At the 2010 Annual RLG Partnership Meeting, David Lewis (Dean of the IUPUI University Library) gave a talk entitled “Collections Futures”. I’ve followed David’s ideas since we crossed paths a few years ago; his ideas on applying Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theories to libraries ring true to me. This presentation is in part an update on his earlier work on this theme and an expansion to include new ideas from Clay Shirky and John Seely Brown.
With David Lewis’ permission and in keeping with the Creative Commons license he used to publish the work, I have synchronized his slides and the audio recording using Slideshare.net. That effort is embedded below and is available on the Slideshare site.
This is a preview of Slidecast of David Lewis’ “Collections Futures” Talk
. Read the full post (389 words, 3 images, 1:33 minutes estimated reading time) I really like Christensen‘s Theory of Disruptive Innovation (as he proposed in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma). It succinctly describes the challenges, if not the fate, of academic libraries as we navigate through changing expectations and fast-moving, turbulent technologies. In fact, I often find that in explaining my point-of-view on where libraries need to go that I draw the core graph of Christensen’s theory on napkins, whiteboards, hands — whatever I can find. Inevitably, with the enthusiasm for the topic and quick-moving hands, the lines don’t always match where they ought and that makes the concepts all that more difficult to explain.
This is a preview of Pocket-sized Graph of the Theory of Disruptive Innovation
. Read the full post (292 words, 1 image, 1:10 minutes estimated reading time) Tom Wilson, LITA past president and all-around insightful LITA Top Technology Trendster, posted a commentary to the “Where have all the programmers gone?” post that deserves top billing . Please read and digest it before coming back here. And it’s not late to the party at all, Tom — I believe it is only now just getting interesting.
This is a preview of Appreciating our Heritage while Embracing a Future
. Read the full post (819 words, 3:17 minutes estimated reading time) You may be wondering about the meaning behind the tagline for DLTJ:
We’re Disrupted, We’re Librarians, and We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore
If you’ll pardon the crude analogy, I’d like to borrow from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ On Death and Dying — the Five Stages of Grieving: “The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost.”
This is a preview of The Meaning Behind the Tagline
. Read the full post (460 words, 1:50 minutes estimated reading time) 
