Última alteração: 2018-07-05
Resumo
Libraries and Higher Education institutions worldwide are adapting to a changing environment where new technology-intensive approaches to teaching and learning are transforming the very nature of universities. And although creativity and innovation in academic library may still be occasionally challenging with a persistent myopic worldview perpetuating sameness and reutilization and minimizing the rate of radical change, nevertheless libraries flexible and adaptive by default are gradually transforming to alternative learning centres by adopting agile approaches towards user evolving needs and pursuing the radical collaborations, deconstruction and reorganization processes crucial to repositioning the library at the centre of ‘multiversity’, the appropriate interpretation of contemporary university on account of its increasingly diverse remit and function.
While Creative Knowledge-based Industries are becoming the subject of an important focus of attention around the world as governments begin to recognise the role of creativity as a key resource in driving innovation and promoting competitive advantage in a globalized economy, libraries are in the midst of an ongoing transition marked by their brokerage and facilitation old-mission-transcending transformation to multipurpose learning centres, creativity catalysts and innovation anchors within the organization by applying a pioneering spirit in developing innovative fusion-skilled people, collaboratively generating new ideas and technologies, enhancing scholar productivity and not just redesigning but also repurposing library spaces and practices.
Within this context and with our mindset on the widely acknowledged fact that research library central value is clearly creative, we considered there was a timely opportunity to examine Academic Library position within the Creative Industries system. Besides providing an overview of (1) the attention, weight and interpretation attributed to its characteristics , growth, creative intensity, value and content by different Creative Industries classification models that in the case of non-profit organisations is often underreported and underestimated, (2) its relationship with the Creative Industries realm as knowledge-intensive organization and valuable insights into community perspectives on the topic that would facilitate the articulation of targeted recommendations, this first explorative research is also envisioned as a first step to informing the process of formation of a special interest group that would develop the avenues of academic librarianship community response to this challenging area.
Following a literature review indicative of an existing research gap on the topic, we set off to complement our work by conducting an Library expert-oriented survey through distribution of a self-developed questionnaire aiming to record Library and Information Science community understanding of ways in which library creativity is supported within and beyond the Creative Industries.
Initial analysis of preliminary findings where Information Professionals, acknowledging a predominant moderate library creative intensity and indicating the lack of institutional support, information, HR skills and funding as top library creativity impediments, argue that academic libraries should definitely be part of the Creative Industries classification and that library developments hold great potential to upgrading its position in the Creative Industries rankings sometime in the future, suggests (1) the revision of current Creative Industries evaluation frameworks and classification inclusion criteria and (2) the need for a systematic leverage of library-generated practical, interdisciplinary, informal, applied, contextual new knowledge which could eventually lead to more value, growth, visibility and unimaginable partnerships for both the closely affiliated circle of students, faculty and staff and the broader global community.