Browsing by Author "Mathews, Brian"

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17
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    THE ART OF PROBLEM DISCOVERY: Adaptive Thinking for Innovation and Growth
    Mathews, Brian (Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), 2013-04-02)
    What challenges do students face in the classroom? What issues do faculty encounter when applying for grants? How does the Writing Center plan to help students abroad? What keeps senior administrators up at night? We invest a lot of time and effort discussing library issues, but how well do we know the issues of our constituents? What are the problems, priorities, and possibilities of the people we serve? Higher education is poised to undergo a historic evolution with the introduction of new pedagogies, publishing models, and user preferences. Libraries will not only be asked to adapt, but to help lead monumental changes. This paper presents an innovation strategy designed around growth. By adopting a discovery-oriented problem-seeking outlook and a holistic view of our institutions, librarians can develop an entrepreneurial mindset stretching beyond traditionally predefined boundaries. By advancing the objectives of others, we not only help our organizations succeed, but simultaneously reframe the role, value, and perception of libraries throughout the process.
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    Assessing Student Needs Through Discovery
    Hall, Monena; Lancaster, Charla; Mathews, Brian (2013-04-23)
    Discovery Teams were created to boost the Library’s R&D effort. Annually, University Libraries at Virginia Tech will collectively explore a theme through hands-on experience. For Spring 2012 the topic was: The Learning Process. This poster combines and presents the findings and potential directions based on the feedback from this research.
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    CULTIVATING COMPLEXITY: How I Stopped Driving The Innovation Train And Started Planting Seeds In The Community Garden
    Mathews, Brian (2017-09-14)
    The last two decades have ushered transformative change across libraries. We have reimagined collections, revolutionized spaces, introduced numerous technologies, and greatly expanded our service offerings. Yet despite all of these advances, our organizational structures have remained largely the same. This paper serves as an invitation to explore evolutionary paths for academic and research libraries. I offer my leadership journey as a conversational example, moving from a focus on productivity and serving as a driver of innovation toward a role as facilitator and gardener, helping to nurture the work environment to grow more organically. By rethinking how we interact with our colleagues, we can cultivate a more creative culture that enables us to be more resilient and better situated to tackle the complex and unpredictable nature of the work that lies ahead.
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    CURATING THE CAMPUS, CURATING CHANGE: A collection of eight vignettes
    Mathews, Brian; Badua, Jenizza (2016-10)
    As librarians, we select, collect, integrate, and manage diverse forms of information. Imagine if we apply this foundation in a new context: partnerships across the campus environment. In buildings all around us, students and faculty are using, sharing, and creating knowledge. This presents a tremendous opportunity for us to venture forth and empower our communities. Vignettes include: classroom building, research building, labs, studios, exhibits & displays, atriums & lobbies, living learning community, and incubators.
  • Discovery Teams: Summary
    Hall, Monena; Mathews, Brian (2012-10-19)
    In February 2012 Brian Mathews, Associate Dean for Learning and Outreach, put together a proposal to boost the Library’s research and development efforts and gather insight into students’ potential desires concerning upcoming renovations. He put out a call to the library and library partners across campus to participate in Discovery Teams that would observe and talk with students “in the act of scholarship.” Throughout March and April of 2012, teams of faculty and staff from across the University walked around Newman Library and the Blacksburg campus to engage with students.
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    Engines For Change: Libraries as drivers of engagement
    Mathews, Brian (2014-11-11)
    This paper explores the concept of social entrepreneurship and applies it to libraries. It includes examples from an academic library related environmental sustainability and undocumented students. A case is made that outreach endeavors are a form of entrepreneurship that enable librarians and staff to contribute to the social, civic, creative, scholarly, and cultural aspirations of the communities they serve.
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    FLIP THE MODEL: Strategies for Creating and Delivering Value
    Mathews, Brian (2013-10-28)
    Academic libraries are encountering a critical inflection point. In our case it isn’t a single technology that is disrupting our established system, but a barrage of advancements in publishing, pedagogy, and user preferences. The landscape is shifting around us, and the future of scholarship requires us to develop new skills, design new environments, and deliver new service capacities. In short, we need new operating models.
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    Hubs and centers as transitional change strategy for library collaboration
    Griffin, Julie; Mathews, Brian; Walters, Tyler (International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries, 2013-04-18)
    Libraries of science and technology universities worldwide are adapting to a changing environment where cyberinfrastructure, eResearch, and new technology-intensive approaches to teaching and learning are transforming the very nature of universities. While many have adopted new technologies and the resources and expertise to manage them, this is only an initial step. Libraries are experimenting with organizational models that will transform their work capacity and expertise. The goal of these libraries is being an entity that feeds and produces collaborative synergies between faculty, students, information professionals, and technologists. Virginia Tech, among the top research universities in the United States, and its constituent libraries are adopting a unique organizational change strategy that implements eScience and cyberlearning roles. This two-part strategy begins with establishing ‘hubs’. The hubs are collaborative, crossdepartmental groups in which library employees of varying backgrounds and skills come together on common themes of strategic importance. The hubs act in one sense as a ‘research & development lab’ to explore, imagine, and brainstorm new library initiatives as well as engender deeper understandings of the university’s core academic enterprise. They also are a ‘strike force’ that implements, supports, and assesses emerging library roles in relation to the institution’s academic mission. In these ways, hubs also create learning and scholarship opportunities for their participants beyond the individual task-oriented projects. The second part of this strategy involves the establishment of research and service centers. At Virginia Tech, these are the Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL) and the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS). These centers are designed to incubate and sustain new collaborative synergies between libraries, researchers, instructors, and learners by providing expertise, resources, and new infrastructures to address specific academic research-based needs. The centers become focal points for library action, focused on learning and research activities within other university entities. Benefits to library employees come in the form of scholarship and research with potential for collaboration and new initiatives as relationships grow among project participants. The authors will discuss transformational aspects of the change management model, with lessons from their early experiences. They also will discuss how the model can be adapted by other libraries of science and technology-centered universities.
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    A Learning Platform: 2nd Floor, Newman Library, Virginia Tech, Conceptual Draft #2
    Mathews, Brian (2012-10-01)
    Over the Spring 2012 semester the Library published a conceptual draft for second floor renovations to the Newman Library. After working over the summer with students, faculty, and library employees a new draft emerged that further expresses the vision.
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    Librarian as Futurist: Changing the Way Libraries Think About the Future
    Mathews, Brian (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014-07)
    Are librarians preoccupied with the future? There are countless books, articles, blog posts, webinars, and conference presentations filled with speculation about what libraries will become. This is understandable with the emergence of new roles for libraries and librarians as we determine our identity across the digital landscape. This essay offers guidance for thinking about the future. By adopting the cognitive tools and mindsets used by practitioners of strategic foresight, library leaders can position their organizations for greater impact and value. Knowing how to discover, design, assess, and address possible future scenarios is becoming increasingly critical, and this skill should become part of our professional fluency.
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    Renovation, Revitalization, Revival: 2nd Floor, Newman Library, Virginia Tech, Conceptual Draft #1
    Mathews, Brian (2012-04-02)
    This is an initial planning draft for the upcoming renovation. This version will be used for further development and planning.
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    The Smart Commons: An Experiment in Sensor-Based Space Assessment of Learning Environments
    Bradley, Jonathan; Tomlin, Patrick; Mathews, Brian (ACRL, 2017-03)
    The need for agile, technology-enhanced learning environments capable of meeting the evolving needs of students and researchers presents a unique opportunity to reimagine the design, creation, management, and assessment of library spaces. This presentation will provide attendees with a hands-on overview of emerging sensor-based technologies and their potential to support learning space assessment.
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    Think Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism
    Mathews, Brian (2012-04-03)
    This document is intended to inspire transformative thinking using insight into startup culture and innovation methodologies. It’s a collection of talking points intended to stir the entrepreneurial spirit in library leaders at every level.
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    Too Much Assessment Not Enough Innovation: R&D Models and Mindsets for Academic Libraries
    Mathews, Brian (Library Assessment Conference, 2012-10)
    Academic libraries are facing a disruptive future. There are new technologies, new pedagogies, new publishing models, and new environments, all converging with teaching and research. This multiplicity of change is bubbling forth and setting up for new directions in the years ahead. Library assessment programs would benefit from adopting Research and Development (R&D) practices in order to anticipate and accommodate new demands. This paper outlines a perspective shift for addressing needs in the emerging landscape of higher education. By embracing a discovery-oriented outlook, activating networked development initiatives, and nurturing a culture of creativity and experimentation, libraries can position themselves for growth opportunities.
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    Understanding the Learner Experience: Threshold Concepts and Curriculum Mapping
    Booth, Char; Mathews, Brian (2012-04-07)
    In order to programmatically improve our efforts at library instruction and outreach, we need to develop a richer understanding of the holistic learning and teaching experience that comprises our institutions. Threshold concepts are core ideas in a particular area or discipline that, once understood, transform perceptions of that subject. Curriculum mapping is a method of visualizing insight into the steps, requirements, and communities a learner negotiates as they engage with a particular learning experience or degree path. When understood and applied in tandem, these strategies provide a powerful means of developing actionable insight into the learner and faculty perspective and highlight pivotal points at which to provide library instruction, resources, and research support. This paper will explore theoretical and applied applications of threshold concepts and curriculum mapping as key to teaching and learning in libraries.
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    University Libraries Annual Report 2018
    Brown, Ann; Griffin, Julie; Mathews, Brian; Walters, Tyler; Kucsak, Michael; McVoy, Liz (2018-08)
    Explore University Libraries key accomplishments and strategic plans during the 2017-2018 fiscal year.