Library Innovation

This article reviews the most important trends of the year in academic libraries. These include delivering services, supporting student success, managing staff and physical spaces, embracing new technology, managing data, open access, AI, and critical librarianship.

Play is a powerful method of fostering creativity and innovation in organizations. As libraries confront a rapidly changing information landscape, the need for innovation in meeting user needs is paramount. Libraries can embrace organizational play as a means of stimulating employee creativity and developing innovative products and services. This article discusses the work-play dichotomy, the definition of play, and the Millennial generation’s attitude toward play. Several important characteristics of play are discussed, including time and space, transformation potential, safety, and intrinsic motivation. Various types of play activities are explored, and the psychological links that exist between play and creativity are examined. Several successful businesses have made bold moves to embrace organizational play. Examinations of Google, 37signals, IDEO, and Pixar Animation Studios provide lessons about the ways that play can be integrated into the library workplace. Finally, this article poses questions that should be answered by libraries wishing to foster a culture of innovation through play.

Blog post detailing innovative chatbot service and UJ's interest in implementing virtual reality and blockchain applications.

A photo gallery documenting the many ways that libraries can be creative. This is an inspiring and funny collection.

One end of the Studio features two high-definition blended laser projectors and a curved screen ideal for immersive presentations. The other end features a single high-definition projector optimized for standard instructional uses. Moveable walls with dry-erase whiteboard surfaces can be placed throughout the space for active learning, group work, and prototyping activities. Furniture and technology can be configured upon request in support of a variety of uses, including simulations, workshops, presentations, and installations

Kennedy Library's Creative Works department focuses on diverse ways of scholarly expression. Visual and digital resources are used to bring scholarship to life visually.

The Library Innovation Lab is a forward-looking group of thinkers and doers working at the intersection of libraries, technology, and law.

Five libraries earned this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Presidential Citation for Innovative International Library Projects. The winning projects include programs that offered online academic aid and games to college students during the pandemic; examined the significance of historic lighthouses and maritime history; established lifelines to senior citizens; and provided digital literacy kits to help combat social isolation.