It might not come as a shock to you that your amazing efforts are being noticed by other departments on campus. We often hear from you with emails like, “Student Advising saw our LibCal Appointment Scheduler, and they want to use it for scheduling student one-on-ones.” Or, “Career Services saw our LibAnswers FAQ and LibChat, and they want a LibAnswers system for career advising”.
Librarians are innovators. Always on the forefront of trying some new service, software, or process to provide better and better customer service to their patrons. And even more so, librarians always want to help others achieve. As Malcolm Gladwell puts it in The Tipping Point, you all are Mavens.
Mavens are information specialists, or people we rely upon to connect us with new information. They accumulate knowledge and know how to share it with others. Gladwell cites Mark Alpert as a prototypical Maven who is “almost pathologically helpful” further adding, “he can’t help himself”. In this vein, Alpert himself concedes, “A Maven is someone who wants to solve other people’s problems, generally by solving his own”.
Tipping Point, The Law of the Few
Which is why so many of you who bring other departments onboard with LibCal or LibAnswers – end up helping them setup their system. Your selflessness knows no bounds!
LibCal Seats Beyond the Library
To that end, last summer when we released LibCal Seats, we saw many of you signing up as a way to reopen your libraries safely while monitoring building occupancy and check-in/out features for track & trace. And your efforts did not go unnoticed. Not only did others see what you were doing, but saw it as a viable way to reopen entire campuses. University of Michigan uses LibCal seats for managing reservations for classrooms, computer labs, and even their dining halls.
The Fashion Institute of Technology used LibCal Seats for the 2020/2021 academic year to safely reopen their campus in the middle of one of the hardest COVID-19 impacted cities in the world.
Join Us For An EDUCAUSE Webinar Tomorrow
The New School launched LibCal Seats for labs across the entire campus, with only 3-weeks of prep time, before the start of the Fall semester. To that end, we’ve asked Kayla O’Daniel and Marcus Longmiur to share their experience launching a campus-wide reservation system, in such a short period of time, and what the future holds.
Hear from Kayla and Marcus for a free EDUCAUSE webinar tomorrow, May 25 from 1pm – 2:00pm ET.
Mavens Can’t Help Themselves – Spread the Word
As Mavens, when you have a juicy bit of helpful information – you just can’t keep it to yourself. Your strong social motivations compel you to share, far and wide. If you think this webinar, or LibCal Seats, would be useful for other departments outside your Library or useful for campus or institution-wide deployment, spread the word! Share this handy help guide or forward this blog post along.