The Innovative Dutch: Libraries, Universities, and Research Institutes in the Netherlands

This article focuses on research I did while in the Netherlands in Fall 2009 with the University of Washington, and is the featured item (cover story) in the March, 2010 issue of Searcher Magazine.  The article is full of videos that I contracted in advance or took with my iPhone during my research, pictures of amazing libraries, and observations on the great things the Dutch are doing in the information world, (think metal keyboards in a library).

 Searcher Magazine is offering a free HTML to the article. In my conclusion in the article I note:

"Sometimes having a large amount of ideas presented to an organization from “popcorn heads” (people who pop out several ideas without the responsibility of implementing the ideas) can be overwhelming. Leaders are managing dynamic, growing, evolving, organizations with limited resources and can’t implement every, or even many, of the ideas that are presented to the organization. The leaders must pick and choose what is possible. With this in mind, there are a few concepts that worked very well in the libraries I visited and could potentially yield great benefits to some libraries in the U.S. today:

• Implementation of a fee structure for public libraries.

• Partnering up within the “footprint” of the library with other organizations such as record stores, ticket outlets, restaurants, after-school programs, branch libraries in public schools, etc.

• Trying out ideas sooner on a small scale and implementing them quickly if viable.

These ideas would require discussions to determine if they could work for the organization, thoughtful implementation and would not work for every organization." 

Two final thoughts I wish were in the article...

"you have to take some risks"

and a comment by the DOK library staff, all library students should learn how to create and produce videos. I agree!

The link from Information Today for the full article with videos, text and pictures is listed below.

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar10/Birdsong.shtml

Comments

[Scott Nicholson]

I was also very taken by the libraries in Amsterdam and Delft, and made a video on YouTube about them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIkvKBG8UQc

[Lark Birdsong]

The video Scott mentions above and another of Scott's video's on libraries in the Netherlands, is included in the "More Readings" section of the article.

Additionally, you will see a resource by Helen Blower who had a 49.5 hour tour of the Netherlands libraries plus other resources. Thanks for reading the article Scott.