Category Archives: learning

keynote, learning, Librarianship, libraries, SDGs, skills, strategy, workshop

Keynote for Estonian library directors summer school: Public libraries: SDGs, Trends, goals, innovation and connecting with the community​.

Leave a comment

The UNs Sustainable Development Goals played the leading role in my keynote about trends, goals and innovations that influence our world and, therefore, our communities and libraries. 
The global goals are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. While the 17 global goals are made simple, they are not always easy to understand. Libraries are essential in making the goals understandable for the public and facilitating partnerships in and with the community to actively support projects that have a tangible impact on the SDGs.
To give the global goals the focus they deserve, they should be part of your existing library strategy. 
As an example of a national public library strategy that includes the SDGs, go to the all-new Scottish library strategy: Forward.

Part of my keynote was an example of a strategy process I did about the library as a strategically important learning institution in the community and how that informed decisions like building a FabLab with a sharp library focus on the services it delivered to the public.

By doing all of the above, libraries enable communities to make smarter decisions.

To be relevant for our communities, we need to listen to all parts of the community – also the people who are not like us. We must listen actively to the people who do not visit us often or never visit us at all. That means we must get out and have honest conversations with people in the community.

When we still struggle with COVID (though times are getting better in many countries now), we must not forget that it has been a rough time for all of us – the people who visit our libraries. Compassion and sincere interest in how people are doing is a highly valued skill these days.

In the group, we discussed what we wanted to bring into the new post-COVID normal and what we wanted to leave behind in the old world.

You can see all of the trends mentioned in my slides, and here is the “worknotes” from our workshop. 

I promised the group to share a few links about the theme “Biased tech”. So here are the once I mentioned from New York Times:
The Week in Tech: Algorithmic Bias Is Bad. Uncovering It Is Good. [New York Times 15. November 2019]
Exposing the Bias Embedded in Tech. [New York Times 17. June 2019] 

I want to thank the National Library of Estonia for inviting me and all the participants for their contributions and kindness: Thank you for learning with me. – Please stay in touch.

community, conference, learning, Librarianship, libraries, Presentations, skills, strategy

Presentation “Public libraries as the learning hub in the community. Strategy and practical examples” for Conferência Internacional: [Re]Pensar a Biblioteca Pública

Leave a comment

Thank you participants in Aveiro and online for your feedback and positivity. I was honored to be part of your wonderful conference.

Public libraries are about providing access to information for all citizens. They are also about giving the community members the best possibilities to transform that information into knowledge.

When we look at libraries not only as a place for cultural inspiration or a house full of information -but also as the learning hub in the community, we focus on different ways of connecting with the community and new ways of delivering library services. We also have a new approach to what skillset librarians need to make this happen.

In this talk, I focus on practical examples from my work as a library director in Denmark and New Zealand. Examples of working with learning as a strategy and how that impacted the library services delivered and how libraries reached out to the community.

Here are the slides:

HolmquistStartup, Jan Holmquist, learning

New challenges for 2020

Leave a comment

I have two pieces of exciting news to share:

1) I am starting my own business in early 2020. Lately, I have been doing consultancy in Denmark, and Europe centred around Strategic leadership, innovation, collaboration and project management.
I will have a desk in the heart of Copenhagen for the next 12 weeks in a shared space with 49 other startups. The scope is to win and fail and learn from both.
I will share the journey with you on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and here on the blog using the hashtag #HolmquistStartup

2) For the next 9 months, I will work part-time as a Project Lead for a national library learning project centred around digital learning for library staff and digital leadership for library managers.

I am very excited about both new opportunities and as always. I will keep you posted.

Advocacy, community, keynote, learning, libraries, strategy

Keynote: Smart Libraries Create Smart Communities for #ILI2016

2 Comments

Thank you Internet Librarian International for your kind feedback and for questions and comments after my talk and during the day. It has been a pleasure learning with you.

Like I promised – My slides:

This is a slightly reworked Q and A I did for CILIP Update before the keynote, and it provides some context to the talk.

Q. Firstly a little bit about you – Tell us about your current role and the projects are you currently working on.

A.
I am Assistant Library director at Guldborgsund Public Library in the South eastern part of Denmark. We are currently making a FabLab which will open to the Public early 2017.
In my spare time I work as a Global Librarian. I am currently engaged in The Library Avengers and The PL2020 Library Advocacy Lab that works with raising awareness on a political level about EUs 65000 Public libraries.

I am also studying Master of Public Governance at Copenhagen Business School and doing some Consultant work on crowdfunding and making presentations and keynotes about i.e. global librarianship, gamification and libraries and the Library professional development program 23 mobile things that we made in Guldborgsund and expanded world-wide in cooperation with State Library of New South Wales in Australia.

img_2658
Q. Your keynote is called ‘Smart libraries create smart communities – towards a visionary strategy for libraries’ – can you give us an insight into what you’ll be discussing?
A.
Last year the Swedish professor Hans Rosling said “You can’t trust the news outlets if you want to understand the world”.
This year the debate after the Brexit vote circulated around the same issue. Was the voters well-informed? The same debate is going on in the US right now with their upcoming election.
We need to invent a place where the public can seek and find fact checked and verified information – wait! We already have such a place. Libraries!
In a world where we compete about knowledge jobs libraries are more important than ever. They are the one place where everyone’s learning is actively supported. This is important to acknowledge when designing library strategy.
I will be discussing that and a whole lot more. You will have to wait until October at ILI to hear the rest 😉
Q. What are your thoughts on how libraries can raise their profile with their communities and with decision makers?
A.
In Denmark the “Open Libraries” where you can lock yourself into the Library for self-service between 7 AM and 10 PM has raised the profile in the community a lot.
Also presenting knowledge in new ways like Guldborgsund Public Librarys gamified treasure Hunt app “Hidden treasures” does.  Via the app you learn about the City’s history as you walk the City and solve puzzles and quizzes. The app is a fun way to engage with the community. Basically getting the Library out of the building and going where people are like we do with the yearly fruit harvest festival is a way to meet people and show them what the Library can do and why the Library matters in their lives.
This is also a good way to engage decision makers but I think working with Library strategy is even more important. If you can tell stories about how the Library changes lives and show politicians and decisionmakers that the Library raises the knowledge level in the community and thereby makes the community smarter. Then you have a good opportunity to continue the conversation with the decisionmakers and get the Library on their agenda.
Q. Times are challenging for many libraries at the moment – how can we stay inspired to focus on long-term strategy?
A.
Every time someone walks into the library or visit us online they need to be inspired or learn something new.
Noble prize winner Jose Saramago (my favorite writer) educated himself at libraries. For some years Cory Doctorow did the same thing.
Libraries change lives. That is very inspiring.
It can be hard to focus on the long-term when budget cuts are so bad as they are in the UK right now. I think it Helps to know that libraries are very well visited and used and that we support learning for people every day. There is more information in the world than ever before. Libraries can navigate this information and support the learning the community needs and inspire people to find good stories and new knowledge. That is a good foundation for a Library strategy.
That is the big picture. I have a “Keep calm and see the big picture” poster on my wall in my office by the way. That is a good reminder about all the above mentioned.
Q. Anything else you’d like to add?
A.
Libraries need to work even closer with schools, museums and other parts of the community.
A lot of museums have experts with a lot of knowledge but not many visitors.
Libraries have a lot of visitors. We can work together to present expert knowledge in new ways at libraries – also knowledge about our communities. There is great potential in that kind of cooperation.
global librarianship, keynote, learning, libraries, Uncategorized

Keynote for #CILIPS16: Making communities smarter through connections

1 Comment

20140311-154338.jpgThe theme of this years CILIPS conference is “Making connections”. I am proud to do todays morning keynote.

Libraries are strategically important for modern knowledge societies. In the library people of all ages have a safe space for learning and exchanging ideas. In the knowledge economy where communities, regions and countries compete for knowledge jobs libraries are essential in actively supporting life long learning for all. Libraries facilitae connections between people and their knowledge. Thereby libraries are making their communities smarter.

Here are my slides:

23 Mobile Things, learning

Another project joins the 23 Mobile Things family

Leave a comment

23It is always a very special thing for me to learn about a new version of 23 Mobile Things. This week 7 Mobile Things (7 Mobiele Dingen) from the Netherlands joined the 23 family.

The new version adds academic libraries to the project and is primarily aimed at familiarizing the library staff at Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden with using mobile devices to gather and process scholarly information. Selected themes are “Collecting and sharing”, “Privacy” and “Reference managers”. This makes 7 Mobile Things true to the 23 vision: to explore the potential of mobile tools to deliver library services.

We have proudly added the project to our list of 23 Mobile Things versions and I want to thank Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden and Mieneke van der Salm for doing this wonderful job with the academic version in Dutch.

23 Mobile Things is now available in 14 different versions in 7 different languages with an estimated number of around 20.000 participants world wide.

23 Mobile Things, buyalib, crowdfunding, global librarianship, learning

Ignite – Next Library: From global inspiration to local action

3 Comments

At #nextlibrary2015 I did an Ignite talk about global librarianship. I shared the vision that in a world where countries compete on knowledge to get knowledge jobs – life long learning is valuable. Therefore libraries are more important than ever.
We need to know how people learn, unlearn and relearn – and we need to have our own agenda about how we learn on a global level so we can be one step ahead as information professionals – and be even better to support the learning of our communities.

By being inspired globally we learn different answers to the challenges we all face as libraries – and we can translate our inspiration into acting locally in our communities – to make our communities smarter.

The examples I shared was Buy India a Library where four information professionals (Including yours truly) set up a crowdfunding project to build a library attached to a school in Mysore, India. More than 100 wonderfully generous people from all over the globe supported our effort – so though we (at that time) we enabled people to fund a brand new library.

23 Mobile Things took the inspiration from the original 23 Things project and transformed it into a learning program for information professionals with the scope to explore the potential of mobile tools for delivering library services. It was a local project for the staff at Guldborgsund Public Library and we then turned it into a global learning project in cooperation with State Library of New South Wales (with my wonderful colleagues Mylee Joseph and Kathryn Barwick). Today there are several English language versions in USA, Australia / New Zealand, Singapore and the Philippines and versions in German, French, Russian, Norwegian and Danish.
At Guldborgsund Public Library we have just launched a version of the program with 16 Mobile Things for the public (in cooperation with Kalundborg Public Library) (New blog post coming up soon!)

Thank you for feedback to everyone at Next Library – and thank you to all the people I connected and learned with and who shared your time and knowledge with me.

The Ignite presentation format is very challenging. 5 minutes – 20 slides advancing automatically after 15 seconds.

global librarianship, keynote, learning

The Global Librarian at #EduTechAU

1 Comment

 Global librarian is not a title – it is a choice. Global librarianship is a mindset where you seek inspiration from global projects and translate them into making value in your community.

In my recent presentation at EduTech in Brisbane, Australia I spoke about learning as a core task and strategy for libraries, skills we need to upgrade as librarians and I shared examples of global projects – remixed into local ones. Thank you for a great conference and for the feedback.

23 Mobile Things, global librarianship, learning, Presentations

Libraries as Strategic Learning Institutions – Workshop at #CILDC

Leave a comment

CIL15_Hearme_ButtonChange is happening fast in our societies these years. For libraries the environment around us and the need for information has been changing a lot going from the industrial society over the information society to the knowledge society.
Countries around the globe compete not only on low cost but also on the knowledge level of their populations. Libraries are more important than ever. Libraries support learning on all levels in our communities every day. Both formal learning and informal learning.

To be even more relevant as the learning hub of the community in the future we need to upgrade our skills about how people learn, unlearn and relearn. It is said that the loosers of the future are the poeple who can not learn, unlearn and relearn. Libraries are the right institutions to bridge the learning divide.

Here are my slides from todays workshop. Thanks to everyone who showed up and shared their knowledge  – It was a pleasure learning with you.