Introductory workshop in an 8-part series on public library collection development.

1. Designing Collection Experiences:
1. The Experience Library
Roy Kenagy
rjkenagy@netins.net
www.whatwouldranganathando.org
September 10, 2013
Waterloo Public Library

2. Design
Experience
Collection

3. Ludwig
Wittgenstein
“The problems are solved,
not by giving new
information, but by
arranging what we have
always known. Philosophy is
a battle against the
bewitchment of our
intelligence by means of
language.”
Philosophical Investigations,
§ 109

4. Exercise
Inventory tasks in collections work

5. Professional frames
Donald Schön and Martin Rein. Frame
Reflection: Toward the Resolution of
Intractable Policy Controversies. New
York: BasicBooks, 1994.

8. The Progression of
Economic Value
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore. The
Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre and
Every Business a Stage. Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 1999.

9. Commodity
Product
Service
Experience
Transformation

10. Cathy De Rosa and Jenny Johnson. From Awareness to
Funding: A Study of Library Support in America: A Report to
the OCLC Membership. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 2008; available
at http://www.oclc.org/reports/funding/default.htm.
One of three findings called out in the introductory
web page of OCLC’s From Awareness to Funding:
“Voters who see the library as a
'transformational' force as opposed to an
'informational' source are more likely to
increase taxes in its support”

11. The Collection as a
Designed Artifact

12. Affordances in Design
Donald A. Norman. The Design of
Everyday Things. New York:
Doubleday, 1990.

13. Exercise
What are some affordances of
board books? Then, what are some
affordances of collections as artifacts?

14. Discovery
Brian C. O'Connor, Jud H. Copeland, and Jodi
L. Kearns. Hunting and Gathering on the
Information Savanna: Conversations on
Modeling Human Search Abilities. Lanham,
Md.: Scarecrow, 2003.

15. But all the VSPs (Very Serious
People) say libraries aren’t about
artifacts anymore!
Libraries are about information/
knowledge/ makerspaces/ anything
but artifacts

16. Exercise
Anything But Artifacts: Read and
discuss “Meet Your Makers,” then
inventory all the phenomena that will
replace artifacts in libraries.

17. And for my next
trick, I will make All
the Information in
the Universe
disappear.

18. The Conduit Metaphor
Michael Reddy. "The Conduit Metaphor." In Metaphor
and Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony, 164-201. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Available online at http//www.reddyworks.com/reddy-
writes/the-conduit-metaphor.

19. Antoine Lavoisier,
who made All the
Phlogiston in the
Universe disappear.

20. Nominalization
Helen Sword. "Zombie Nouns," The New
York Times (July 23, 2012):
http//opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2
012-07/23/zombie-nouns/.

21. Technology Changes Everything™
Unlock Your Potential
Change the Way the World Looks at You

22. Toolmaking
Alexandra
Doni
Edie

23. The Mission of Librarians is to Improve Society
through Facilitating Knowledge Creation in their
Communities.
R. David Lankes

24. “I hate the READ posters. There,
I’ve said it.”
R. David Lankes. The Atlas of New
Librarianship. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2011. p. 73.

25. The Curse of Knowledge
Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick:
Why Some Ideas Survive and Others
Die. New York: Random, 2007.

26. Two Frames for Reading
Reading as consumption
vs.
Reading as making

27. Exercise
Is reading consumption, making, or a
little of both? Hint: I think there is a
wrong answer.

28. If reading is making, what do we
make when we read?

29. Meaning
Almost always, narrative meaning

30. People transform themselves
when they make meaning.
Especially narrative meaning

31. Waterloo Public Library
August 2013 Checkouts - All collections
Rhizome Sum of Checkout % of Checkout
Exposition 5,011 16.26%
Narrative 25,798 83.73%
Total 30,812 100.00%
Does not include renewals

33. The mission of librarians is to help
create transformative meaning in the
lives of readers and the conversations
of communities.
C. Roy Kenagy

34. Now for some bullet points
• Public library collections work is about
designing transformative experiences
• Readers experience collections as unitary
artifacts that afford practice, play, and praxis
• Public library collections are overwhelmingly
about narrative, not information
• Creating meaning is hard work, and our
readers deserve our respect

35. Ludwig
Wittgenstein
“don’t think,
just look!”
Philosophical
Investigations, § 66