UK School Library Association Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland

1. Engagement: The Epicentre of
Learner and Library Success
Stephen Abram, MLS
School Library Association
Belfast, Northern Ireland - June 21, 2013

2. Every Day in every way libraries are
throwing pebbles

3. What business are you in?

4. YOU

5. It’s simple really, shift happens, gedoverit
• Learners & Communities will continue to be diverse in the extreme –
especially on learning styles
• A foot in both camps for many, many years to come: digital and physical
• Content is already be dominated by non-text
(gamification, 3D, graphics, numeric, visual, music, video, audio, etc.)
• Search will explode with more options and one-step, one box search is
for dummies not professionally educated folks
• The single purpose anchored device is already dead as a target
• Devices will focus on
social, collaboration, sharing, learning, multimedia, creation and
successful library strategies must align with that
• School Librarians will need to focus primarily on transformational
librarianship and strategic alignment with curriculum
• E-Learning, collections and metadata will go to the cloud massively

6. Library Megatrends
It doesn’t take a genius to see teacher-librarian
skills and competencies applied to the trends and
issues in library communities can help in very
strategic ways – social, economic, and discovery
impacts.

7. School Libraries
• Are you a librarian or an educator?
• Are you a support or mission-critical?
• Your business is education and learning (they’re
different)
• Your new competitors are non-traditional
• Renewed advocacy has moved from apple pie to
influencing and selling the value and impact of teacher-
librarians
• Library staff competencies need a plateau upgrade –
consultation, relationship, influence, educating . . .

11. Deer in headlamps slide here.

13. Libraries core skill is not
delivering information
Libraries improve the
quality of the question
and the user experience
Learning Libraries are about
building life competencies

14. Libraries Have Seasons

15. Librarian Magic
What are your magic tricks?

17. Think deeply about . . .
17
Your
Operation’s
Scalability
Your
sustainability
The depth of your
relationships How you set
priorities:
Daily and Future

18. Smelly
Yellow
Liquid
Or
Sex
Appeal?
The Complex Value Proposition

19. Books, eBooks
Magazines
Websites
Buildings
Rooms
Desks
Stations
Programs
Nouns can be warehoused
and ‘cut’
Serve
Answer
Engage
Link
Entertain
Tell a story
Teach
Do
Action verbs imply dynamism
and impact

20. Are you locked into an old library mindset?

21. A Verb . . . an Experience, enlivened for an audience

22. A Noun . . . A foundation but not sufficient with professional animation

23. Grocery Stores

24. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

25. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

26. Meals

28. Library Land
What changes, disruptions
and shifts are already in
the environment?

29. • If all users are ubiquitously connected with
broadband, have downloading skills for books
and movies, own smartphones, whither
libraries?
• What about the ‘digital divide’?
• If the school system (K-12 and HigherEd)
changes radically …?

30. • What if all music, audiobooks, and video
moved to streaming formats by 2018?
• What if the DVD and CD go the way of
vinyl, VHS, and cassettes?

31. • What if all books are digital?
• What if book services move to a subscription
model of unlimited use for $7/month?
• What about next generation e-books?

32. • What if all books are ‘beyond text’?
• The NextGen Textbook…
• Can we support books with embedded
video, adaptive
technologies, audio, updating, software
tools, assessments, web-links, etc.

33. • Are you positioned at the lesson level?
• Could your library support all curricula and
distance education?
• Have you catalogued the learning
opportunities on the web? (Khan
Academy, Coursera, Udacity, edX, MIT, Harvard,
MOOCs, YouTube, Learn4All (ed2go), …)

34. • Could your library support real e-learning
• Is EVERY staff member fluent in your LMS and
the needs of supporting hybrid or total
distance learning?
• By the way – nearly all learning is distance
learning from the perspective of the library.

35. • Could your library support any kind of mobile
device?
• Are you fully ready to deliver, agnostically to
desktops, laptops, tablets, phablets, smartpho
nes, televisions, appliances, at a much higher
level?

36. • Are you prepared for new forms of content?
• Real multimedia? 3D objects and databases?
Holographics? Enhanced media?
• Can you be ready for makerspaces, creative
spaces, writing labs, business and start-up
incubators, etc.
• Can you publish for your community?

37. • What kinds of learning spaces are needed in
the future?
• Can you support real learning
spaces, community meeting
spaces, performance spaces, maker
spaces, real advisory spaces, true relationship
and consultation management . . .? In a virtual
space?

38. • What if everything was in the cloud?
(software, databases, metadata, content . . .)
• What would you do with those system skills
on staff?
• What if all metadata and content discovery is
freely available using open APIs through the
OCLC WorldShare vault and the Digital Public
Library of America / Europeana vault of open
and free metadata?

39. • What if search immersive resource discovery
becomes as ubiquitous as search engines?
• Can they find as well as search?
• Are your training sessions hitting 100% of
students?
• Are they aligned with workflow or
transactions?

40. • What does your experience portal look like?
• What are your top questions?
• Pathfinder - - LibGuides - Portals
• What are the outcome domains?

41. • Can you do it all ALONE?
• What would it look like if you cooperated?
• Consortia, Cooperatives, …

42. And what would you sacrifice?

43. The Library as Sandbox

44. Focus and Understand on the Whole
Experience

45. Up Your Game
• Know your local community demographics i.e. Teachers vs.
Students vs. admin
• Focus on needs assessment and social assessments
• Prioritize: Love all, Serve all, Save the World means nothing
gets done
• Focus on scalability
• Look for partnerships that add value

46. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – every collection must be justified by
programs
• Force strategic investment budgeting
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Don’t go it alone. Focus on large scale sustainable programs
• Connect to the longer process not just events
• Virtual and in-person - in the Library and reaching out with partners
• SCALE: eLearning and Surveys – e.g. citation methods

47. What are the real issues?
• Craft versus Industrial Strength
• Personal service only when there’s impact
• Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
• Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy initiatives (LibGuides)
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units and program dissemination
• Citation and information ethics
• Content and repository archipelagos
• Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment

48. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – But add virtual experiences
• Start being Mobile in the extreme
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Focus on relationship management / liaisons
• Ensure the program delivery person is embedded including
librarians
• What are your top learning or research domains? Start there.
• Don’t go it alone. Build scalability and sustainability.
• Look for replicability – look for commonalities

49. The new
bibliography and
collection
development
Ask Us, KNOWLEDGE
PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,
LEARNING,
INFORMATION &
RESEARCH
COMMONS

50. Up Your Game
• Learn the LMS system – everyone
• Learn copyright and licensing rights
• Learn developmental, genome, IQ, and learning styles research
• Relationship management, team building
• Advocacy and influence and research support

51. Up Your Game
• Learn how to reach and teach online
• Teach how to learn online
• Teach how to research online
• Everyone in academic libraries should be focused on
teaching/researching first, then library
• Learn more systems than one!
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Social alignment rules and use the tools

52. Up Your Game
• Start to understand the real issues with e-books
• Study e-textbooks
• Study Learning Objects
• Balance content with interface
• Focus on learner not librarian behaviours

53. Up Your Game
• Learn consulting and relationship management practices
• Understand the research goals
• Understand Pedagogy in the context of student experiences
and educational goals
• Understand human development and stage(teens)
• Know where your programs are heading
• Consider deep partnerships
• Consider coaches, peer, and tutoring partnerships

54. Up Your Game
• The strong ‘library’ brand – adding dimension
• Personal branding – Who are your stars? Promote them.
• Program branding
• Take risks for attention (AIDA)
• Embed your brand beyond the library walls and virtually

55. Up Your Game
• Grow collections investments in strategic areas (for example
economic impact, jobs, early years, hobbies, political
alignment, homework, research agenda …)
• Develop hybrid strategies that are consistent for digital and print
and programs
• Be obsessive about recommendations and advice and added value
• Integrate virtual and physical – hybridize
• Don’t fear off-site cooperation
• CURATE – real curation not assembly

56. Up Your Game
• Move the ILS to the Cloud
• Linked Data models – OCLC Worldshare, Europeana, DPLA, etc.
• Fix the ‘repository problem’
• Look at TCO and look at all costs incurred and not just hard
costs
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs

57. Up Your Game
• Dog, Star, Cow, Problem Child/?
• Reduce investment in successes
• Increase investments in the future
• Set priorities
• ‘Park’ some stuff temporarily

60. Is this library ready to support a
world of unlimited content, multiple
formats, massive access, and
consumer expectations of MORE?
Yes?
No?
With
Effort, Vision, Leadership?
Never?

61. Embracing Change

62. Change is….

63. Global

64. Constant

65. Inevitable

66. Stressful

67. Breathe

68. Find Your
Rhythm

69. Do you like change?
Does it matter?

70. What are the risks of not changing?

71. We can’t control change…
We can control our attitude towards change…

72. Deny

73. Resist

74. React

75. Explore

76. Commit

77. Change can be difficult

78. Personal change
precedes organizational
change

80. Negativity

81. Contagious

82. I can learn and I can
change and I can do it
quickly.

83. What can you do to deal with
change?

84. Accept that change
is an attitude

85. Create a personal vision
In the context of your team

86. Focus on what you can do…
……not what you can’t do

87. velop a perspective of
portunity

88. Create a willingness to learn & develop

89. Learn to love ambiguity

90. Support Aspiration

91. Be Creative and Attract

92. Being More Open to Change

94. ‘New’ Library Cultures
Support Your Team

95. Too Much Respect for Tradition
While Neglecting to Curate the
Future

96. Are there any of these in your library?
The Black
Hole
Sucking the life out of initiative(s)?

97. Being More Open
Experimentation, Pilots and
Innovation

98. Being More Open to Risk

99. Being Open to Ambiguity

100. Be
More
Open
to Social
Technologies
and
Unintended
Consequences

101. Being Comfortable with Speed

102. Letting Go of Control

103. Be Inspirational

104. Honest to G*d – Let’s
Encourage Some Fun!

105. Tell Your Story:
Until lions learn to write their own story,
the story will always be from the perspective
of the hunter not the hunted.

109. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Dysart & Jones/Lighthouse Partners
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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