Community Engagement and Makerspace

Chrissy Klenke, MSLIS, and Tod Colegrove, Ph.D., MSLISDeLaMare Science & Engineering Library

University of Nevada, Reno

Presentation at Internet Librarian 2013 conference, Monterey CAOctober 28, 2013

“How can we engage with the community of the library?”

ies!

connectattract

become involved

Communities as “patrons”?

Image credit: Natasha Starkell . GoalEurope weblog, September 8, 2011.Retrieved from http://goaleurope.com/2011/11/08/crowdsourcing-innovation-outsourcing-eastern-europe-venture-capital-hungary-startup-cee-hungarian-crowdsourcer-skawa-boasts-a-crowd-of-17-000-workers-launches-website-translation-service-easyling/

Or individuals?

Image licensed Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic by cnystrom. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/36614889@N00/11357463/

Time to get personal.

Superpower #1: connecting with individuals - one person at a time.

“What good is connecting/engaging with just one person?”

432,430 friendship relations.1 person, 3 degrees of separation:

Image credit: Jeffrey Heer, Vizster Project. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://whyfiles.org/2009/social-network/

One connection leads to another…

Image credit: Calzadilla, A. (2012). Anatomy of a social network. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://www.trulia.com/blog/angel_calzadilla/2012/06/anatomy_of_a_social_network

Building trust.

“Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement. Trust isn’t a grand gesture – it’s a growing marble collection.”1

1 Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live. New York, NY: Gotham Books Image credit: Hernandez, J. (2013). Bicycles and Blueberries weblog. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://bicyclesandblueberries.wordpress.com/

“Do your eyes light up?”2

2 Maya Angelou. Attributed by Sara on the weblog The Good, retrieved 10/2013 from http://thegood2012.blogspot.com/2012/05/do-your-eyes-light-up.html Image credit: Veronica Samuels. Retrieved 10/2013 from Jersey Mom’s Blog at http://jerseymomsblog.com/2010/10/what-makes-your-childs-eyes-light-up/

Simple things build trust3:• Active care. Don’t wait to be asked.• Build rapport. Many ways to create: being

visible/nearby, using their name, encouraging…• Reliability. Deliver on your promises.• Similarity. We trust people who are like us.• Teasing. Testing and showing trust.• Evidence. Social Proof.

Note: rules, agreements, monitoring, and so on, are trust substitutes. Use with caution.

3Derived from Straker, D. (2013), changingminds.org: supporting materials retrieved 10/2013 from http://changingminds.org/explanations/trust/trust.htm

Trust is built up or eroded away slowly: one person at a time.

Superpower #2: Rapport. Reliability. Similarity.

“We trust people who are like us.”

Image credit: imgur r/QuotesPorn: “Being a geek…Simon Pegg”. Retrieved 10/2013 from http://imgur.com/DneS7

Little Boy “the device” exhibit:

Build rapport. Demonstrate similarity.

An afternoon outing on the Quad:

Deliver on your promises. Evidence – social proof.

“Would you be willing to let us…?”

Over 400 attended the opening of the month-long exhibit.

Rapport. Reliability. Similarity. Evidence.

WordCamp 2011 - over 100 participants. Students, faculty, and members of the

greater community.

“The library in 2020 will be ruled by geeks. In my happy vision for the

future, libraries are ruled by benign geek librarian overlords, and the world

is full of awesome.”

Houghton, S. (2013). Sara Houghton. In J. Janes (Ed.) Library 2020: Today’s Leading Library Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library. Scarecrow Press, Lanham:Maryland.