edited by Charles B. Lowry

Innovation: Who’s in Charge Here? by Nancy Allen and James F. Williams II

It is easy to get mired in the demanding routines of the day- to-day obligations of academic library work. Managers need look no further than the daily schedule of their calendar the in- box on their desk or in their e-mail to

old paradigm, as important as it still is. Leadership will mean pushing the envelope of change and taking risks which help increment progress in both small and large ways. Nancy Allen and Jim Williams have prescribed some good sense principles in their essay for balancing old demands with new. However the key insight they propose is the strategy of technology partnerships.-C.B.L.

A re libraries environments of change or not? Who should be taking initiatives for change in information manage- ment and libraries? Who should be taking risks for

change in universities and colleges? There are lots of reasons why libraries are not organizations which support innovation particularly well. These include: l Many of them are located in universities. Universities are

ancient institutions which are organized pretty much as they were in the 16th century. Change in colleges and universi- ties, when viewed from the outside, does not look particu-

larly dramatic. A shift in emphasis from research to pedagogy, or from one definition of great literature to another, does not represent a substantial shift which might better support organizational innovation.

l Even those libraries not located in universities are usually organized as bureaucracies, with hierarchical organization charts, lots of rules, weighty policy manuals, and incredibly intricate procedures for staff to follow. Human resources and hiring practices are often inflexible, and resource con- straints in today’s libraries complicate the bureaucratic structures-despite that old saying about necessity being the mother of invention, budget cuts do not encourage inno- vation.

Nancy Allen is Dean of Libraries, Penrose library, University of Denver, 2150 E. Evans, Denver, CO 80208-0287; and Williams is

Dean of Libraries, University Libraries, the University of Colorado,

Campus Box 184, Boulder, CO 80309-0784.

Libraries are burdened by having to live with one foot in the past and the other foot in the future. For instance, many research libraries are dedicated to maintaining unwieldy and costly programs to preserve and archive the history of man- kind, which creates a serious cash-flow problem for those administrators inclined to take risks.

Many senior administrators in libraries may not know very much about information technology or information policy. Two recent workshops held by EDUCOM and by the Amer- ican Library Association’s Association for Library Collec- tions and Technical Services were designed by people who obviously thought decision makers need some briefing on issues which might encourage innovation.

Innovation in libraries is not at all well funded by the public and private sectors. The two or three funding programs available to library decision makers willing to develop dem- onstration projects are highly competitive, and to make mat- ters worse, a time-consuming application process is a major inhibiting factor. We can list the high-visibility, innovative library/information demonstration projects on two hands. Knowing about these programs makes us feel better, but back on campus, life goes on while we listen to library staff say “We don’t have time for innovation” or “We don’t have time to fill out those grant applications.” Library adminis- trators, staff, and professionals feel frustrated about the lack of time to think creatively about the next generation of libraries and to apply for the funds to get started.

Despite the years of debate about research and scholarship by librarians, it is still the case that most library research is applied, not pure, and that much of the applied research is derivative. This is not necessarily bad, but it does not describe a professional group experienced in funded research initiatives. The number of working librarians with an active research agenda or with personal experience with methods is relatively small.

So, what should we do about this situation? Should we plunge ahead, or should we face facts and let somebody else take the lead? Should we feel guilty when we hear about that faculty member in Chemistry who sent in the innovative “informatics” proposal without including the library in proposal development? Should we try to be on every technology committee on campus? The real question is: where is campus-based innovation for aca- demic information technology best supported?

The answer lies in partnership, supported more by bursts of energy than by huge influxes of external funding. Innovation is already funded in many academic disciplines. Many faculty members have a lot more experience (and success) than do the

July 1994 167

reference staff in getting grants funded. The concepts advanced by Richard Lucier and others defining “knowledge manage- ment” are key to success, i.e., partnerships within the academy, risk taking, and development of organizational change to sup- port innovation.

At the recent meeting of the Coalition for Networked Infor- mation, innovative applications of technology were highlighted, and the common thread among most of the projects reported was collaboration. With collaboration, the risks and costs of innova- tion are shared, while expertise is both shared and expanded.

So, yes, get on all the information policy or technology com- mittees you can. Get on the phone. Find out who decides what is listed on your gopher server, see what it takes to establish the library as an PIP site or to get library files connected to your campus network. Meet every week for lunch with the head of academic computing. Find out which deans are interested in col- laborative funding of technology. Find out which faculty mem- bers are interested in or already using multimedia and smart classrooms, and who checks e-mail three times each day. The ideas behind partnership between librarians and teachers which led to collaborative bibliographic instruction programs will work even better in the application of information technologies.

Do not be possessive about information technology. If some- body in the geography department gets a nice big grant to fund equipment and software for a geo-information lab, go visit the lab and talk with the principal investigator about programmatic integration with the library. Supporting innovation is almost as good as getting the idea and the funding yourself. It certainly fits the mission of the library.

It is instructive to review calls for proposals like the Digital Library Initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF) when considering forward-looking collaborative projects. The outline of innovative areas in the NSF announcement included:

1) Capturing data (and descriptive information about data) of all forms (text, images, sound, speech, etc.) and categorizing and organizing electronic information in a variety of formats, 2) Advanced software and algorithms for browsing, searching, fil- tering, abstracting, summarizing and combining large volumes of data, imagery, and all kinds of information, 3) The utilization of networked databases distributed around the nation and around the world.

We suggest that librarians should use such announcements as springboards for local partnering, if not at the NSF application level, then at a campus-initiatives level. Ideas for innovations will probably not be a problem. Another place to look is the Council on Library Resources initiatives regarding post-Bool- ean retrieval systems (the next generation of online catalogs). The Bibliographic Services Study Committee of the Council has recommended initiatives be taken in the form of research projects, demonstration projects, and library school programs supporting enhanced and integrated information retrieval. In this area, where online catalog improvements are the domain of the vendor community, once again the concept of partnerships is applicable. The collective voices of librarians suggesting changes to vendors designing integrated systems will effect change. We believe that taken together, a host of campus-based initiatives, and vendor/client projects, even limited projects which do not require major funding, can represent enormous progress and substantial innovation.

And do not forget to look for partners beyond the campus as well. Local technology companies might also be interested in collaboration. Most university communities support a healthy information industry of software, hardware, and systems firms, some of which are already working on R&D projects which could be related to higher education in the information age.

So, position the library for leadership and innovation without bringing all the risks and costs into the library organization- extend your hand as a partner in campus-based innovation.

In the next issue Rhoda ChanningS essay takes a look at “PowerUp,” an innovative program at Wake Forest Libraries to train incoming freshmen and jump-start their technology skills for information retrieval.

Individuals interested in contributing guest columns should send a precis of their proposed essay to: Charles B. Lowry, Uni- versity Librarian, Editor “Managing Technology, ” JAL, Carn- egie Mellon University Libraries, Hunt Library, Frew St., Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890. Or phone: (412) 268-2446; Fax: (412) 268-2944; E-mail: <lowry@andrew.cmu.edu>.

168 The Journal of Academic Librarianship