Use your friends to develop the library, or even better – use the friends of your friends to develop the library. The library as a physical space and phenomena is changing at its core and the only way not to be overtaken by the development is to use it to move ones positions forward. Here social networks take an important place. According to experiences made recently social networks often have even more potential than intuitively assumed. The most important social networks are also easier to navigate through than you might think, because the most important social networks are you, your friends and the friends of your friends.
Around the world there is a discussion going on at forums and conferences. The libraries are changing. For a long time the libraries have had a well-functioning collection of media as most important goal and instrument. Today there is an opinion growing that the most important goal and instrument of the library is an active body of users.
The modern library should play an integral part in one’s learning process at any age. In spite of the growing use of the library as it changeovers into the era of online databases and archives, this learning typology remains an important space for developing knowledge and connecting with community. Attainable to all, the library represents a standard of exploratory learning that can continually grow and shift over time. Catering towards everyone from young to old, libraries present new typologies for connecting with the general public through a shared interest in accumulative knowledge. As the role of the library continues to evolve, the development of various projects focuses on the shifting relationship with a library and transforms it into a meeting place that encourages engagement, participation, and development.
The media collection is still important, but consuming of media is predicted to have to stand back for the unique ability of the library to create creating. You might say that the libraries will rely on its ability to collect citizens, their ideas, initiatives and dreams more than it will rely on its ability to collect media. But in order to have active users, extensive knowledge is needed. Libraries need to inform themselves on what is interesting and important to the target groups they want to attract and activate at the library.
This enables anybody to find suitable ideas and trends in a preferred target group that could be adopted into the library. When searching your social network there are many features that would be desirable in the idea or trend that you find, but some features deserve special mentioning. Ideas that build on passion are really what you’re looking for. Ideally they also should be remarkable, innovative, somewhat trendy and allow you as a library to blend in your ambitions for this target group. The passion part is extremely important if you want things to start living its own life. You could add limitless amounts of passion to the concept and only make it better. You should never stop looking for more. Hopes and dreams should be born and raised at the library.
It is also important to mention that it is not enough to gather intelligence. Library staff should not only collect hopes and dreams from the surrounding community, but also from each other. How to start a good creativity process in the work group is an article of its own, but promoting ideas that build on others ideas is a good start.
Things that build on dreams and passion tend to develop Crowd Accelerated Innovation. Crowd accelerated innovation is a phenomenon that comes from people who repeat what other people did, but a little bit better. In order to start crowd accelerated innovation certain components are needed. The most important component is, as previously explained, an interesting idea with lots of potential enthusiasts and passion. Also particularly important is a space where people could interact within this topic. A campfire or a party would do if it had greater size, frequent occurrence, an educated staff and was more like a library in general. But libraries represent a fantastic opportunity from this perspective. If you can share a space like a library it is not necessary to share the same moment, the important thing is that you may see what the rest of the crowd produced and how you may exceed that.
Topics that have benefited recently from this phenomenon include dance, meditation, chemistry, lecturing, skateboarding, wake-boarding, activities for a group 50+, and, as in Sweden, restoration of old buildings, and as in Ukraine, Internet studies or learning foreign languages. The story of the example from Sweden is that the library of Nyköping was looking for ways to reach out the difficult target group of youth with an age of between 13 – 25 years old. A friend of a friend of theirs was working at the city council and she had problems with a group of youngsters. They were actually occupying an old building that was due to be demolished. The levels of passion were almost too high. But they managed to use this fact to cooperate with the city council and the town museum to create a space for learning how to restore the building in question so that it wouldn’t have to be demolished. The result was a summer camp and an exhibition that attracted more youth. They were inspired to contribute even more during the autumn. This, in turn, made the exhibition better and made it possible for it to go on tour in the region, and so on. At this point the social networks were used in the opposite way compared to the initial stage. Just as you may listen for interesting occurrences through networks, you might spread information about interesting occurrences through networks. If you can get the friends of your friends to speak about a message in their networks, you will reach a lot of people.
In the next example information from social contacts was used to improve an existing activity rather than create a new one. In the Swedish village of Nora, there was a group of young girls gathering every week to discuss books and sew things like dolls, table cloth and other things. It was a popular activity but the library staff felt it was excluding to the boys. Some boys turned up when the activity was carving wood, but soon the ambition rose to loosen up the norm that girls should be sewing and boys should be carving wood. The library staff started to ask the friends of their friends, and soon the idea was found that instead of making dolls the group should be offered to make monsters. This way both girls and boys are both sewing and carving. The popularity of the activity was increased further. What the next step is in this development is yet to come.
Following the Swedish project Kompobib 2020 and taking into consideration Crowd Accelerated Innovation, Vinnytsia Regional Universal Research Library has made the proper research what target groups could be integrated into a mutual social network. As a result of a quiz, the Library could be “open” for new potential users who are eager to use its services and be an integral part of its everyday life. The respondents of Vinnytsia community make their choice on the following aspects:
(1) The heart of a library should rest in the physical communication structure tempting visitors to explore and interact with all parts of the library. A library should serve as a new platform for finding knowledge, communication, and inspiration. As a consequence, a lot of activities, various club meetings, Internet studies, and foreign language learning activities have been organized at this library including partnership with some non-government organizations and a net of volunteers. Special entertaining and informative programs on learning English with audio and texts provide engaging and interesting content based on various information. Special English is “special” because it is really worth to use when starting your learning a foreign language or even improving your knowledge. Use of Rosetta Stone or Anglijskij are multimedia collections, the most effective way of learning English with native speakers at Vinnytsia RUR Library.
(2) Coming to the library parents with kids often face multiple disadvantages. This has led to consider what the cumulative impact would be if children could receive high-quality support at a library across all the contexts in which they learn and develop. Very soon the Library in Vinnytsia will propose for children of various age new settings, so unusual for public libraries in Ukraine, and their parents who write their research papers or participate in club activities. Hey, parents, you will get this opportunity very soon here. The Library has made its first steps thinking about you.
This unique library project seeks to create a ‘pipeline’ of personal, social and health support for children providing community development initiatives. A project “Developing Children’s Zone at a Public Library” is funded and led in a way which enables it to concentrate on improving children’s life chances. There is a good reason to believe that there will be cumulative effects from these interventions presenting new expectations and aspirations for children who use library services with their parents. Here it should be noted that it is a pilot kids’ zone, a small island where children could spend their time with pleasure. The idea is initiated by our local community needs and supported by librarians of Vinnytsia Library.
There's a spine-tingling adventure waiting for children when they use Library Kids’ services. Children can enjoy the same services as adults, including Internet access, but with a particular focus on their interests and needs. All children are valued members of a community and librarians make them particularly welcome at Vinnytsia RUR Library. It offers a complete lending service for children. Here you will find books for babies; fiction and non-fiction for 6-12 year olds; a young adult section for 12 -15 year olds; a reference section; music and games on CD for watching in the library. Games, toys, and jigsaws can be used while you are at the library. There are also children's PCs with lots of educational and entertaining software for young people.
Children can participate in a wide range of activities designed to entertain, teach, involve and stimulate the youngest members of our community to spend their time at a library. A wigwam for amazing storytelling, Melissa & Doug Deluxe Standing Easel for drawing and making sums, a Kids Multi-touch All-In-One Computer with educational software, Ravensburger Educational Trivia card and learning games, LEGO Minecraft, Children’s Word and Desk games provide educational development at the Kids’ Zone. Health purveyance is also offered for young users of the Center with a help of a Little Tikes Easy Score Basketball Set, a kids’ exercise machine, and a children’s slide. Kids Classic Bean Bag Chairs and proper furniture create a new design, comfort and home atmosphere.
This project introduces new technologies with a new design with its playful colors, organic shapes, soft material, and light. No doubt, it will help the librarians develop a sense of community and identity widening a network of users in the Ukrainian community. It encourages parents with children to visit the Library, play, relax, work, and exchange ideas inviting movements to the Children’s Center. This single kids’ space creates multiple opportunities for public interaction, including reading, playing, storytelling and communication. The library’s open spaces are filled with some examples of modern furniture in bright colors and bold designs by some of the globe’s most recognized designers. Among the most distinctive ones are such an exclusive Sonic Chair.
The Kids Cybernet Station Pro is Kids Multi-touch All-In-One Computer. It provides children a wonderful and entertaining learning experience. The computer includes everything that you could ever want in a child's computer. The Ultimate Educational Computer with Educational Software is for children of all ages with hours of non-stop entertainment and computer fun. It includes tons of educational software packages. Kids Cybernet Station is an All-In-One computer package designed for the classroom, libraries and daycares that includes everything you could need for a child / student friendly workstation. Software packages are determined by the system package and include the most popular children's games and educational titles.
(3) Library services for people with disabilities. The next project, starting its implementation in 2013, runs a library service for handicapped people who cannot easily use a library due to disability, or frailty, helping people to learn the basics of using the computers at the library or learn a foreign language, or participate at any organized activity. We expect very soon that wheelchair users may enter Vinnytsia RUR Library and leave without staff assistance. A unique lifting system will be installed at the Library and make its space accessible for every member of our community. We dream about a toilet that will have one wheelchair-accessible stall, equipped with railings, grab bars, sink and mirror. Dreams could come true. Some day a handicapped-accessible toilet could be available. Vinnytsia Library provides free internet access to anyone wanting to learn more about using the Internet or developing IT skills. The Library will also have a support of volunteers who can support learners following various courses at a library.
When people are allowed to contribute as much or as little as they want there are big differences in how they contribute. There are different roles to be filled. Besides the innovators there is a need for commenters, trend spotters, skeptics, superspreaders, eccentrics (or even rebels), and fans (even though all of the people these roles tend to be fans in their own way). Often these roles are partially filled by the library staff until sufficient momentum and critical mass is gained. The normal development pattern could be characterized as “the long tail” or the 80-20 curve. That means that those that are engaged are very engaged and that the number of people that contribute very little is huge. This is normal. But if you get the people involved to communicate with each other about their involvement, rather than communicating with the library about it you may radically change the involvement in the group. But the important question should not be if people contribute enough, it should be if it is adding to the whole. Anything that is worth something is worth something.
Such a network is considered so important that network meetings are arranged. The fact that network meetings are important is widely accepted in almost every professional context. Why should it be different for undertakings and ventures made by the patrons of the library? Because it is voluntary and non-regulated? The very reason the library is so important is that it enables the citizens of its community. A good collection of books is an instrument of that, but an equally powerful instrument is a good collection of interesting, vital networks between patrons. Every event activity arranged by a library could and should be considered a network meeting for users, visitors and patrons. Library staff has a unique position to find existing social contacts in their library and to introduce individuals from one such social network with another. This will increase involvement and interest. It also makes clear what the attractors are for the target groups coming to the library.
The term “library target group” might seem like a contradiction in itself. A public library should be for everybody, while a target group by definition is excluding. How could you target everybody at the same time? The answer that has been found is that you don’t. Rather the answer is to switch focus between target groups regularly. According to this kind of reasoning there are two types of target groups, the ones coming to the library and the ones that don’t. Of tradition most participating libraries are very good at communicating with the target groups that already visit and use the library. This kind of communication doesn’t require social networks. The most common method is to leave survey forms at the counter and those who want fill them in. This give a picture of very happy users, but it is only half the answer. Half of the energy put into communicating with target groups that are not yet coming to the library. There must be a balance between change and stability. In this case existent target groups are associated with stability and new target groups are associated with change.
According to the New York University professor Clay Shirky there is 1 000 000 000 000 h of participatory value from those who use the internet. The number of people who use the library is nowhere close to the number of people who use the internet. But if your library could get only some hundred thousand of that trillion hours it would be a huge asset for your local community. Now, to gather that amount of people might seem like a daunting task. But then you should consider the figures. As an example the Vinnytsia Regional Research Library in Ukraine is as good as any. The amount of visitors at this library is 136 000 per year. This is almost two times the amount of people that would fit into the Olympia Stadium in Kiev.
The unique ability of the library to create creating is going to be increasingly important in the future. It is important to make use of the enthusiasm of community members. People get enthusiastic about things that are remarkable. They want to contribute to it. You could invent it by being creative and you could find it in your social networks. The way to find things in your social network is to get your friend to get his/her friend to ask a question to his/her friends. This way you will reach much more people than you might intuitively think. When people engage as much or as little they want to the level of involvement is very different. You improve this and increase the involvement if you get them to connect to each other more than they connect to you as a library. If you succeed to increase the enthusiasm to passion you will get crowd sourced innovation just from people being able to see each other’s efforts. This requires large quantities of engagement but the potential is enormous. Just Vinnytsia Regional Research Library alone could fill an arena twice the size of the Olympia Stadium in Kiev every year with its visitors.
Imagine an entire stadium jam packed with library visitors. They all have dreams they are passionate about. They all want to be empowered by your library. They all want to connect with you, and with each other. You just have to get started.
“The library is so modern – it really speaks to the future,” said Aaron Moser. And we’d like to have our both libraries – the Ukrainian and the Swedish one - full of life. We spend a long time working continuously to build up a network for ourselves within the local community. There are now some “really outstanding cooperative ventures underway with all kinds of partners. Unless you keep checking back with people and maintain contact, a cooperative venture can quickly dwindle to nothing again”.
In a nutshell, let’s keep this communication in our community and be creative in our choice.
Yulia Kashpruk
Librarian of
Vinnytsia Regional Universal Research Library
named after K.A. Timiriazev,
(Vinnytsia,
Ukraine)
David
Jonsson
Project leader
of the project 'KompoBib 2020'
(Upsala, Sweden)
Тема: “Banned Books and Banned Web Sites: Ethics, Censorship, Filtering of the Web and Libraries in the U.S.”
