Community Engagement
and Makerspace
Chrissy Klenke, MSLIS, and Tod Colegrove, Ph.D., MSLIS
DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library
University of Nevada, Reno
Presentation at Internet Librarian 2013 conference, Monterey CA
October 28, 2013

“How can we engage with the
community of the library?”

Communities as “patrons”?
Image credit: Natasha Starkell . GoalEurope weblog, September 8, 2011.
Retrieved from http://goaleurope.com/2011/11/08/crowdsourcing-innovation-outsourcing-eastern-europe-venture-capital-hungary-startup-cee-hungarian-crowdsourcer-skawa-boasts-a-crowd-of-17-000-workers-launches-website-translation-service-easyling/

Or individuals?
Image licensed Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic by cnystrom. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/36614889@N00/11357463/

Time to get personal.

Superpower #1: connecting with
individuals - one person at a time.

“What good is connecting/engaging
with just one person?”

1 person, 3 degrees of separation:
432,430 friendship relations.
Image credit: Jeffrey Heer, Vizster Project. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://whyfiles.org/2009/social-network/

One connection leads to another…
Image credit: Calzadilla, A. (2012). Anatomy of a social network. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://www.trulia.com/blog/angel_calzadilla/2012/06/anatomy_of_a_social_network

Building trust.
“Trust is a product of
vulnerability that grows over
time and requires
work, attention, and full
engagement. Trust isn’t a grand
gesture – it’s a growing marble
collection.”1
1
Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live. New York, NY: Gotham Books
Image credit: Hernandez, J. (2013). Bicycles and Blueberries weblog. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://bicyclesandblueberries.wordpress.com/

“Do your eyes light up?”2
2 Maya
Angelou. Attributed by Sara on the weblog The Good, retrieved 10/2013 from http://thegood2012.blogspot.com/2012/05/do-your-eyes-light-up.html
Image credit: Veronica Samuels. Retrieved 10/2013 from Jersey Mom’s Blog at http://jerseymomsblog.com/2010/10/what-makes-your-childs-eyes-light-up/

Simple things build
3:
trust
• Active care. Don’t wait to be asked.
• Build rapport. Many ways to create: being
visible/nearby, using their name, encouraging…
• Reliability. Deliver on your promises.
• Similarity. We trust people who are like us.
• Teasing. Testing and showing trust.
• Evidence. Social Proof.
Note: rules, agreements, monitoring, and so
on, are trust substitutes. Use with caution.
3Derived
from Straker, D. (2013), changingminds.org: supporting materials retrieved 10/2013 from http://changingminds.org/explanations/trust/trust.htm

Trust is built up or eroded away
slowly: one person at a time.

Superpower #2: Rapport. Reliability.
Similarity.
“We trust people who are like us.”

Image credit: imgur r/QuotesPorn: “Being a geek…Simon Pegg”. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://imgur.com/DneS7

Little Boy “the device” exhibit:
Build rapport. Demonstrate similarity.

An afternoon outing on the Quad:
Deliver on your promises. Evidence – social proof.

“Would you be willing to let us…?”

Over 400 attended the opening of the
month-long exhibit.
Rapport. Reliability. Similarity. Evidence.

WordCamp 2011 - over 100 participants.
Students, faculty, and members of the
greater community.

“The library in 2020 will be ruled by
geeks. In my happy vision for the
future, libraries are ruled by benign
geek librarian overlords, and the world
is full of awesome.”
Houghton, S. (2013). Sara Houghton. In J. Janes (Ed.) Library 2020: Today’s Leading Library Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library. Scarecrow Press, Lanham:Maryland.