the development plan captured our vision of creating an innovative space that brought researchers together with librarians to collaborate together. This section will conclude with a discussion of uniting our vision with the development plan into a comprehensive policy for the lab. The final section will then use case studies to illustrate how the lab has become a space for truly collaborative research projects between researchers and librarians.

Chapter 8: Collaborative Implementation of a Semi-Automated 3D Printing Service - Amy Van Epps, Matt Cook, and Susan Berstler

Library partnerships with other campus groups to develop services can lead to positive experiences for everyone, particularly the students. In this chapter we will present the local innovation that led to the library piloting a 3D printing service, thus opening availability of the service to all students regardless of department affiliation. After a recent renovation, the science library emerged with 25% of its previous collection on-site. A range of new tools (e.g. virtual reality) and spaces (like recording studios) were deployed to support events, media creation, and collaborative learning. Sharing these new resources and developing partnerships transformed the newly renovated space into a vital campus hub for many cross sections of the university community, not just science and engineering. One new partner with the library was the manager of a neighboring makerspace and the desire to expand the outreach of the makerspace.

As local faculty work to foster a DIY attitude in diverse subject areas from engineering to theater, students, faculty, and staff still struggle to locate the tools they need to be successful. Meanwhile library directors are striving to support these endeavors despite tightening budgets. This chapter will present a pilot 3D printing service that took place Fall 2019 in the science library at an Ivy League university. This innovative new service resulted from the combination of 1) remote 3D print submission software developed by an alumnus and local entrepreneur and 2) effective inter-departmental partnerships for the service model.

The authors will present the collaborative activities integral to the pilot. Of note is a new software program, called MakerFleet, developed by a recent alumnus and funded by the university innovation lab, that allows users to send 3D files and monitor printing progress online. MakerFleet enabled adding this new service with minimal staff intervention. The collaboration also included the makerspace, which loaned the library 6 Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printers and helped with support. We will present several early use cases for the pilot to help illustrate the interest and use for the service. Despite a soft rollout and minimal publicity, the printers quickly became known on campus and were widely used for projects ranging from social (holiday decorations) to serious (prototypes for medical devices). The printers also supported library staff development of a workshop that taught users how to create 3D sculptures in an app in a virtual reality headset (available through our tech lending program) to then be sent to be 3D printed.

Finally, the chapter will present some of the assessment done on the service and discuss lessons learned that include ongoing costs for a shared service, interest from the student users, and further collaboration with the makerspace manager. Next steps after we all return to campus will be considered in light of new budget realities and shifting user needs.

Chapter 10: Maker Literacy, Metaliteracy, and the ACRL Framework - Sarah Nagle

Throughout the last decade, makerspaces and other experiential learning labs have grown in popularity in academic libraries, following trends set by community makerspaces, public libraries, and K-12 schools. Academic libraries have been established as ideal spaces on college campuses for makerspace technology and the experiential learning that it enables. The central, open nature of the campus library meshes well with the collaborative and interdisciplinary character of makerspaces. But trends move quickly in the realm of emerging technologies, and librarians must demonstrate the sustainability and enduring benefits of makerspaces in order to garner the continued support of administrations. The huge potential that makerspaces hold for student engagement and learning may be the key to ensuring that makerspaces remain relevant in the future. Most academic library instruction focuses on information literacy competencies as defined by the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy. This chapter will use two of the foundational concepts of the ACRL Framework, metaliteracy and liminality, to demonstrate how maker-centered learning can help librarians further their institutions’ information literacy goals.

Chapter 11: Off the Cutting Edge: Lessons Learned From Centering People in Creative Technology Spaces - Kelsey Sheaffer, Oscar K. Keyes, Eric Johnson, Jason Evans Groth, Vanessa Rodriguez, Emily Thompson

In the last two decades, libraries have expanded their literacy efforts to incorporate digital and media literacies, often through the use of creative technologies. Many university libraries have seen the rise in technology equipment loan programs to augment more traditional print collections, the creation of multimedia studios and makerspaces, and hiring of nontraditional librarians to support the new initiatives. Additionally, the concept of digital literacy has been adopted by university administration advocating for career preparedness and multimodal communication. Over time, digital literacy has become an accepted component of many library instructional and programmatic initiatives and is no longer the cutting edge of library services. The vanguard of innovation in libraries is now focused around topics such as immersive environments, data literacy, and artificial intelligence. However, the digital literacy movement can serve as a robust model for the development of new literacy movements.

Our chapter will detail what the new cutting edge initiatives can learn from the formerly cutting edge. At many institutions, digital literacy support is channeled through multimedia centers that are composed of three kinds of resources: (1) space, (2) technology/physical, and (3) people. In contemporary library budget contexts, it is tempting, and common, to emphasize space and technological resources at the onset of building a new center, with the common mantra: “if you build it, they will come.” Many libraries are responding to either institutional directives or national trends when building new innovative services, and securing technology and/or space can appear to satisfy the interest. However, we can document through the development and trajectory of many multimedia centers over the last decade that the most institutionally-integrated and sustainable centers are those that prioritize the people as the essential component of a new literacy movement. Making technology available is not enough, instead, new movements must train, support, and integrate people that teach and promote the technology.

This theme will be examined in our chapter through five multimedia centers at academic libraries: Clemson University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Tennessee Chattanooga, North Carolina State University, and University of Miami, and the various successes and challenges associated with an initially emerging and now more established form of a creative library resource. Each library has developed its unique vision for integrating new technologies into the institution but has continually emphasized the importance of people. We will expand on recruitment, developing an institutional ecosystem, finding collaborators, emphasizing equity and accessibility, and evolving staff and patron expertise through a focus on the importance of people to new literacy movements. Envisioning future literacies is to imagine the future itself and our experience compels us to advocate for frameworks to become more sustainable in order for this creative work to continue. The tech industry model, where much of this is borrowed, is structured around an undefined future of innovation. We have a chance to shift the conversation for the next generation of making things in libraries. By focusing on people, we can create a future literacy movement that embeds the values of sustainability, connection, and equity into its code and creativity.