Page 24 - Campus Technology, April/May 2017

LIBRARIES
studies program who are hired for a two-year contract. In addition to supporting their home departments, they work on special initiatives — interesting projects consisting of the “coolest ideas we think our organization should do but we don’t have the resources or staff time to do them,” Lynema explained. After the two-year stint, about six in 10 fellows end
4) Plan on “Making” Your Own Resources
While money and people with time are necessary for continued innovation, public universities aren’t exactly overflowing with either resource. Administration emphasizes that message frequently, said Lynema: “We don’t have the money. We don’t have the money to hire new people. We
Private donations made those acquisitions possible.
Third, the technology providers became major partners in innovation. They were excited to be part of something so remarkable, Lynema recounted. “We found that going big was better than going small when we wanted to get external support from the vendor community. That’s one of the many reasons that we went big with our technology vision with
Hunt Library.”
The challenge is that it’s tougher to engage vendors the
second time around, she added. “We’re not going to have as much of an influx of new money this time.” The companies “are all very interested in keeping their equipment in the building, because it’s a big name for them. But nobody has come forward and offered us anything yet. We’re trying to find the right way to spin ‘refresh.’ Refresh is not really a very exciting word for the vendors.”
5) Make Tech as Accessible as Possible
Once the “wow” factor has quieted down, it’s time to take stock of innovation, suggested Lynema, and figure out just what faculty and students are “actually doing” so that the “refresh work” will support their needs.
One intention is to figure out how to “open up the spaces more and make them easier to use.” Simplifying the technology stack may seem “like a weird direction when you’re talking about innovation,” Lynema acknowledged. But doing so will
“Sometimes you’re going to try things that fail, and if your staff get in a lot of trouble for having ideas that fail, that’s not really going to get you where you want to go.”
—Emily Lynema, North Carolina State University
don’t have the money to pay for some piece of new technology. Nobody has the money. You have to make the money.”
up staying as permanent employees.
As is the nature of new things, not everything works out, of
course. Therefore, the culture must be forgiving of failure, she added. “That’s the other side of innovation. Sometimes you’re going to try things that fail, and if your staff get in a lot of trouble for having ideas that fail, that’s not really going to get you where you want to go.”
When the ideas work, however, the libraries also try to find ways to reward people. That’s hardly ever with pay raises: “We’re a state organization; that’s not so easy to do,” she observed. But innovative people are also turned on by “letting them do what they want, giving them more responsibility, giving them student workers — things like that.”
Lynema interprets that to mean a lot of things. First, when there’s something new you want to do, you have to decide on something else you’re “not going to do.” At Hunt, for example, the 270-degree projection space probably won’t be changed up. But Lynema might try to introduce virtual reality controls into that space so that people can have a 3D social VR experience. Even there, she may try to get away with “less expensive projectors” or “take another space where we’ve gone to a much more immersive visualization and put something less expensive in
there” to leave more money for another project.
Second, you have to assume innovation will require private fundraising. Lynema points to the example of Hunt’s “expensive” furniture: The campus couldn’t buy that, she said.
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | April/May 2017