Monday, June 29, 2015

No Sugarcoating Allowed: Four Honest Perspectives on Change Management

This panel consisted of people from Skokie Library at different levels of management (and non-management) discussing the large structural changes and remodel that happened at their library and how their staff dealt with it.  The synthesis was a lot of empathy, a lot of listening, and a lot of just allowing people to feel during the process to create buy-in and trust.  Here are the notes...

Importance of Transparency
  •      If there’s a void, there’s a story – someone will create their own story
  •       Importance of transparency – ego and individual career should be secondary to community need and communication
  •       No ever said “you’re telling me too much truth!” – you can’t over-communicate
  •       Keep what you’re going towards in mind because it will make the journey easier

Transition phases during Change
·      Recognize Endings and losses –
o   have to leave room to examine those feelings and acknowledge them (ex. loss of office space, loss of people or sitting next to others)
o   giving up parts of their positions that they found fulfilling and loved – validating people’s reality is important.  Listen.  It’s a process.  Be patient. 
o   Make it a safe place at an appropriate time for your staff. 
o   Facilitate connections.
·      Wandering in the wilderness
o   Time between what was and what will be
o   Period of high anxiety and low energy.  Low productivity and efficiency
o   Mixed signals – changing of responsibiltiies, confusion on decision making
o   Resignations and retirements – have to learn to work with new people; exacerbate anxiety
o   Reduced sense of competence
o   What’s a manager to do?  Keep listening.  Keep providing information on WHY.  Keep building bridges.  Mantra – It takes a year to go through, transition, accept, and work out this kind of change
·      A new beginning
o   Making the Emotional commitment to the new way


Parting Note:
Being a good leader isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room – quiet leadership, listening, guiding, is just as important as being loud and assertive

Diverse Books Need Us

Diversity in Books

This program focused on educating librarians about the need for diverse collections, 

Many children, teens and adults living in certain areas of the United States do not have access to materials that feature diversity. four speakers from different backgrounds spoke about what we can do to promote diversity in books and other forms of media. 

Joy Triche- Publisher
She owns a small publishing called Tiger Stripe Books that focuses on African American titles. During the session she showed several children's picture books that are currently being published by Tiger Stripe.

Some challenges to small publishers:
Difficult to fund. 
Time
Learning curve. 

CM Winters- City Colleges of Chicago Librarian
How do we advocate for diverse books, and how do we promote these books?
She tries to put books that feature diversity into students hands whenever possible, and tries to ensure these titles are represented in the curriculum by working with other educators.

Alma Flor Ada- Professor-University of San Francisco
It is essential for children and adults to be exposed to books and materials with diversity and feature other cultures.

Look beyond color. There is diversity even within diversity.  Stressed the importance of publishers to provide support to authors and recognize books on diversity.  

Mike Jung- Author and founding member of We Need Diverse Books. 
We need diverse books organization. www.diversebooks.org

Created after it was noticed that Book-Con had few books depicting diversity. They are a  501c3 organization. Wants essential changes in all forms of books and materials 

We need not only diverse books, but authors, editors, publishers, illustrators etc.

Exhibits, part deux

Ok, the other side of the exhibit was way more awesome - IMHO!

Update - have scanned the flyers into the i drive for staffing, cubelets, word winder, and BRM furniture.

* Came across an AWESOME looking new vendor with special needs storytime manipulatives (so good!) - there website happens to be in Pomona!

We play (phalate free, latex free, lead free etc.) they do a lot of work with European clients (who have higher standards than US). SUper, mega, cool sensory bin stackers, awesome whale rider.

www.e-weplay.us

* Also cool, giant word winder. Makes me think of Allen's great literacy word games. Think of a big wordpuzzle layout of letters and you use neon colored disks to spell out words. Not sure we want to buy (think it's several hundred), but it could be cool! Even if we make a sad version ourselves (taped down laminated paper) - could be a fun, new interactive literacy element for CAN.

* Tons (like I swear I saw 6 vendors) with makerspace stuff. Don't know much about their quality, but they looked cool. Figured I would mention in case anyone wanted to dig for further info on them.

- www.robotsLAB.com (cubelets are magnetic robot blocks that can create robots with no programming and no wires!)

- Ten80 Elementary Innovation Station 3D (3D printing station, story creation station)

- makercamp.com (free summer camp July - Aug = 6 weeks hands on fun)

* Keva and GYroscope were there (of course Gyroscope had our PAL images on their display). Keva is now selling card kits with directed play / learning - example spell out a letter, letter recognition, early literacy or build this specific design (brain processing 2d to 3d) with solution on the back.

* Visited Burgeon group - very nice booth, brought book mobile, had full scale play wall system. They have invested a lot of money, time in this booth set up. They also had a sample of the new book trailer/book bike at the booth. Very cute. Their work is colorful, clean, and appears to have many layers, however when you do get up close and it comes down to interaction, it feels like there is not as much to do (as a smart someone has pointed out before). For example at the cool book mobile - there is a small magnetic button panel, a steering wheel, and a lacing activity. I do think if we worked with them and gave them good ideas, it would be successful with their craftsmenship. But are we looking for someone with better ideas than us?

Other vendors include the standard furniture, database vendors, what I did see that I had not seen before was an artist alley with lots of graphic novel artists displaying both art and comics.

There was also a game set up (games!) with tables to play games, a set up of what the good games were, etc.

Blend It: Using technology to create online/onsite learning spaces

Monday, June 29th, 1-2:30 pm

Paul Signorelli
paul@paulsignorelli.com

Blogged during session:

Notes:

- Library issues in training podcast, Maurice, LITA top trends, renaissance of podcast
- Story - Maurice was not going to be able to attend, join "the tribe" of left behind, we could set up google hang out and invite him
- Google hangouts, flexible spaces, any space flexible is what you are looking for for online work, example ALA networking uncommons

So sorry, this presentation is not a good one. I'm cutting my losses, jumping ship and heading to another.

Originally, I had planned to see the "google guy", but apparently so did everyone else. There was not even room to stand in an aisle or on the floor. He really should have been put on a big stage as a main speaker - who doesn't wan to see the "google guy?"

I just walked the floor and my choices are slim. I'll head back to help pack up the booth (bummer).

Digital Archiving for Humans

Internet archive - www.archive.org
Non-profit digital library.  19 years of internet history through the Wayback Machine.

Internet Archive has:
20 million media items 
8 million print items
2 mil audio items 
3 million hours of TV 
2.5 million users each day downloading 
The goal is all published works of humankind. 
Works with 100 partners. Digitize books 1000 books per day in 39 countries
Web service- "archive it" will archive all sites for the internet Archive. 
65 channels of TV archived constantly every day
129 million published books Internet archive has only about 4 million. Need to increase.
Create your own collection on Internet archive and reference books by other persons and libraries. This will help create meaning.

Digital Public library of America - dp.la
Acts to bring togther communities in a local fashion.
Create an ecosystem where different libraries can all work together. DPLA gathers digital collections from other libraries. 
DPLA does not preserve, but works with others to bring existing content into one source.
Collaboration is difficult but is essential.

Pop-up archive
Creating access and preserving in audio format. Works with digital audio in order to give users the ability to search historical audio files. This project is web based popuparchive.org. Pop-up Archive works with small and large libraries and academic institutions to collect digital audio files. 

The goal is to create a digital oral history. There are 10000 digital audio files loaded to Pop-Up Archive.  


If You Make It, They Will Come...if you make it somewhere else?

This Saturday program was highly disappointing.  The full title is:

If we make it, will they come? Could introducing creative spaces add value to your community?

Given it was a library conference I thought it would have something to do with libraries but sadly no.  It was about the history of maker spaces and what a maker space offers but if failed to make the connection to libraries. Instead they talked about forging swords (yes, making them at a Maker space forgery and pounding steel...for kids) and how they offer table saw safety certifications...    

I did walk away with a few ideas:

*Build a microscope (cardboard, paper, magnifying glass)

*E-Textiles (wearable electronics for fashion)

*Autism Spectrum Robotics Project at Longmont Public Library (seemed to be a theme this year-robotics and special needs.  Sounds like fun!)

*Electroluminescent
  1. Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical phenomenon and electrical phenomenon in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field.

Games as Effective Learning Tools

This was a short half hour presentation at the Graphic Novel/Gamer stage and it was led by a representative from Academy Games who make board games that are historical and often start as strategy games for the military.  The talk was about how game developers decide how to create a game.  More precisely the logic behind it.  This is dictated in large part what is called the dopamine cycle.  Here is how it works:

In any cycle there are 3 main components: Decision, Anticipation & Resolution. As an example when you make make a decision to act you start the cycle.  Whether it's getting up off the couch to eat or getting out of bed that is when you make a conscious decision to act.  Next is the anticipation.  There is something you got up for.  It was enough to make you get up and now you want it...bowl of cereal, piece of chocolate, cup of coffee...and the anticipation of how good that will taste is  when dopamine levels spike.  After we receive that item, take that bite, have that sip, the dopamine level drops.  it is not quite as gratifying as it was during the anticipation stage.

Below is a graph of how it works and in the past what are considered "Mass Market" games like monopoly & Sorry had very short dopamine cycles (ever sit there during a game waiting for you turn and bored out of your mind).  These are considered "Mass Market" because very little thought has gone into the creation.  They are often sequential and have clear, easy to learn rules that make for very accessible play-ability.


The resurgence of table top games recently is in large part to the Eurogames that have been created. Games such as Settlers of Catan try to time the dopamine cycle just long enough by making your decision and the decision of others build anticipation throughout every players turn.  Basically your turn effects another player and their turn effects your decision.  By doing so when resolution finally comes it's time to make another decision and the scale of the "Decision Tree" makes all of this possible.  The ability to make a choice that could have a variety of outcomes based on the decision of others.




Still with me?

So the talk was fantastic as it was not just a plug for the games they make (well it was, but not to the point of obnoxious).  There is something to be said about how this relates to programming at the library.  People make a decision to join us for storytime, Seuss day and other events.  For some the story might be the build up or the anticipation part before the activity.  For others the story might be the point of resolution.  I often notice that the amount of time waiting in line for an activity is sometimes the best part for kids.  I see them watching others, waiting for their turn (sometimes they can't wait and walk in front of others).  I guess what I am trying to say is don't discount the anticipation stage.  That excitement, that feeling just before you get what you want is the actual fun part and rushing through the motions will only shorten that dopamine cycle.

What does this teach us:
  • Dopamine is released by the anticipation of reward. Not when receiving the reward.
  • Dopamine spikes higher if there is uncertainty involved.
  • We crave actions that release dopamine (to the point of addiction).
  • The period of time between work and reward can be great.