The document discusses the research on creating a person-centered library, guided by values such as critical thinking, student-centeredness, and collaborative learning. It emphasizes the importance of the learner's agency in constructing knowledge and the role of empathetic understanding in facilitating effective learning experiences. The author outlines plans for library interventions and a transformative approach to library services through dialogue and community engagement.

1. At work in the phenomenal field: can
there be a person centred library?
Nick’s research, beginning 2013

2. Our values define us and guide our
decision-making behaviour
• We are; • Critical in our thinking:
• aspirational, challenging, researching,
• Student-centred: • questioning, analytical, innovative,
• maximising potential, nurturing • independent thinking.
talent,
• respecting individuality, holistic. • Professional:
• relevant, contemporary, ambitious,
• Focused on specialist creative • achieving, international, employable,
• communities: • entrepreneurial, networked with
• collaborative, interactive, industry.
multidisciplinary,
• studio-focused, • Progressive:
• externally engaged. • beautiful, unconventional, risk-
taking,
• experimental, radical, responsive.

3. Our values define us and guide our
decision-making behaviour
• Are we? • Are we?
• maximising • relevant, contemporary,
potential, nurturing ambitious, achieving,
talent, respecting international,
individuality, holistic. • employable,
• collaborative, interactive, entrepreneurial,
multidisciplinary, studio- networked with industry.
focused, externally • beautiful,
engaged. unconventional, risk-
• aspirational, challenging, taking,
researching, questioning, • experimental, radical,
analytical, innovative, ind responsive.
ependent thinking.

4. Networking...
• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at
“Librarians as researchers”.

5. Networking...
• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at
“Librarians as researchers”.
• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account
in order to communicate about blog.

6. Networking...
• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at
“Librarians as researchers”.
• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account
in order to communicate about blog.
• Andy’s interest in “play” as means of exploring
the library.

7. Networking...
• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at
“Librarians as researchers”.
• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account
in order to communicate about blog.
• Andy’s interest in “play” as means of exploring
the library.
• Becky pointed out how my research idea fitted
with the “Only connect” book proposition.

8. Networking...
• Submitted a proposal:
At work in the phenomenal field:
can there be a person centred
library?

9. Networking...
• At work in the phenomenal field: can there be
a person centred library?
• They asked me what this meant!
• I gave a further break down of the structure &
content.
• Chapter proposal accepted!

10. Networking worked!
• Now I only need to write it...
• First draft by June
• Publication Autumn 2013
• So............................

11. “Only connect ...” discovery
pathways, library explorations, and
the information adventure.
A collection of information
discovery journeys.

12. Free e-book distributed under Creative
Commons licence
• The editors’ gave the following suggestions to
consider:
• The agency for the discovery pathway rests with the
learner both naturally and ethically - and we must
recognise this
• The learner creates the connections as a means of
achieving a narrative of his/her reality
• co-constructed or constructivist learning as opposed to
transmission model; profound impact on our
approaches to teaching and our understanding of
learning as a negotiation of the info context, not an
unquestioned acceptance of librarian diktats

13. Can there be a person centred library?
LCA values My research
• Student-centred • Person centred
• maximising potential, nurturing talent,
respecting individuality, holistic • Focused on the self activating
• Focused on specialist creative communities
• collaborative, interactive, multi-disciplinary,
potential of every person –
studio-focused, externally engaged given the core conditions of:
• Critical in our thinking Congruence – being
• aspirational, challenging, researching,
questioning, analytical, innovative, real, genuine. Empathy – trust
independent- thinking sufficiently developed that one
• Professional
• relevant, contemporary, ambitious, person can as it walk around in
achieving, international, employable,
entrepreneurial, networked with industry
another’s world. Unconditional
• Progressive positive regard – to value the
• beautiful, unconventional, risk-taking, whole person in all
experimental, radical, responsive
circumstances.

14. • Realness in the facilitator of learning. Perhaps the most basic of
Carl R. Rogers (1902 - these essential attitudes is realness or genuineness. When the
facilitator is a real person, being what she is, entering into a
1987) relationship with the learner without presenting a front or a façade,
she is much more likely to be effective. This means that the feelings
Carl Rogers has provided educators that she is experiencing are available to her, available to her
awareness, that she is able to live these feelings, be them, and able
with some fascinating and important to communicate if appropriate. It means coming into a direct
questions with regard to their way of personal encounter with the learner, meeting her on a person-to-
being with participants, and the person basis. It means that she is being herself, not denying herself.
• Prizing, acceptance, trust. There is another attitude that stands out
processes they might employ. The in those who are successful in facilitating learning… I think of it as
danger in his work for informal prizing the learner, prizing her feelings, her opinions, her person. It
educators lays in what has been a is a caring for the learner, but a non-possessive caring. It is an
acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, having
point of great attraction - his person- worth in her own right. It is a basic trust - a belief that this other
centredness. Informal education is not person is somehow fundamentally trustworthy… What we are
so much person-centred as dialogical. describing is a prizing of the learner as an imperfect human being
with many feelings, many potentialities. The facilitator’s prizing or
A focus on the other rather than on acceptance of the learner is an operational expression of her
what lies between us could lead away essential confidence and trust in the capacity of the human
from the relational into a rather selfish organism.
individualism. Indeed, this criticism • Empathic understanding. A further element that establishes a
climate for self-initiated experiential learning is emphatic
could also be made of the general understanding. When the teacher has the ability to understand the
direction of his therapeutic student’s reactions from the inside, has a sensitive awareness of the
endeavours. way the process of education and learning seems to the student,
then again the likelihood of significant learning is increased….
[Students feel deeply appreciative] when they are simply
understood – not evaluated, not judged, simply understood from
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et- their own point of view, not the teacher’s. (Rogers 1967 304-311)
rogers.htm

15. The phenomenal field – where we are

16. Is this your sense of “self”?

17. Or this?

18. We select, find, or co-create a self-identity from the totality of events
in our environment. The likeness (or not) of this identity to our true
self partially depends on where our locus of evaluation rests.
Do we judge ourselves by the standards of someone (or something)
else, even as we imagine what this other is thinking/judging?
The phenomenal field includes projected attitudes as well as the
people in the field reacting.
How can we attempt to alleviate a sense of the judgemental while
encouraging the people within the field to feel more confident and
valued in themselves?

19. Thoughts & processes
• This cannot be a purely theoretical text
• Dialogic
• Setting up conversations
• Library Interventions – exhibition series – this
is the fruit of beginning a dialogue inspired by
my blog; Adventure of Library
• http://nicknorton2.wordpress.com/

20. Library Interventions
• Beginning conversations. A series
of artist led interventions into
the library context: book, books,
collection, searchable archive,
facilitated learning, thinking
space, discovery, mapped and
yet still uncharted territory.
• 1st intervention: Garry Barker, Art
and Fiction.

21. Suggestions
1. The best time for first intervention & series launch would be
September – allowing inductees to view. Also this will become
part of LCA gallery marketing programme & provide time for
further organisation
2. Twitter: tweet “a bay a day” mirco-interventions
(colour, title, sculpture, curriculum links), invite artists, course
areas, any staff doing shelving to photograph a shelf and send as
link + comment
3. This continually curated space to be a “viral campaign” aka a viral
feed... Use #tags to gain audience
4. Cumulated posts could become a “zine” to be published at the
launch
5. Turn weeding into an auction/performance? Other “Library
games”? Reading groups?

22. Dialogue
• Questions and answers, yes
• But

23. Dialogue
• yes
• But
• Listening facilitates movement between
question and answer

24. Dialogue
• Between territory and discovery

25. Dialogue
• Between persons

26. • The person centred approach began in a
therapeutic context but proved useful in
education & group dynamics. Carl Rogers was
nominated for the Noble Peace Prize for his
work in South African & N. Ireland peace
processes...
• Can it have any value in a library context?

27. • Can it work in a library context?
• More conversations – the college has two
qualified counsellors working in Student
Services.
• It was pointed out that to value the person is
not the same as being “merely” nice – it is a
challenge.

28. Input
• To develop an ethos
• To be congruent across the whole service
• To set boundaries and establish an understanding
of how we want to work
– With one another
– With the library user
– With the collection
• To work out the limits of what is possible (or
desirable)

29. • I need to look at other institutions also
• Ethical concerns – make institution and
contributing voices anonymous, right of
review, bring no harm
• As the author I speak only as an author rather
than a representative of LCA library

30. Questions?