Creativity Jared Howland

It is my opinion that librarians are riding a lot of dead horses these days. For example, why do we continue to pay for the same content twice - once in print and once electronically? Why do we bother to check for duplicate call numbers? The patron knows what book she is looking for once she has a call number so it won't be confusing to her if she finds two books with the same call number on the spine. Or perhaps more radically, why do we still bother with call numbers at all? Why not just assign everything an accession number and let serendipitous discovery and leisurely browsing happen in the electronic catalog rather than the shelves. Those dead horses, however, are for another presentation. The point I am trying to make is that we must be creative if we are going to ditch these dead horses in time to save libraries. If we wait too long, university administrations will begin to see libraries as dead horses. So the question is, how do we foster this creativity? The answer, at least partially, comes from the fairly recent idea of design patterns. Are there any design pattern experts here today? Good, because I am probably going to butcher this. You'll be none the wiser. Christopher Alexander is an architect that noticed he was solving a similar set of problems over and over. He discovered that he could come up with a general solution to this set of problems so that he would not have to solve this problem in a new way every time he faced it. This has basically been expanded into the idea of design patterns. Christopher Alexander describes them this way:

Christopher Alexander “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem in such a way that you could use this solution a million times over without doing it the same way twice.” Christopher Alexander There are six elements in a good design pattern: http://www.43folders.com/2009/01/27/creativity-patterns

Design Patterns Name Conflict Resolution Use When Examples May Contain Many of you probably use design patterns every day and don't realize it. Here's one I use everyday as a parent. Merlin Mann, productivity and creativity expert, calls this his "You Pick" design pattern. http://www.43folders.com/2009/01/27/creativity-patterns

“You Pick” Name Conflict Resolution Use When Examples May Contain The conflict is: Parents have to make kids do things Kids hate being bossed around The resolution is: Let her choose an option for getting a task done not WHETHER the task will be done Use when: You want to help a child do something without causing drama Examples: Should we wear our red jammies or our teddy bear jammies? Do you want a quick bath or a long bath? Do you want broccoli or spinach with your dinner? May contain: Bedtime ritual Reading together Dinner time Bath time http://www.43folders.com/2009/01/27/creativity-patterns

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