When people ask me what inspired my startup thinking I point to Paul Stamatiou. He was an undergrad at Georgia Tech when I was there and I started following his blog as part of my preemptive reference experiment. Wow, 2005 was so long ago!
I dug up this old post of mine from 2008 chronicling Paul’s all-nighter in the library. What was the paper topic? Twitter. Maybe he was destined to work there…
Here is a quick interview on growth, startups, and the Web. Follow him @stammy
What have you been up to? Tell me about your career…
I’m a fan of Shark Tank. I’ve learned a lot from watching the panel evaluate business prospects. Thanks for making the show exciting and educational.
I wanted to share a note regarding your recent post Will Your College Go Out Of Business Before Your Graduate? There are a lot of conversations right now about where higher education is heading. I appreciate your focus on the business model aspect. As a father myself, the affordability of education is definitely on my mind too.
I’m writing because of a comment you made questioning why anyone would construct new libraries. Today, libraries are some of the busiest buildings on campuses across the country. As more and more information migrates to online platforms, library spaces are transforming into knowledge or content creation centers. They are hubs for…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the downfall of Blockbuster and Atari. Both companies are in the news because of financial collapse. Can you believe that Blockbuster was once a $6 billion company? And Atari had the jump on everyone with regards to consoles and games. I spent countless hours playing Pitfall! and never beat it. Today I don’t even own a game console– everything I play is on my phone or iPad.
Articles about why they fell apart all point to failure to innovate despite knowing that change was necessary. This quote sums it up:
“Blockbuster continued to see itself as a provider of movie and game rentals rather than a distributor of entertainment. By locking itself into this narrow view, they ignored the innovations happening around them and believed that people wanted to come into the store and talk to their staff, get recommendations, and make their…
I saw that there was a session at midwinter talking about focus groups. Since I won’t be there I wanted to take a few minutes and share my thoughts. I don’t have the original announcement, but I was disappointed with the phrasing. It asked something like are focus groups effective? I would prefer a conversation around how to use focus groups effectively.
I have found thematic conversations with various user (and non-user) segments to be an important component of my discovery strategy. Focus groups often get knocked because of three main things: loud people dominate the discussion, people tend to tell you what they think you want to hear, and people can’t imagine breakthrough change. Those are all legit criticisms, however, if you plan according you can neutralize those issues.
Happy 2013. I’ve been intrigued by William Easterly’s searchers/planners philosophy. Here is a good summary:
The searcher admits that he or she doesn’t have the answer in advance and he or she takes responsibility for decisions that are made. The searcher conforms to local conditions and searches for local solutions. (UUB)
The planner tends to overgeneralize and makes assumptions about how things should be before taking unique conditions into account.
I was struck by a dissenting view on the value of 3D printers in libraries. Anytime someone use phrases like mission creep or mission critical to try and squash new ideas then I know they are stuck in functional fixedness. In this view, the role and operation of libraries fits into a nicely defined box and trying to rearrange (or introduce new) components in the box is a challenge because it doesn’t match…
I wanted to share a quick post before we jump into the holidays.
Our leadership group has been talking a lot about change—particularly managing change or guiding change. Like most libraries we have a lot of things in motion; change is constant, not just a transition and then it’s done.
I’ve worked at a number of different libraries and it has been interesting to see how individuals react to change. Take for example demand-driven acquisition. Some people are very opposed to this model while others welcome it. This is a polarizing issue because it shifts control of collection development and actually starts to redefine what a library collection is and why it exists. But I’m getting off topic.
Two familiar models came up in our discussions this week:
I’m thrilled and honored to be have been selected as one of the Invited Papers for ACRL 2013. This isn’t something I applied for so the committee must read this blog. It would be easy to simply repackage startup or R&D and present a modified version of those papers—but what’s the fun in that? I’m planning to build off of the disruptive thinking theme and deliver something a little more compact.
I’m obsessed with J.W. Getzels right now and I want to honor his work. One of his core ideas went something like this:
There is a lot of information out there about how we solve problems, but very little related to how we discover, invent, pose, or formulate problems. From: “The Problem of the Problem”
The paper I’m writing is based on that. I’m calling it: The Art of Problem Discovery.
It’s due Feb 18 so not a lot of time. But that’s what…
It’s an interesting visual showing how an extended slinky hovers in midair when dropped. The dramatic demonstration is followed by the scientific explanation. What’s cool about the video is that the researcher shows the raw model on the computer and talks about the experiment, but it’s the intro that grabs your attention. The demo is intriguing and compels you into wanted to learn more. It’s Matrix stuff!
Along with the video there is also a link to the pre-print of the paper providing everyone with open access to the scholarly material. It’s a great way to promote a paper.
The video has over one million views and over nine hundred comments. Granted most of the comments are silly, but the video was effective in getting people thinking and talking about…
Last week I heard Siva Vaidhyanathan speak about the googleization of everything. This post isn’t really about that. While I think he’s a great presenter and a fine writer — we live on different ends of the spectrum: he fears Google, I love Google. When I read his book last Spring I found myself disagreeing with him page after page. I’m more in favor of the In The Plex version of Google. But that’s a topic for another day…
Something Siva said though really stuck with me. This is totally paraphrasing but it goes like this:
The digital divide was initially about the have and have-nots related to web and technology access. That is shifting— now the divide is about those who understand the data being collected and who know how to manipulate that system vs. those who are unaware of this process and who are simply objects being used.
CORE functions and services are foundational programs, processes, and services that are executed by library faculty and staff. They currently exist as mature program offerings. Examples are: reference, circulation, instruction, cataloging, etc. Core functions and services are managed and carried out by existing library departments.
HUBS are organizational units consisting of library faculty and staff working together on emerging themes of strategic importance.
Hubs work in a number of ways:
1) as an ‘R&D lab’ to explore, imagine, and brainstorm new roles and activities for the Libraries and deeper…
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Brian Mathews
is Associate Dean for Learning & Outreach at Virginia Tech. This blog is about designing better user experiences and the pursuit of use-sensitive libraries.
In his new book, Brian Mathews speaks directly to the academic library practitioner. The guiding principle, that marketing should focus on the lifestyle of the user, showcases how the library fits within the daily life of students.
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