SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

March 30, 2017 by Gary Price

Knight Foundation Announces Nearly $1 Million in Funding for Five Projects Aimed at Advancing Innovation in Public Libraries

March 30, 2017 by Gary Price

From The Knight Foundation:

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today announced nearly $1 million in support to five projects aimed at advancing innovation in U.S. public libraries so they can better meet digital age information demands.
The new funding is informed by the foundation’s previous work with libraries, detailed in a report also released today that explores opportunities and challenges to innovation in libraries, and highlights lessons for the field.
“At a time of rising distrust of institutions, echo chambers and concerns about the accuracy of information, libraries are more essential to American democracy than ever before,” said John S. Bracken, Knight Foundation vice president for technology innovation. “But in an increasingly digital world, they need the resources, skills, people and practices to embrace new innovations and take on an ever-important role in informing the communities that they serve. The projects and research we’re supporting today aim to advance this goal.”
The projects receiving funding focus on libraries as essential to addressing information challenges and creating new opportunities for communities to engage with ideas and each other. They support the transformation of libraries as digital age community hubs addressing issues from measuring the success of library programming, to using technology tools to make library collections more accessible and open, to giving librarians access to the skills and resources they need to innovate and better support their patrons.
The projects receiving investments include:
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library | $250,000 | Charlotte, North Carolina: Supporting a design and visioning process for transforming the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library into a leading example of a 21st century urban library. The process will help the Main Library, which has not renovated in 30 years, better address the current and emerging information and education needs of the community by updating its public spaces and developing new partnerships, service delivery tools and staffing procedures. Library staff will engage design firm MACHINE to help craft the vision and hold workshops with city residents and others to get input from the community.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $250,000 | Cambridge, Massachusetts: Advancing innovation in public libraries through a residency program at the MIT Media Lab that will enable librarians and technologists to collaborate on projects. Librarians who participate in the program will spend two weeks at the Media Lab and Media Lab researchers will spend up to three months working at their partner library.
Peer 2 Peer University | $135,000 | Chicago: Expanding a program, including learning circles, that makes open online courses easier for people to access and complete by organizing in-person study groups for patrons in libraries. This project previously won funding through the 2015 Knight News Challenge on Libraries. New support will help scale the program, initially piloted in Chicago, to 9 new libraries, including: Boston Public Library (Massachusetts), Detroit Public Library (Michigan), Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (North Carolina), Multnomah County Library (Oregon), Pierce County Library (Washington), Providence Public Library (Rhode Island), Richland Library (South Carolina), San Jose Public Library (California), and Wichita Public Library (Kansas). In addition, Peer to Peer University will further develop the open-source learning circle toolkit, which supports a growing community of learning circle facilitators around the world.
Richland Library | $247,000 | Columbia, South Carolina: Developing a patron engagement tool to better measure attendance at library programs and understand the benefits that patrons receive from participation. By tracking attendance at programs, the library can more easily measure outcomes, recommend additional resources to patrons, and connect communities. Tools developed as part of the project will be shared with other libraries.
Southwest Harbor Public Library | $35,000 | Southwest Harbor, Maine: Making special collections from local libraries more accessible using data visualization, a technique that allows a user to view a database item, such as a photograph, while graphically seeing every other related item. Funding will help develop a visual relationships plugin for Omeka, an open source software solution from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The plugin will allow archivists to add relationship data so that database items are connected in ways that make it easy for users to discover related information.
New Report
Support for these projects is part of Knight Foundation’s efforts to strengthen the capacity of libraries to meet digital age demands. To this end, Knight released a report today, produced by MACHINE, titled “Developing Clarity: Innovating in Library Systems.”
Based on interviews from 25 leaders in the library community and other experts, the report explores the state of the field, identifying advantages and opportunities and innovation challenges, as well as the role of technology in library innovation. Importantly, it also provides libraries with a framework for developing an innovation agenda and defines the characteristics of innovation-ready urban libraries, including:
●      Clearly framed innovation problems: Library leadership, funders and staff understand the main problems, questions and challenges that are the focus of the system’s innovation efforts.
●      Patron focus: Patrons of innovation efforts have been identified (for example, new immigrants to a city who are unsure of how to best take advantage of the library), and the library engages in a process of understanding and elevating the patrons’ experience of the library system.
●      An identified innovation process: Libraries develop a clear approach to innovation and manage a pipeline of scheduled innovation projects.
●      Experienced innovation project leadership: Skilled project leaders guide less-experienced staff and partners through the process of innovation.
●      Technical proficiency and resource availability: Libraries are able to build and integrate technology and digital solutions into their offerings, in accordance with patron needs and preferences.
●      Deliberate storytelling and marketing: Those in charge of leading innovation craft compelling proposals for funding, and capture and share project stories to inspire staff and attract more investment.
●      Manage a strategic portfolio: Multiple, complementary projects happen at the same time, with incremental resources allocated across the portfolio of projects. And strategic decisions are made about what projects should scale, adjust or stop.

Direct to Full Text Report: “Developing Clarity: Innovating in Library Systems.”
32 pages; PDF. 2017-03-30_09-14-19

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, Funding, Interviews, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

A New EPUB Reader For E-Books From the Library of Congress Open Access Books Collection 

From a Library of Congress Blog Post: The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works ...

Panel Discussion Video Recording: "Internet Freedom: Information Communication, Accessibility and Archiving"

The panel discussion video recording embedded below from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) was recorded on February 1, 2023.  Description This is a discussion on censorship-resistance, web archiving and ensuring ...

RLUK Releases Community-Driven Toolkit for the Development and Delivery of Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs)

From RLUK (Research Libraries UK): The Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs) Toolkit is a resource for all collection-holding institutions, including libraries, archives, and museums, which are interested in setting up a VRR consultation ...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say; Senator Calls on Apple and Google...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say (via The Decoder) & Microsoft Teams gets an AI upgrade with OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 (via The Decoder) Resources ...

Library of Congress Opens New Web Archive Collection Documenting Protests Against Racism & Learn About LC's Black History...

From the Library of Congress (Full Text of Announcement): A new web archive collection from the Library of Congress documents the civil unrest sparked by the police murder of George ...

AI: arXiv Announces New Policy on ChatGPT and Similar Tools

From an arXiv Blog Post: The recent release of AI technology that generates new text has raised serious questions among the research community. For one, “Can ChatGPT be named an ...

ResearchGate and De Gruyter Announce a New Content Syndication Partnership

From a Joint Statement (via De Gruyter): ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and De Gruyter, an independent academic publisher, have today announced a content syndication partnership that will see ...

EveryLibrary Releases 2022 Annual Report; ARL: Celebrating Black History Month 2023 & More News Headlines

ARL: Celebrating Black History Month 2023 EveryLibrary Releases 2022 Annual Report ||| Full Text Report Germany: DFG Launches Cooperation with the OAPEN Foundation IFLA: Applications for Public Library of the ...

Ithaka S+R Releases "A*CENSUS II: Archives Administrators Survey" Findings

From an Ithaka S+R Blog Post by the Report’s Author, Makala Skinner:  On Tuesday, January 31, we published the A*CENSUS II Archives Administrators Survey findings. The Archives Administrator Survey Report is ...

“Food is a Right: Libraries and Food Justice" (A New White Paper From the Urban Libraries Council)

From the Urban Libraries Council (ULC): The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) announces today the release of its latest white paper, “Food is a Right: Libraries and Food Justice,” which addresses ...

Standards: W3C Re-Launched as a Public-Interest Non-Profit Organization; eLife’s New Model: Open for Submissions; & More News Headlines

Annual Report 2022: Highlights from the Data Curation Network arXiv Announces New Policy on ChatGPT and Similar Tools (via arXiv Blog) COPE in 2023 (via Committee on Publication Ethics) eLife’s ...

Journal Article: "A Free Toolkit to Foster Open Access Agreements"

The article linked to below was today published by Insights. Title A Free Toolkit to Foster Open Access Agreements Authors Alicia Wise Information Power Lorraine Estelle Information Power Source Insights 36 ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.