creativity

How does a library leader manage him/herself when someone else is the library manager? That was the first part of the question posed to me by a colleague yesterday. How does the leader, in such a position, maintain that internal flame of creativity? How does such a leader lead in practical terms?

Every week, I have the opportunity--often the opportunities--to provide on-the-spot reference services at a local coffee shop. Among other morning caffeine inhalers on hand as I make use of my own most portable electronics, some shyly ask about the rudiments of choosing and/or using specific creation-enabled tools (iPad, smartphone) . Others ask for help altering the settings on their ereaders. Another kind of query relies on my ability to connect them to online resources when they've been stumped by their own efforts to find the very specific information they'd like to uncover.

Next week, Infopeople is sending a few California librarians to a new and unusual library conference. "R-Squared" (Risk x Reward) promises an exciting "mountaintop experience," both in that cheesy life-changing sense and also in a completely literal sense, as we'll be spending a few breathless days in Telluride, Colorado, at close to 10,000 feet. We've received advisory emails about drinking extra water, toning down weekend exercise goals, and coming with open minds.

In my Edgy Librarian webinar on Culture Shift in Libraries, I asked the question “Does it feel like, all of a sudden, everyone is talking about the need to be creative and innovative?”  Most of the people on the webinar responded “yes.”  Much of the webinar covered why this is so, and what to do about it.  What I didn’t get a chance to do was really get into what it means to be creative and innovative.

Overcoming challenges in the library workplace involves a mixture of creativity and fun, Suzanne Merritt suggests in her new full-day Infopeople “Building Leadership Skills: Stimulating Creativity” workshop sessions being offered in libraries throughout California from April 10-24, 2009.

If we are looking for permission to be creative, have fun, and tell stories, we don’t need to look much beyond Daniel Pink and his popular nonfiction book A Whole New Mind. And if we want to spend a little time face to face with him, we won’t need to look much farther than San Jose this weekend when he appears as one of the presenters in the Infopeople “Master Speaker” series.