Eli Nei Burger

Wow I dazzled by the bombardment of awesome from Eli Neiburger,  from Ann Arbor. His main points were about diversification of the library role – collections, production, and customer experience. He did this by using examples that illustrated what his library had been doing. The activities were exciting and inspiring, but it was the way they were thinking about the value of their services for their communities that I found the most exciting.  On a smaller more achievable scale, Matt is writing about the activities he’s been doing in Parkes in the Finding Library Futures series. Same philosophy – to steal a phrase from Matt – “that imaginative play is also the business of libraries.“)
There’s a real theme emerging about Playfulness.
It started in the presentation by Penny Hagen about using design frameworks to have a conversation with the community about their library – particularly useful for a new building or. – to start the conversation. From this another couple of themes are emerging – Just Start and Prototype/Test.
The themes of Context and Collaboration are also continuing through the presentations. I enjoyed the links that people made during their presentations with the effect that the research/initiatives/changes/ actions had on their communities.  It made their examples more concrete and made it easier for me to transfer some of that thinking to my situation. It feels like more sophisticated thinking than ‘how to do this thing’ or ‘how I did this thing’. That practical work is also important, but the examples about the difference it makes speaks to the Library’s purpose. I’m calling it next layer thinking – we’re getting beyond the objects/basic service and starting to dream and think about what could be done next. This was particularly evident for me in Tim Sherratt‘s presentation on the work Trove is doing to connect heritage collections with users. Their success is shown by the fact that users are spontaneously creating their own ways of sharing the things they find in the collection via #TroveTuesday and other ways. (Ravelry is apparently a great place for people to share the patterns they’ve found on Trove. We’re articulating value for the community rather than financial return or stuff based things. It’s really exciting.
Two practical things for me -
1. An idea that was inspired by Eli’s presentation is for APNK to expand into MakerSpaces in smaller towns. MakerSpaces (according to Eli) are extensions of what already happens at the library – photocopy, print, access to creation software. It feels like a great fit for APNK with their mission of “everyone can benefit from accessing, experiencing and creating digital content.”
2. Co-creation with our communities and APNK / Kete great places to host these co-creations.