Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rethinking Organizational Structures To Support Digital Innovation, Lindsey Wharton, Devin Soper

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This paper presents a vision for supporting the growth and development of innovative digital services in research libraries. While libraries have been undergoing digital transformation for decades, we have seen a flowering of new digital services in recent years, from research support services related to data and digital publishing to learning support services that seek to make our pedagogy more accessible, engaging, and suited to the needs of 21st-century learners. The question of how best to support these services structurally within an organization remains an open one, however, and there is little consistency in how this is accomplished across different …

Reckoning With Organizational Identity And Innovation In Research Libraries, Neil Romanosky

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Who or what an organization thinks it is—its sense of identity—greatly informs the choices it makes. Yet an organization’s identity, which provides coherence and stability, may constrain or enable an organization’s capacity for innovation, which at its core is about doing new or different things. This paper explores the dynamics of organizational identity and innovation through a qualitative study involving leaders from eleven U.S. and Canadian academic research libraries—organizations and a profession that are experiencing an abundance of change and identity threats. A major finding of this research is that the very process of scoping and defining innovation can enable …

Fostering Innovation In The Library's Experiential Studio, C. Jeffrey Belliston

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The paper focuses on the Harold B. Lee Library’s Experiential Studio, which is an interdisciplinary design space where students, faculty, and librarians from multiple colleges and departments can work together on solving compelling social problems. Many courses taught in the studio have employed design thinking processes to foster innovation and the studio itself is a product of design thinking with the most recent iteration having opened in January 2020. Some courses taught in the space since its inception in 2014 have been community collaborations—some local, some national, and some international. A local collaboration included working with the Lee Library to …

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions And The Impact Of Librarian Interventions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

At a large Midwestern university, librarians work closely with an annual undergraduate agricultural innovation competition to guide students through the process of conducting market research and assessing patentability. In 2018, the authors conducted an exploratory study using focus groups of students who had participated in that year’s competition in order to learn how students find and use information in a competition setting, to evaluate the impact of library support on the students’ success, and inform further assessment activities. Results showed that students used information from the library and from their own research, notably seeking out first-hand expertise, to practice evidence-based …

Inspiring Novel Application Of Technology And Self-Directed Learning In Library Makerspace, Dr Shirley Chiu-Wing Wong

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s mission is to nurture next generation of critical thinkers, effective communicators, innovative problem solver, and global citizens. Opened to all students in September 2017, the i-Space of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Library is designated to ignite students’ spirit of innovation and facilitate the development of self-directed learning.

The vision of the i-Space is to lower the barrier of entry of the latest technology for students of all disciplinary and inspire novel application in their disciplinary work. Students can explore different technologies, including 3D scanning, 3D printing, laser cutting, vinyl cutting, Virtual Reality, Internet of …

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

At a large university in the Midwestern United States, librarians work closely with an undergraduate agricultural innovation competition. Librarians serve as entrepreneurial information guides, providing business information instruction and consulting with student groups to mentor them through the innovation process. The competition, with a winning prize of $20,000, focuses on developing new products from soybeans to foster environmental stewardship and reduce reliance on petroleum. Competitions are a form of experiential learning, allowing students to fully experience the product design process and practice making evidence-based decisions. In order to progress through this competition, the students’ inventions must be shown to have …

Profile Interview With Sabine Brunswicker, Jia Lin Cheoh

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Jia Lin Cheoh is a third-year undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, working with support from a national fellowship award. She was an independent study student under Dr. Sabine Brunswicker, working on the Purdue IronHacks for the past two years. She enjoys guiding students and working as a software developer on the Purdue IronHacks platform (www.ironhacks.com) with Dr. Brunswicker in HONR 299 and TECH 499 on open data hacking. Her team contributed to multiple novel web applications developed by students from various backgrounds.

Creativity In Organizations: Antecedents And Outcomes Of Individual Creativity, Goran Calic

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation I set out to expand our collective understanding of creativity in organizations. I accomplish this through three related studies, each organized into independent chapters of this dissertation.

The first study explores how demands of organizations, particularly strategic contradictions faced by decision makers, affect creative processes and products. In this chapter I develop the theory of paradoxical creativity, which posits that creative discovery is a function of how strategic contradictions are perceived by decision-makers. The key insight of the theory of paradoxical creativity is that strategic contradictions have independent effects on the two stages of creative discovery (generation …

Innovation As Everyday Action: A Case Study Of Organizational Discourse And The Local Meaning Of Innovation, Jennifer C. Batra

Open Access Theses

This study describes and explicates the nuanced nature of commonly adopted buzzwords such as innovation by analyzing how innovation is defined and embedded structurally within a single organization. Working to uncover how the individual construction of a local definition of innovation within the global context of a quasi-academic organization changes as organizational priorities and practices evolve over time, I present the varied framings of innovation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, through two research phases (a) the definition phase and (b) the practice phase over the course of one year.

This thesis project is situated within a single Mid-Western …

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, And Users, Suzanne M. Ward, Robert S. Freeman, Judith M. Nixon

Purdue University Press Books

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users provides readers with a view of the changing and emerging roles of electronic books in higher education. The three main sections contain contributions by experts in the publisher/vendor arena, as well as by librarians who report on both the challenges of offering and managing e-books and on the issues surrounding patron use of e-books. The case study section offers perspectives from seven different sizes and types of libraries whose librarians describe innovative and thought-provoking projects involving e-books.

Read about perspectives on e-books from organizations as diverse as a commercial publisher and an association press. …

User Interface Design Evaluation For L-Thia Watershed Analysis Tool., Lakshya Garg, Larry Theller, Yichen Zhong

Purdue GIS Day

This project is a semester-long analysis of the user interface deign of the ABE web-Based Decision support tool "L-THIA Watershed Management System". The goal is to evaluate the components such as user inputs, logical flow, graphical display, navigation, operational feasibility and technical feasibility. The process includes comparison to the interface of other of other well-known online mapping web tools. The student team will be evaluating under GIS specialist Larry Theller (Purdue ABE) some other online watershed analysis tools. The result of this study will be incorporated in the next phase of tool development for L-thia and several other ABE web …

University Of The Future Colombia-Purdue Workshop Report, Suresh V. Garimella, David B. Janes, Liliana Gómez Díaz

PPRI Digital Library

The University of the Future Workshop, a joint Colombia-Purdue event, was held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, October 28-29, 2014. Participants included rectors and board members from six top universities in Colombia, along with executive directors of NGOs, government representatives from the U.S. and Colombia, and Purdue faculty and administrators. The workshop was focused on a dialog among participants on key programs and focuses that will allow universities to be responsive to the 21st century needs of the Americas.

This report is a summary of the workshop and is based on the contributions of all the participants. Key …

Innovation, Creativity And Meaning: Leading In The Information Age, Tomalee Doan

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Today’s fast pace global environment requires information professionals to be leaders keeping pace with user needs. Two academic research libraries share their work seeking to ensure and leverage the creativity in their organizations focusing on the most meaningful innovative opportunities. The premise is that usefulness and appropriateness is achieved through strategic alignment – thereby opening the door of opportunity for innovative products and services. The ability to seize the opportunity each group seeks to meet is due to the recognition by the organization of that alignment. And so, organizational perception, awareness and value all impact the successful implementation of creativity. …