Good Ideas Come From Here

When I read Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation a few months ago, it occurred to me that the book could serve as a framework for design of an academic library's research commons. Or perhaps, to fully explore Johnson's ideas, I should call it a "research reef." For anyone thinking about fostering innovation, I highly recommend the book.

I've just finished re-reading the book, this time taking notes and thinking specifically about how it might be used for planning library spaces. Johnson's main point is that environments matter to the development of new ideas. The coral reef, the city, and the World Wide Web all stand as exemplars of environments where innovation thrives. In a nutshell, innovation typically involves a new combination, pieced together from the "adjacent possible" (existing pieces). Ideas frequently emerge over time, held as "slow hunches" until the other pieces fall into place. Networks are needed to bring people/ideas together, and a "liquid" state allows for a randomness in the collisions between ideas. Serendipity brings possibly beneficial solutions together, sometimes helping a person see that what has seemed like error is in fact the answer to a completely different question. "Exaptation," a term from evolutionary biology, describes the borrowing of a trait intended for one purpose for a completely different use. Johnson gives the example of Gutenberg's adaptation of the screw press from the wine industry for his printing press. These kinds of exaptations are more likely in "a world where a diverse mix of distinct professions and passions overlap" (p. 162). A platform for innovation is typically built as a stack of ideas or technologies, with openness a trait which generally fosters more creativity.

"Research commons" is a rather amorphous phrase, and describes an intention more than a particular type of space and/or set of services. It is a needed reaction to a decade of focus on undergraduate learning spaces and noble attempts to create one-stop triage for basic undergraduate needs, all embodied in the "information commons" movement. The new nomenclature points to a desire to embed our work deeper into the process, to get beyond the role of dispensary of information, and into a role as partners in the research process.

As the research commons movement matures, a leading conceptual framework is the "research lifecycle." This is a useful, structural approach to designing services (including space as a service). It provides a checklist of possible service options, facilitates identification of complimentary (or competing) programs on campus and potential partners, and highlights gaps in the support network for faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers. A recent, thoroughly researched report from the Ohio State University Libraries takes this approach, referring to the model as a "services focus" approach, as compared to an "innovative space" model or a "research lab" profile. The OSU report points to a particularly well-done "Research Lifecycle" graphic from the University of Central Florida Libraries. The UCF graphic clearly illustrates, at an institutional level, the services currently available, services not yet offered, and the links between these services. Again, I really like this way of thinking through support for research.

I do have two concerns about relying solely on this model. First, it puts a lot of focus on a traditional research process. Even though there are new elements, such as data management, this model doesn't directly address alternative forms of scholarship, or the types of support which might be needed, such as video production, digital humanities expertise, GIS services, makerspaces, etc. My second concern is that this model is too utilitarian to sell. The model likely makes sense to a provost or head of research. And if these leaders have the pockets to fully fund the project, maybe this is enough. If, however, a library needs donor or legislator support to make the research commons a reality, this model will likely fall short. It is practical, but lacks a theoretical, and more to the point, an inspirational angle.

This is where I see Johnson's book helping us make the case. I think we need to talk about the research library as a suite of spaces, services, and programs which serves as a platform for innovation. The RC should bring together a diverse mix of expertise, a variety of perspectives, to create the "weak ties" (Granovetter, 1973) that help ideas spread and recombine in a network. The RC should be a space that serves as an incubator for new networks. The RC should be a combination of spaces which is the right mix to find the "liquid" state between the inert solid (librarians hidden away behind office walls) and the chaos of a gas (welding torches and drills next door to the special collections reading room, perhaps?). The RC should be an interdisciplinary coral reef, a city of academic subcultures, an ever widening web of connections. The RC should foster the "gradual but relentless probing of the adjacent possible, each new innovation opening up new paths to explore" (Johnson, p. 33). The RC should be "a  world where a diverse mix of distinct professions and passions overlap...where exaptations thrive" (p. 162).

If we revisit the structural research lifecycle model in light of Johnson's text, what jumps out at me is how the lifecycle privileges the status quo. It assumes the library plays a servant role, injecting support into an existing and rather static academic dialog. The focus is on the researcher(s), not on the conversation; on saving the time of the researcher (yes, a fundamental library value), but failing to assert a library role facilitating new conversations between new partners. This is the opportunity of the research commons -- creating spaces, services, and programs that draw in expertise from many fields, and create the collisions of ideas that, on occasion, shift paradigms and create something entirely new.


Works cited:

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380.

Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: The natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead Books.

Research Commons Task Force. (2013). Research Commons Task Force Findings and Recommendations. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Libraries. Retrieved from http://go.osu.edu/ResearchCommonsReport

University of Central Florida Libraries Research Lifecycle Committee. (2012). The research lifecycle at UCF. University of Central Florida Libraries. Retrieved from http://library.ucf.edu/ScholarlyCommunication/ResearchLifecycleUCF.php 

 

Makerspace as Part of a Research Commons?

Each year the Electronic Library at Baylor sponsors a round of information sessions based on the EDUCAUSE 7 Things series. Yesterday I participated in a session on "makerspaces," led by David Burns. The discussion led me to thinking (and rambling, I'm afraid) about the possible connection between the makerspace concept and the "research commons" idea that I'm working to define for the Baylor Libraries.
The conversation brought to mind Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). Gardner challenges the unitary intelligence model implied by an I.Q. test or the SAT with at least seven recognizable "intelligences": musical, bodily/kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal.While critics argue that Gardner's theory lacks rigor, and that what he labels "intelligences" might be more accurately described as "abilities," the theory has nevertheless been influential in education circles. For me, in this instance, it provides a way of articulating what struck me during yesterday's presentation.
Many of the examples David shared involved highly tactile activities, with a corresponding bias (in a good way) toward Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence. There also tended to be many proto-engineers in the spaces, hinting in my mind toward support for Logical-Mathematical and Spatial intelligences. We also observed that the orientation of the workspaces, and one explicit intent of those building the spaces, was to bring people together in collaborations, promoting Interpersonal intelligence.
It is my belief that the academic libraries overarching purpose is to provide those pieces of infrastructure that directly support the academic mission of the institution (teaching, learning, research) and which are better held in common than parceled out to or customized for the various colleges, schools and department. In the past this meant, at a most basic level, buying and storing books and journals. As we seek to redefine our roles in this online/hybrid course, hybrid collection, MOOC-hype, and student-amenities warfare era, we need to step back and reflect on this larger purpose. Where are the gaps in the academic infrastructure of the modern academy? What strengths do we have that align with solutions for these gaps? Where might we have a perspective useful for shaping the future of higher education? What do we lack in our skills and orientation that keep us from filling these gaps successfully?
This brings me back to Gardner, MI, makerspaces, and the research commons. The research commons, at least as I'm thinking about it now, is about shifting our energies from a rather intense focus on the perceived needs of undergraduates (and a bias toward support for active, group learning modalities),  and toward greater attention toward faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduates doing research, with a more nuanced and diverse approach to development of spaces for discovery. Most of my thinking along these lines has been leaning toward spaces for quiet reflection, small group discussion, and serendipitous, interdisciplinary encounters. What I realized yesterday, and as I've tried to unpack my reaction to the makerspace presentation, is that my research commons ideas have been fairly one-dimensional. For all of my excitement about a "revolutionary" space and suite of services, the outline in my head has been rooted in a traditional library orientation toward support for linguistic intelligences, with perhaps a bit of logical-mathematical and interpersonal thrown in.
What if we conceived of a space designed to nurture all of the intelligences, and to bring those with different strengths into contact and collaboration with one another? What if, in addition to a floor plan which moves from quiet on one side to active on the other, we overlay a set of services which intentionally nurture the full set of intelligences in Gardner's MI theory? What if a makerspace (or several such spaces) was part of this research commons?
I see at least three positive outcomes from this model. First, on a practical level, I think this brings interest (and potentially resources) from areas of the university which currently look on us as a pharmacist dispensing annual doses of electronic journals. Second, and more interestingly, the library may be able to make a real (perhaps even measurable) contribution to student retention and completion rates. This space could become a home for those who might be struggling with some of their traditional, linguistic/logical-mathematical courses but who have tremendous gifts in the other intelligences. The buzzword in the area of student retention and completion (OK, those are buzzwords, too) is engagement. The research commons could be the place a differently-gifted student becomes truly engaged in her educational process. Finally, this intentional diversity in purpose, aiming to nurture a range of intelligences, has a greater chance of attracting an intellectually diverse set of students and faculty, and creating the kinds of serendipitous collisions which lead to break-through ideas (more on serendipity, "collisions," and my debt to Steven Johnson in a later post).
It seems I'm rambling again, so I'll stop. I would like to know what you think. What is the potential of the "makerspace" to broaden the reach and relevance of the academic library? Can Gardner's MI theory stimulate our thinking about the diversity of library services we should offer?