Informed systems genesis

Abstract

Insights from organizational leadership experiences emphasize the critical importance of activating sustainable relationships among information technology learning. With that aim, selected literature associated history explore themes that connect people ideas through using information to learn using technology for learning. High-level concepts from antecedent thought sympathetic to systems design and design thinking, organizational leadership and shared leadership, organizational learning and knowledge creation, and action research and evidence-based ­decision-making situate workplace enactment of Informed Systems. Within this rich professional context, essential learning organization design elements activate and sustain interactions between individuals and information to produce rich information experiences within intentional learning environments.

Keywords

Participatory design

Participatory action research

Systems design

Soft systems methodology

Informed learning

Relational information literacy

Organizational learning

Organizational leadership.

2.1 A lifelong inquiry

"How can we design robust organizations that anticipate unprecedented user expectations and enable nimble employee responsiveness within a complex and disrupted ecosystem?" This question has engaged my attention for more than three decades, as I earned my doctoral degree and "moved up the career ladder" to assume increasingly influential leadership roles and organizational responsibilities. What was initially mere intellectual curiosity assumed a real urgency, as-"in the eye of the storm"-I increasingly experienced, full force, the turbulence necessitating re-vision and re-invention of library services, collections, and facilities. In addition, "lessons learned" from Cal Poly leadership experiences emphasize the critical importance of activating sustainable relationships among information, technology, and learning. In response, a more specific question emerged: "How might organizational leadership enable systems design processes and enact workplace learning practices?"

This inquiry continues to direct my professional research and practice. Therefore, the following chapter explores themes that connect people and ideas through using information to learn and using technology for learning. Insights from antecedent literatures sympathetic to these fundamental premises encompass systems design and design thinking, organizational leadership and shared leadership, organizational learning and knowledge creation, and action research and evidence-based decision-making, which together situate and enable workplace enactment of Informed Systems.

Selected publication highlights acknowledge that academic library organizations are living ecosystems that can adapt, change, and innovate to remain relevant to higher education constituencies and institutions. This "appreciative setting" reflects confidence that, as information and education professionals, we can learn to interact productively with other interrelated systems, including academic publishers, public policy makers, information technology experts, and more, beyond our organizational borders. Readiness depends on continuous review, refinement, and renewal of workplace knowledge to ensure organizations poised for action amidst disrupted "ecologies" (Garcia-Marco, 2011) that affect our traditional information management and knowledge transfer roles.

Furthermore, an action orientation-to improve local situations and professional practices-requires cultural workplace values and organizational structures that promote the necessary relationships for connecting information, learning, and technology. Such enabling systems infrastructure encourages information exchange and knowledge creation. At the intersection of these elements, "informed learning" occurs.

2.2 Organizational context

Organizational redesign initiatives are fueled by the recognition that "library services in higher education will continue to be crucial to the core processes of learning, teaching, and research as long as the key library structures, processes, services, and staff roles evolve to accommodate epochal changes occurring in publishing and communications" (Wawrzaszek & Wedaman, 2008). In response, library staff members must transition from "their inherited position as the mediators of a print-focused, highly controlled environment to become collaborators in a multimedia rich, user-empowered, disintermediated free-for-all where their value will be proven only by demonstrably improving outcomes in learning, teaching, and research" (Wawrzaszek & Wedaman, 2008). In so doing, we can survive-and even flourish-in the Digital Age by inventing new ways of expressing libraries' distinctive advantages, customized to local conditions and circumstances.

The traditional mission of academic libraries has been to select, collect, and preserve information and to facilitate access to and use of this information. Until fairly recently, this mission has largely been expressed in a print-centered world, where the book is a universally recognized container of data and information. In a print world, local collections are vitally important: books and journals on the shelf provide the most effective access to information; they are discovered and obtained much more easily than resources held by other institutions; and the number of items owned is an appropriate measure of library value and institutional status. It follows that in this local and print-based context, libraries were revered, specialized, stable organizations with unquestioned importance on campus-in many instances, at the heart of the campus both figuratively and literally. The librarian acted as mediator to the collections of information through classification, reference, instruction, and access services. In this traditional environment, library work was, by and large, consistent and unchanging, governed by well-organized professional principles and practices appropriately fulfilled through an entrenched organizational hierarchy.

Into this orderly and ordered world came digitized art, music, and film; online journals and e-books; Web sites and blogs; open access and social media-all of which have dramatically changed expectations and experiences. Formats, creators, and publishers continue to rapidly proliferate, irrevocably altering and, ultimately, fragmenting traditional knowledge creation practices for enabling quality, linkage, and access (Smart, 2014). Information is now ubiquitous and global, permitting information consumers to search and find independently, eroding the need for librarians' traditional mediation services. Instead, individuals now expect to seamlessly experience information discovery, evaluation, selection, and creation. The full continuum of researchers- from novice to expert-express impatience with disaggregated services reflected in libraries' traditionally separate functions of evaluating, selecting, classifying, consulting, instructing, housing, and circulating.

Meanwhile, knowledge continues to grow exponentially each year while long standing relationships among libraries, publishers, and service providers (vendors) have been disrupted by emergent technological advances and scholarship practices, disallowing continuance of "how we've always done things here" while simultaneously creating unforeseen opportunities for "working together" across the ecosystem (Collins, Somerville, Pelsinsky, & Wood, 2013; Somerville & Conrad, 2013, 2014; Somerville, Schader, & Sack, 2012). Of this situation, one visionary has said: "The structures and practices of libraries will no more withstand the technological changes we are facing than the scribal culture withstood the changes brought on by the printing press. Change will not be instantaneous, but it will be relentless" (Lewis, 2007a). In other words, "real change requires real change. Incremental adjustments at the margins will not suffice; rather, alterations in fundamental practice will be needed" (Lewis, 2007b). This necessarily requires "an organizational culture that values learning and is willing to experiment even when success is not assured" (Lewis, 2007c).

2.3 Experiential antecedents

My response to contemporary challenges and unprecedented opportunities for academic libraries was indelibly influenced by experiences overseas during a Fulbright Scholar residency at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science in Borås in 1991. During that exchange, I was introduced to Scandinavian style participatory design and decision-making during a very formative period of my professional life. I had recently completed my doctoral dissertation, which suggested that culturally diverse learners could build upon what they knew about knowledge creation through their everyday information experiences as they explored the scholarly ecosystem for disciplinary knowledge (Huston, 1989). The Fulbright experience in Scandinavia permitted me to build on these democratic values through developing participative engagement and social learning strategies in workplace settings.

As my Swedish colleague Anita Mirijamdotter once...