Today we had our site visit at the Delft Public Library (DOK), which was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. From the outside, it is not immediately obvious that the building is even a library. The word “open” is printed on the large glass windows that surround the first floor of the building. When we entered the library, it really still didn’t look like a library inside. Right inside is a cafe filled with students working at tables, a nice reception desk, a view of the auditorium and the book return slot. We were escorted upstairs to one of their many multi-purpose rooms only to find out that our original guest speaker had a dental emergency and wouldn’t be coming into work that day. Two other people took us on a tour of the library while we waited for another librarian to come in for the day to give us a presentation about the library.
The Delft Public Library is predominantly child centered and is designed to cater to children up to the age of 14. They moved to their current building in Delft in 2006. The stairs to the auditorium is filled with large blocks that have Dutch words printed on them that can be rearranged into different poems. The tour guide explained that the reason why they designed it this way was to engage the children coming to the library in something more than reading as a way for them to practice different skills. I know as a child, I don’t remember any library I went to having something so large and interactive for the children. The entire second floor of the library is dedicated solely to children with lots of toys, comfortable seating and space to run around in while they are looking for books.
For the larger community, the library includes a kitchen that allows passion chefs to come in and cook 25 meals from their own country for the public to buy. Parts of the first and second floors are dedicated to providing lots of seating for students to study or adults to complete other work. The tour guide told us that there was no expectation that you needed to buy something at the cafe next to the seating in order to use it. The library is simply meant to be an open place for members of the community to come and work. I think it is a rare occasion that we have come across any place outside of libraries in the Netherlands so far where you can simply go sit and work without purchasing anything, but in reality that is really no different than the cultural expectations in America. The library does also offer a wide selection for books for adults, but it is significantly less than you would expect when you think of a traditional library.
The Delft Public Library to me is an example of a library taking on a role that we don’t typically associate libraries with. Rather than just being a place to come, sit quietly and read books, it is a collaborative space meant to invite the community in. They offer food, coffee and places to work either independently or with others. In particular, having a library serve food, coffee and meals from a passion chef is something I would argue falls under the category of library innovation. Even the design of the outside of the building with its large glass windows that have the word “open” on them is supposed to signal more of a community space than what we traditionally think of as a library. I think that my experience at the Delft Public Library ties in well with what Eric, our speaker at Koninklijke Bibliotheek last week, talked about during his presentation. One of the biggest things that he wanted to leave us with was a reminder that some of the best innovation isn’t tied to how big or flashy a library is, and I think the Delft Public Library is a perfect example of what he was talking about.
After wrapping up our site visit at the Delft Public Library, a group of us stopped at Albert Heijn on the way back to the hotel to get something for lunch. We stayed in the breakfast room to eat and work on blogging with the hour we had before class was going to start. I think I managed to get a single blog post written, but as I was writing, I looked over and Talia had fallen asleep with her head on the table. Sometimes, blogging is really challenging. I also think maybe that was a sign that none of us have gotten enough sleep since this program has started!
Our class session started out with the final two presentations for Kelley’s book The 10 Faces of Innovation. The first innovator personality type that we discussed was the “Caregiver”. This is an innovator type that focuses on humanizing interaction, displays of empathy, extending relationships, demystifying experiences and providing a personalized and unique experience to those they interact with. They also opt for a show rather than tell mentality and value all opinions and any feedback they are given. In particular, the personalization of innovation for the individual or target was something I noted that could be really important in the innovation process.
In our activity, we had to decide which aspects of the caregiver were strongest and weakest for different site visits we had done. Our group was given the guest speaker at the University of Utrecht to analyze for the activity. For the strongest part of the “Caregiver” type in terms of her presentation, our group agreed that extending the relationship was a strong part. She offered her contact information at the end of the presentation, continued to converse with students about the topic over lunch after the presentation and invited us to attend a conference in Seattle that she would also be attending as a way to continue networking with other professionals in her field. In terms of a weakness, we chose displaying empathy because the presentation was solely focused on research and in general, when a question was asked she would direct us back to her research rather than allowing us to discuss some of the topics that we were interested in.
The second type of innovator we talked about during our class session was the “Storyteller”. This is someone who has the ability to connect with people on an emotional level to something through stories. A huge part of their innovator type is the ability to be authentic in their storytelling yet keep a focused purpose. They also have the ability to be listeners, gain the respect of the speaker, give perspective and help show passion for the innovation. In our activity, we discussed stories from our own lives of people who act as successful storytellers and how challenging storytelling can really be. In my opinion, I think it can be very rare in life to come across someone who is successful at embodying this innovator type but when they are successful they can be one of the most powerful innovator types.