I'm thrilled to welcome to this presentation Heather Braum, who is the digital and technical services librarian and many other things, she wears many hats and does many great things at the northeast library Kansas system, a blogger and was awarded the 2010 Kansas library association new professional of the year, which is mind boggling to me, because already Heather has made a huge impact on our profession and we're thrilled to have her here presenting today. Welcome, Heather. And I'm going to go ahead and pass the ball over to you. >> Thank you, Jennifer. Before I get started, I want to apologize in advance. I'm getting over a long cold and may go into a coughing fit through this. Hopefully that won't happen, but if it does, and you suddenly lose me. Don't panic, I just hit the mute button to get through that and I will be right back. Hopefully we will get through this without that happening. Good morning from I guess now it is good afternoon, since it is afternoon, from Lawrence, Kansas. I am very happy to be here after a long conversation where Jennifer over the last several months trying to get something put together to speak to you all. A quick disclaimer before I begin. I am not an expert on this topic. This is more just kind of a survey looking at innovation, kind of over the top, on the surface level. I don't have a magic solution for you guys to innovate, but I hope that I look at a lot of different examples, a few methods that the real experts that have put out there that can give you some methods for getting some innovation done in your library. Innovation is a very big buzz word right now in really culture in general, not just the library community. You see it everywhere. It is -- data that goes by, that I don't see innovation mentioned 10, 20 times in a day. In some ways, it is not just the buzz word, it is becoming almost a cliche and overused, but I think it is an important thing to think about as our profession is transforming so much. As we begin, what is innovation? What does the dictionary say? It says something new or different or a INT -- introduction of new things or methods. I did not really find that definition to be helpful as I looked to this topic. I went to the people who I also ask for help looking for ideas, my colleagues. And what did they say? Different people said innovation is adding value. That it is the frosting. In fact, the colleague that said that said it with like vodka frosted cupcakes, it is not just a cupcake anymore, it is something very new. Not the original intent of the idea or object. Innovation is amazing, astonishing. You're free to explore, use, develop, question. I liked this one. Innovation is a twisted idea, a new approach that you feel like you should have come up with that changes the way that culture thinks or works. I think we can all think of ideas or creations or inventions that meet that definition. Standards or status quo -- it breaks everything that we have seen in the past. Focuses on a former function in a new way that is disruptive in a very good way. It is a twist on a simple concept. Does anybody else have a definition of innovation that didn't meet what I just shared? Anybody else? Share them in chat. Okay. I'm going to keep on talking while you share the ideas. I hope somebody else has another definition of innovation that is not shared. I hope you see through all of the different definitions, there is lots of different ways that you can define innovation. There is not a secret formula for how it happens or what it is. It is a lot of different ways of looking at things in new ways and other things. Who can innovate? That is a question I hear a lot. Innovative libraries are only those big libraries or they have a lot of funding or staff. Innovation can happen at any type of library from the smallest to the largest. In fact, I hope I don't insert my foot in my mouth here, but I think in some ways working with smaller libraries here in Kansas, I see a lot of innovation happening in the smaller libraries more easily than a large library because they're usually one or two people and they throw things up on the wall to see if they work. Yeah, they may fail. But they can try and try, larger institutions, you may have to go through committees or lots of planning or long process before you can try a new idea. Really anyone can innovate. A lot of innovative organizations out there. I would like to to quickly look at some of those examples. I will go through the slides very quickly, but as you can see and as Jennifer has announced, the slides are available for download for you to look at later. I think you will see why I have selected some of these organizations as innovative. Of course, apple. 15 years ago apple was on its way out, it was dying. They basically redid the organization. Fluorescent iMACs, that was the beginning of Apple transforming society. That fluorescent iMAC plastic that got used came into society. Fluorescent desk accessories, trash cans, beds, lots of different things. Apple continued to innovate as the years have gone by. Amazon, of course. Libraries you may have a love/hate relationship with Amazon, but I think it is pretty safe to say that Amazon has innovated greatly over the last 20 years of the internet. Xerox used to be considered just a copy machine company. As we go digital, copy machines may not be needed as much and Xerox has transformed the organization to be much more than copy machines. A lot written about their innovation experiences out there. I believe one of the resources that is on the archived page links to a story about the Xerox innovation story. Zappos, of course. Yes, they're about shoes, but they're much, much more. And the culture of the organization of the Zappos company is always pointed to as a different way to work and a different way to organize information. So, I encourage you to check them out. Google, I don't think I need to say anything more about them. NASA, and the jet propulsion laboratory, you know, maybe they have -- NASA hasn't been that innovative over the last few years. They seem to be -- they try to figure out what is next for them, although the Mars curiosity rover is a pretty exciting project. When they went to the moon in the late '60s, it is hard to get much more innovative than that. Mars, I guess, is next. The Cheezburger Network, you know. We have to have our funny cat pictures. Mozilla foundation, you know, what would we do without firefox or thunderbird or some of the other products that THER -- that they create. They are very much a proponent of open source. Open Courseware, major universities that are so selective to get into, share course lectures, record internationally renown professors, and share that with the world for free. That is innovative and transform tran tran transformative. Library examples, Colorado, anythink, rebranded the library with the anythink concept. I encourage you to look at that organization. Mcallen public library in Texas. I will come back to this later as to why I'm pointing to this as an innovative organization. Ann Arbor District Library, doing a lot of transformative work. The summer reading program last year was an online game and they are doing a lot of great work and innovating in their community. The New York public library -- one of the coolest is this what's on the menu project, digitizing and transcribing menus from restaurants over, you know, years of New York City's existence, so that people can, you know, go back through the years and find different menus and see the history of New York City and the transforming nature there. The north Carolina state university library -- university libraries out there, they are always looked at as an innovative organization. They have been for the last several years. I will come back to them again in this presentation. And the Kinsley public library in Kansas is a very rural library in a very small town. And they are doing a lot of digitization projects themselves. They're winning a lot of grants to record their community's history. They have a carousel project, the one you see on the screen, Edwards County farmers rode their tractors to Washington to protest. A project with the Civil War and a lot of other great things going on at that library. Are there other innovative organizations? I know thinks have been flying by in chat. I'm curious to see if there are others out there that have not been mentioned already. I will give you guys a minute. Ever-note, I love ever-note. Webjunction, I would definitely agree with that. Libraries I think would be lost without them. They do a great job for us. I'm not familiar with that one, Debra, but I will look at it. >> Readers, yes, definitely. Radio station, that is really cool. These are great ideas being shared in chat. Innovative ideas. The internet, the idea that it was for everyone, that it was open, that it was free. That there was no one power that governed it. I think this captures the spirit of the internet and the innovation that it was. It was for everyone. Free Public Library, that is an innovative idea that you can walk into a building and have a card and check out books. Yes, your taxes pay for it, but you still can get a card and -- I love this picture, she collects as she traveled the country talking to libraries. Tries to get a library card there and collects them. Photography and perspective, photography came out, that we could capture a still image of a person and look at it later. When you get to perspective, I love this picture, mural on the wall of a photograph of children reading. That is a little girl live in the photo looking at -- trying to look at the book the kids are reading. If you look at perspective, that can change your view of an image or an idea. Think about that that way with innovation. Means. I had to throw this in. When I did this presentation, around the time of the Olympics and the Mars Rover and shortly after the Hillary texting memes around the world. You can look these up later, but these are two of my favorites. iPOD and the headphones, over 10 years, if you can imagine that. If you walk on any college campus, all you see are these white earbuds, in the kids' ears. That is all that they have. The idea that you can carry your music library in your pocket, that is innovative. Open source. The open web. Open access. Open educational resources, all of those, idea that information is accessible to everyone. That you share back to the community, you make your code or your resources or your research available to anybody regardless of if they can pay for it or not. That is innovative and I hope it continues. TED project, if you are not familiar with that, I highly recommend that you take a look. It is TED.com. It is -- there -- it stands for technology entertainment and design. Ideas are spreading. A lot of videos of very smart innovative people around the globe speaking about their ideas. Aids and video gamers. I believe it was in 2011 or 2012, maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong on this, but for years researchers have been trying to decode an enzyme related to the AIDS virus, and that it was important for AIDS research that they decode this enzyme. Someone created this game, it unpacks proteins. Video gamers took this enzyme that researchers had been studying for over a decade, and in 15 days, they decoded this enzyme with a game. That games can solve some of our world's biggest problems that people have been wrestling over for years, if games can do that in days -- that is innovative. It will be very interesting to see where the gaming culture can take us as we have kids who have gamed for 20, 30 years. You know, are moving up into society. What -- other than the fact that yes, they spent all of this time gaming, but some people see it as a waste of time or, you know, they're ruining their minds. Are there skills that this gaming has created that will help them change society. It will be interesting to see. Pumpkin trash bags. When someone mentioned this to me I took a step back and went what? Think about it. You collect leaves. You have to stick them in these ugly black trash bags that sit in your yard until the company comes and picks them up. Suddenly you have this cute decoration that the laser picked up. That was pretty need. N Navajo code talkers from World War II. Military looking for a way for their secrets not to be passed to the Japanese. The codes that they kept using were being broken and so they finally somehow came across with the Navajo code talkers, and used to, you know, hide the military secrets and it was never broken. There is a lot of examples on this particular slide. Mass media and entertainment, newspapers, radio, film, jazz, television, phone, online video, video games, social networks, all when they were creative were innovative brand new ideas that completely transformed how we see music or our entertainment or our communication. Inventions, of course, when they come out they are innovative. I learn this as I presented this the first time, it used to be before I was around, the way you open up a pop can was very dangerous because it was very sharp and until the pop cap came out, it was hard to open up a pop can. Zipper, you know, buttons can be sometimes a pain or not very attractive on clothing and so the zipper really changed things. Sticky notes. I don't know about you, but my desk is sometimes covered with them. What would I do without them. Silicone valley, entire part of our country that is, you know, that is where internet innovations have come out of and different parts of, you know, our country, United States and other countries pop up different technology centers silicone valley. The idea that you can have a robot vacuum your house. Airplane, 110 years ago, idea that you could fly through the air, that didn't exist and now what would we do without the plane. I mentioned this earlier, the color plastic invention and then the printing press. I am in Kansas. I have to mention the game of basketball. I am a die-hard KU fan. The game of basketball was invented to keep football players in shape during the winter. It started with a peach tree basket which is what you see on the screen. And now we know how the game is played today. And Lawrence, Kansas, would not be what it is without the game of basketball. The idea of unconferences, where you show up at an event, and nothing is planned. The people who attend completely plan the event, put it together and decide and have the sessions and everybody goes, has conversations around the different topics and it is a way to be able to quickly respond to new ideas, new inventions, that may not have existed until yesterday. And with regular conferences, sometimes you have to have proposals in a year or two in advance, and so it is hard to react to quickly-changing society. I want to put a quick plug for the make shop at the children's museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was able to see this last summer. While I was there, I had gone purposely to see the make shop. Similar to the maker spaces coming into libraries. But also an interesting story that fit perfectly into this presentation, when they decided to put in the makeshop at the children's museum, the museum began with an exhibit for Fred Rogers. For those of you who don't know, Fred Rogers was from Pittsburgh, and so the children's museum is very proud of that fact. And so they had this entire exhibit devoted to Fred that people had to walk through. They needed space so they decided that Fred had to go away. But they didn't want to lose this exhibit, the information that celebrated Fred. What they did, they took the exhibit apart and put it throughout the museum. And it actually became better because Fred was throughout the museum and people saw him throughout. All over the museum. And so it was even better than before when the exhibit was all together. The makeshop is space right at the beginning of the museum where kids and their parents and grandparents can come in and make things. The project that was there when I visited, they were putting together a city, and someone had made a library as part of the city. They were like, hey, this city doesn't have a library and it needs a library. The questions that they asked and the signage, I thought they were all very interesting. Apple mobile devices. Apple has been mentioned before, but I don't think I need to say much more about how innovative those have been in our lives. Community-built parks, imagined by the kids, not just adults, creating a park and putting it together. Many communities across the country -- there is a grant process and different architects that will work with communities to go into the elementary schools, work with the kids to design a park that they want and the kids will make drawings and the architects will take all of their ideas into consideration and the community comes together and builds the park the kids wanted. The picture on the screen, the kids put this park together. I know there is parks in other parts of Kansas like this, and I'm sure there are other examples in other states of these community-built parks imagined by the kids. What better way to have a park that the kids wanted, it is their idea. A princess castle in this particular park, a fire engine, and different tubes that the kids can play on among other things. Innovative examples in libraries, what you all really are looking for. Converting the old into the new. What this one is, Mcallen public library that I mentioned earlier. They took an old abandoned Wal-Mart building -- Wal-Mart had moved into a bigger facility across town -- they moved into this old abandoned Wal-Mart and turned it into a library with one floor, it was very long, very large, but they used the entire space of the library and they won a lot of major awards for their work there. I also want to make a plug for my own town. The library is going through a renovation project and they just moved into the old borders building that has been abandoned and closed since borders went out of business. They just opened yesterday in the new space, and they call it free borders. A running joke around town. It is converting the old into new. Tech central, Cleveland Public Library, a space they created, patrons, community members can come in and explore different parts of technology. My understanding is that this project is going to continue to expand. It will be very interesting to watch. Underground library, up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I couldn't find any pictures actually of the library, but above where the library is located, there is just this library signage, the picture that you see on the screen, and I don't quite know why this happened, but it happened. Maker space, idea, of course, there has been a lot of other webinars done about this topic, and so I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. If you have not heard about maker spaces, it is this idea where libraries are creating temporary or permanent space or even facilities outside of the library where people in the community can come in and use different tools, digital and physical to create things, robotics, 3-D printing gets mentioned a lot. But it is much more than 3-D printing. People are allowed to be able to create. They can work with experts in their areas. There is a lot of libraries starting to look at this and have these spaces. I would be happy to share more resources later if you have questions about what a maker space is and I can point you to them. Art galleries, a lot of libraries have this. I like this particular art gallery, run by teens in the library, in Hiawatha, Kansas, a couple of years ago. The library had an advisory -- they displayed the artwork they created. It happened. And I hope it happens again in other libraries. I thought this was a neat idea. Hiawatha is not a very large town. Three to 4,000 people. Again, like I said, this can happen even in small towns. Bookstore model, or going digital like we have heard mentioned in the last few days. A library in Texas I believe is opening without any books. Everything is going to be digital. It will be interesting to see these different models, if they work, you know, if it works for that community or doesn't work. Food and drink in the library. This still in some places is a very small idea, very small innovative idea. A lot of people don't allow food and drink. But when you do, people make themselves at home and suddenly are much more comfortable in your space, so it is something to think about. Library parking garage, this is Kansas City, Missouri, downtown branch. And this is the façade of their parking garage. A see this shared on Pinterest a lot, this same picture over and over again. People can't get past this is their parking garage, with a lot of the great pieces of literature. Branding, you know, your brand, what people think of when they think of your library. Some of those ideas can be innovative. I love, again, Cleveland public Library. I love their brand of the people's university. I wish my library could have that because that is what our libraries are because they are the people's university. Jonesboro Library in Arkansas, has had controversial in some ways billboards. This one got a lot of flak because apparently some people had not read the book. Still, even though it has been around for a long time, spoiler alert, page 596 -- they have some other ones out there that are pretty facetious, tongue and cheek. State university libraries has done a project, and go read up on it, where they turn a lab orientation into a library scavenger hunt using iPOD touches and evernote. The results are that usage is significantly up and the students got a lot out of the orientation, more than they ever had before in the traditional sense. The numbers -- I can't remember what they were now, but they were shocking. The great shift. I think they were like 40 to the 80% success rate was the orientation. That is a project worth looking at. This was shared in the prework. You could go watch this earlier. Another example of innovation was the -- lets me get the name pulled up here. The study like a scholar scholar, marketing video for the Brigham Young University Library. It is a SPOOF on one of the old spice commercials that they did in the library. I think I have seen this mentioned in chat a few times already. The Library incubator project. It is a new web site, Twitter account that is definitely worth following. They are sharing ideas around the globe. It is not just from the United States. I have seen stuff from Ireland, Scotland, other countries shared on their blog and Twitter account. Definitely something worth looking at. My Kansas library and the web project developed in 2006 by my organization, Northeast Kansas Library System, Library web presences at small libraries that did not have the technical expertise or staff time or the staffing to create, you know, professionally-looking web sites. They turned to word press, hosted word press sites and they libraries could create their web sites using word press. 150 to 200 active Kansas web sites using the my Kansas library branding and software today. Nebraska, Oregon, other states have had similar projects. I know Nebraska uses word press. I'm not sure what Oregon uses if the project is still in existence. The Koha, when it was developed, open source ILS. It was created to deal with the supposed Y2K bug that was coming, they needed a new system that was going to work in the new millennium. They developed in New Zealand, a Koha software, and 12, 13 years later it is around the globe and used by a lot of different libraries across the country. Again, I have to admit, including my own library system. Statewide courier service. A lot of states have this in place where they are able to transport interlibrary loan materials by way other than the mail service to get materials to patrons and libraries faster and cheaper and through buses, through delivery services, through vans and other things. Exhibits, traveling exhibits. Again, I'm going to talk about Kansas, because it is my state and what I'm much more familiar with. The way we work projects from the Smithsonian, currently traveling the state to, you know, different host sites will be the purple gear. You can see the legend on the map where they are going to actually host the full exhibits. Some of the partner sites are going to have their own localized exhibit for this project. They put together information from their own communities for this project. It is a very neat idea for this exhibit to travel. And in some cases, these exhibits are in libraries. Community education programs, where your library's programming is much more than just programs here and there throughout the month. It turns into classes. A lot of different libraries are doing this. A lot of people think of computer classes as one example. But there are libraries out there doing semester-long programs, classes, for looking at native grasses, learning musical instruments, learning how to repair equipment. This library here in Kansas is an example of that. Going on for almost a decade and has been highly successful. The classes, enrollment filled up quickly when the classes are announced. There are a lot of other libraries doing projects like this. Digital learning labs, similar to maker spaces, but digital learning labs tends to be places where kids in particular but also adults can come into a space and record things or create using the Adobe software, in which a lot of cases they can't afford on their own because it is so expensive. They can create movies. They can create podcasts. They can create slideshows. This is a picture of the you media lab at the Chicago Public Library. Programming, again, ideas that are innovative. How about having a live wolf at a program. The community library here in Kansas had a program like that and had to host it in the school gymnasium and had 700 people show up. Again, it is a smaller library. The person said wow, a real-life wolf. Ive know this took -- I know this took two years to get set up. It took a lot of communication. They finally got this program to go. The kids were not supposed to try to touch of the wolf, but as you can tell, it was very hard for them to not try. Music, music in the library. Performing, allowing people to come in and perform in the library. A lot of libraries are doing this now. Job help. Especially over the last five years, we have become a vital resource in communities. It is a place where people can come to gain new skills, to get work, resumes, apply for jobs and other things. Legos at the library. I'm sure this has been going on for awhile. But it seems to be getting a lot more attention, along with maker spaces where libraries are having Lego clubs, Lego robotics competitions. Different things. Kids of all ages including adults just come to Legos and, again, the library seems to be a place for them to come and, yeah, a lot of people have been doing Legos for awhile. Everybody loves them. Something therapeutic about sitting down and building anything you want with these blocks. It is very enjoyable. Language learning, where people can come into your library and learn a language. Learn English. Some library do offer mango, an online system for learning languages or literally have face-to-face classes, people learning English or another language that they wants to learn. Skyping an author. Skype the author project, instead of having an author come in physically and having to pay for them, you know, you just have them Skype in for a few minutes and they will do it. A lot of authors will do it for free or for small amounts. Human library, where you put together people with other people interested in learning things where they check out community members and have conversations or learn how to do something. And checking out cake pans, bikes, tools, fishing poles, and a lot of other different products that the library catalogs and keeps. And finally, this last one, last fall, last summer, a lot of burglaries going on in my local community, and the district attorney and the libraries in Douglas county got together and offered light bulbs to community members for free so everybody could keep their lights on to try to stop the burglaries from happening. Are there other innovative ideas? I'm sure they're all being shared in chat. And as you guys are sharing those, this is a time for questions that have come up that I can answer, Jennifer, if there is any that you want to share at this point. >> Jennifer: Excellent. Thank you so much Heather. A lot of innovative sharing on Twitter as well as loads and loads in chat. You have an innovative crowd here for sure. One question that I think would be great to touch on as we move through, there were two comments actually. One is about how do you create a culture of innovation with your staff? We know that some folks are in situations where the organization perhaps doesn't embrace innovation. There was someone on the call as a trustee and said that they have noticed oftentimes that there is a resistance in libraries to innovate. So -- and Beth actually asked if library leadership doesn't put innovation on the agenda, how do those of us on the ground make it happen without being labeled disruptive? So, I actually predicted that those questions would come up because I know that that is a reality for many of us. I would say just based on this webinar, make sure that they watch the webinar. Host a webinar viewing party with your staff and generate some discussion locally, but I know Heather has got some great ideas as well. >> Heather: I'm seeing other great ideas being shared in chat that I'm glad are being shared. I will come back to the questions. I want to go through what I have to say through the rest of the presentation because I think it gets at the heart of some of these questions but then I will come back to them at the very end, if that is okay. >> Jennifer: Absolutely. And I already see people sharing their suggestions, so, please continue to post to chat, and like I said, this is great brainstorm. We will be gleaning from this. If you have other resources and links to share, keep posting those as well. >> Heather: I'm going to go ahead and move forward then, Jennifer, and keep going. There are a lot of share qualities of innovation that are out there, and I have seen in chat being mentioned, you know, how do you create a culture of innovation among your staff? And some of it begins with the hiring process, but if you are already there, people are already there, how do you go ahead and get people like that? And in this retirement, I can't share this video that I -- that I do when I do this presentation live, but I will quickly describe it. I strongly encourage you to watch this video that was shared in the prework and shared here. Jennifer will put the link in chat in a second. This young man, Jack Andraka, from Maryland, he won the Intel science competition back in May. He first hit my radar because I saw the video of when he won the award. 15 years old, high schooler. A lot of very smart science people who don't tend to not all of the time show a lot of emotion. When he won, his face just lit up. And he ran down the aisle and he got up on stage and was jumping up and down like a five-year-old, like a little kid. Not this 15-year-old who had won a prestigious award, bowing down to the presenter. I dug a little further and I came across a TED talk that he gave. That is what this video is of him describing of the project that helped him win this award. What he did, 15 years old, again. You look at him and you think he is 12. He, you know, had family members, a friend, or somebody who passed away from pancreatic cancer, and which, when that cancer is caught, it is usually too late. A very low chance of you surviving that cancer. But if it is caught early, the chance of survival dramatically increases. And so, he through this whole process developed a test that is 100 times cheaper, 1,000 times more sensitive. I can't remember the statistics. But the numbers were astronomical on how much more sensitive, cheaper, faster, better this test was to detect pancreatic cancer and it was dead on every time. He developed this with a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. They talked about how it took him 200 people. He sent out letter after letter to researchers trying to find somebody's lab that he could work in. This researcher took a chance on this 15-year-old and developed this test. This test turned out to be not just transformATIVE for pancreatic cancer detection, but significance for other cancer detections, for chemotherapy success rates and a lot of different medical implications. Apparently he has done a lot of other innovative work and he is 15, 16, and what is he going to do throughout the rest of his life? The video, I hope you take the time to watch. It is about seven minutes long. It captured several different elements of innovation that need to be there, that I think those of you that are in resistant organizations that are trying to do things, if you do these things, maybe you can't transform your organization, but if you do these things in your day-to-day work, you can at least make a little bit of inroad. You can make a step further. And that is all you can do sometimes in those hard situations. But, you know, at least give it a try. And there are things that we all can -- we all do. Enthusiasm -- he made it personal. Jack made this project personal and I think we all do that with a lot of our work. We make our library work very personal. He was curious. How many of you are curious about what you are trying to do? Tenacious. He did not give up, he kept getting rejection letter after rejection letter. He did not give up. Those of you in hard situations, don't give up. Keep trying. Make you can't rock the boat, you can't be disruptive, but keep trying small things, and eventually stuff will erode away or you move on. That's reality. Some of it is just sheer luck. It just works. You throw something up on the wall and it works and a lot of the times it doesn't. You know, support, he did have support. It is harder admittedly if you don't have support to innovate, but, you know, find the support elsewhere. He was resolute. Again, he did not have to -- I just saw in chat someone said it -- it is very true and part of this. Caring, again, he -- Jack cared about this project, as many of us do. Problem solver. He saw a problem and went after it. Partnerships -- those are very important. I think you can see in a lot of the different innovative ideas that libraries and other organizations have done. They are not just working within the organization. They are going to the outside bringing other people in and making partners with other community members, other organizations to make things happen and also collaboration. And also failure is not the end. Don't give up. A -- never give up, never, ever give up. I will stop right there. Another video that I didn't share but it is a thought that we could probably share this resource. If you want inspiration for never giving up, watch the Espy award speech from 20 years ago, he talks about never, ever give up. Definitely something worth looking at. A quote that is always shared, I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. You are going to learn through your failure. Do not be afraid to fail. I think a lot of people can attest -- if they want to work -- through their failures and through their success. That is an important part of the innovation process. How do you start to innovate? Some of the ideas I will share, different methods out there for innovating. A lot of others out there. A lot of books out there written on the topic. Other speakers. These are ones that I wanted to share. One is called the five wise, Diana weaver, making me aware of this idea. A story from the Jefferson Memorial library -- sorry, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. They had a problem where there were a lot of birds pooping all over the memorial and it was becoming a problem. It was affecting tourists and becoming very annoying. Regardless of what they did they could not get rid of the birds. What they did, name the problem, the birds' pooping. They asked, why are they pooping? As they went back, they started to realize somehow that the birds were pooping because there was a particular spider -- there was a particular bug that came out a and mated when the lights came on at a certain time of the evening. That is when they mated. I am not making this up. Believe me. They kept asking why. They got an answer? They kept asking why. That is what this method is. So, the Jefferson Memorial staff, they turned on the lights on at a different hour, the bugs went away, spiders went away, and the birds stopped. Done. They could have tried to trap the birds, poison the birds, poison the spiders and they probably never would have gotten rid of it. Simply by turning the lights on at a different hour, they got rid of the problem, but they wouldn't have gotten to that answer if they had not continued to ask why. And so, part of the innovation process is as you create a project, as you are trying to solve a problem, you have to continue to ask why? And why that? Why is this happening? Why is that happening? And you will come back, you know, hopefully an answer that you never would have come up with if you hadn't used that method. Another idea is thinking like a start-up. This comes from Brian Matthews from Virginia. I believe it is Virginia tech. He says, one way of innovating -- and this is an older idea of his but I think it is still relevant -- one way to innovate, with a start-up, disruptive ideas. Innovation is messy. We have talked about that. There is failure at different levels. You have to be conditioned for constant change. Everything does always change with innovation. Culture, as we have talked about, as some of you have mentioned, it is an important part of this process. In order to push an organization forward, there has to be buy in at all levels and that is hard to get at. And I wish I had an answer for that. I think others have tried to answer that in chat. I don't have an easy button for changing your culture. I think there is other people out there who have spoken to that and who have tried, but ultimately all you can do yourself is try each day and sometimes you have to move on from that organization. That's all you really can do. I did like the we don't ask big enough questions idea from Brian's work. I think asking those questions, why is this happening? Why do we do this? Why do we have this program? Why do we have this service? Sometimes innovation is removing something from an organization. And those can be tough questions. Tough things to do. Ask yourself what business are you in? What is it that we do? Along the lines, I just read this yesterday, wire magazine, February issue, they have an article in there about crazy ideas on the horizon about Larry Page at Google, he said if you are not doing something crazy, you are doing the wrong thing. What business are we in? Libraries are in the service business, the idea business, the learning business, community-growth business. I think there are a lot of different ways to answer that question. With time, I'm going to keep going, but I know you have been sharing ideas in chat, where do you get ideas to innovate from? Who can you talk to? Who can you learn from? Your colleagues, always the greatest source of idea for innovations. Other librarians, paying attention to list serves, online social media networks, to journal articles, to conferences. Get ideas from the librarians across the globe. Other professions. Sometimes the greatest ideas come from not the library prof profession, but from other professions. Your community -- what does your community want to do, to move forward, to grow. TED, I mentioned this already, Brian Matthews work, his blog was a good one to follow. Looking at innovation. Heart of innovation blog. Library incubator again. A lot of cool ideas that get mentioned on there. Grants, funding is always a question that comes up with innovation. I have this great idea. I have no money to do it. Look to grants as a way to do that. Librarians can change the world. This was shared last fall at a conference. I thought it was a great idea. Not just employee volunteer board member. You don't merely catalog books -- you are the gateway of the -- people that come to our facility to find a fuel or spark. Part wizard, part genius, part explorer -- something to think about. Finally this last video. It is about entrepreneurs, but if you replace the word entrepreneurs with librarians, I think you will get hopefully a hopeful message as you continue your work this year. There is a lot of reading resources out there that we share on the blog. As we come to the end of the radioactive cat took over, I have to have my token cat picture. And this video, and, yes, that is the same cat. We are here at the end. Feel free to contact me. Different ways, and, Jennifer, are there any other questions? Any other questions as we wrap up? >> Jennifer: Thank you so much, Heather. There are questions that folks are asking of each other, certainly. I think, again, the folks that probably are still struggling are those that are trying to bring others on board. So, I would encourage people if you encountering barriers to things like have a Pinterest page or YouTube channel, to find the examples of these innovative libraries that are using these tools and present those in the way that you hope to use them. And being able to see the impact that some of these innovative ideas are having on the community, on the patrons themselves I think are a really great approach. But, you know, I was struck as your examples at the beginning. I remember when I was in grad school. Two years of grad school, how quickly the world had changed in 2005, in a two-year period. These innovations have come about so quickly and our role in the library, I believe, is to be a barometer of that innovation in our communities as it changes and we need to be a part of that conversation. So, in terms of being disruptive -- maybe disruptive is not the first word that you use in starting that conversation, but that struck me definitely as you went through those first examples. So, I just wanted to note that we will certainly glean from chat and chat will be available as a part of the archive. If folks have other additional questions, feel free to post those now. We will be wrapping up at the top of the hour, but the archive page itself has a comment field. If you think of things, perhaps, at the end of the day or as you move some of these ideas into your work, know that that conversation can continue, and, again, thank you to the folks that were providing some substantive tweets as well. I just love that Twitter can be a place for that conversation to continue as well. Heather, any last-minute comments or thoughts? I know that you have done an amazing job of multitasking with Twitter as well. You perhaps have seen other things come through. >> Heather: Thank you for having me and please feel free to contact me if you have more questions. I may not be able to answer them but I can point you to resources that hopefully will help keep on doing the work that you all are doing. >> Jennifer: Excellent. Thank you so much.