I recently read two
articles in a blog, http://bibliosapien.com
in which the blogger, a public library director—in his blog he refers to
himself as Bibliosapien—he describes his approach to his job and to public
libraries in general. He describes how
he is trying to convey his ideas to his staff in his new position as director
in a city in the southwestern United States.
At one time he worked in the retail business and he brings those
sensibilities to his role. The essay
below is based on my response to his blog.
I was fascinated with a statement he made: “…the goal is to
develop relationships that pay off in a fab synergy over time.” I had to
Google “fab synergy” and was not sure I found anything that adequately
explained the term. Fab might mean fabulous
or he might be speaking of fabricating synergy – a concept that sounds pretty
exciting to me. Although I had known in general what synergy means I went
to Wikipedia (not always an authoritative source, of course) to flesh out my
understanding of the term. I found a
passage that seems to reflect what he is interested in:
“In the context of organizational
behavior, following the view that a cohesive group is more than the sum of its
parts, synergy is the ability of a group to outperform even its best individual
member. These conclusions are derived from the studies conducted by Jay Hall on
a number of laboratory-based group ranking and prediction tasks. He found that
effective groups actively looked for the points in which they disagreed and in
consequence encouraged conflicts amongst the participants in the early stages
of the discussion. …The value added by the system as a whole, beyond that
contributed independently by the parts, is created primarily by the
relationship among the parts, that is, how they are interconnected. In essence,
a system constitutes a set of interrelated components working together with a
common objective: fulfilling some designated need.”1
I have to say those last two sentences remind me of my many
sociology lectures on social structure and social change, in which I tried to
give my students some understanding of these abstract concepts that seemed so
difficult for them.* Social structure, I told them, is a web of social
relationships. Those relationships are
based on and consist of regularized interaction. It is a truism that one cannot have a
relationship without interacting. However,
I have known some married couples who distance themselves from each other and
avoid communicating, perhaps because of hurts with each other. To them it does not seem to be a truism at
all. I wish I could say that I have
never drifted away or avoided communicating with my wife. On the other hand, I will say that the single
most important factor in the 44 year endurance of our marriage relationship is the
fact that we have always eventually been able to communicate even after
intense, sometimes dysfunctional, conflicts.
That third sentence in the Wikipedia quote above, about
encouraging conflicts, reminded me of my previous life as a conflict resolution
trainer and practitioner. Conflicts do
not have to be conducted in anger. One
can have a quiet conversation with someone in which disagreements and opposite
opinions are voiced without strong emotions.
I used to encourage my students to have functional or constructive conflicts, when it seems appropriate to
do so in terms of timing, personalities, and circumstance.
Some of the outstanding experts in the field of conflict
resolution, including internationally renowned conflict resolver, William Ury, say
that organizations need to have more conflicts rather than less, but have them
in a constructive manner. Ury elucidates these ideas beautifully in his book, The Third Side.2. Organizations need to create structures and
processes that facilitate constructive approaches to conflict and train
managers when and how to use conflict rather than to avoid it at all costs –
and the costs of conflict avoidance sometimes are quite severe. Of course, one of the main tasks of managers,
in my experience, is to create lines of communication within their
organizations in which people can exchange ideas, perspectives, and concerns on
a regular basis. These interactions and exchanges often forestall conflicts
because people have a better on-going understanding of each other as persons
and their interests.
Earlier in this essay I referred to the library director (Bibliosapien)
and his blog. I was pleased to read of
his attempts to create synergy in the library by instituting early in his
tenure an outreach to the local public schools, specifically to the librarians.
My wife was a public school librarian and had a good relationship with the
local municipality’s public library director, collaborating with her on
numerous efforts such as plays and a mobile library for their city. She also
worked to establish community/school collaborations on such events as “read me
a story night” in which public officials and other adults in the community came
into the school one evening and read stories to the children. What a
wonderful sight and sound that was.
I am a supporter of Bibliosapien’s idea of installing panels
in the library to display school children’s work and perhaps the works of area
artists and--I would hope--maybe even poems written by local poets. I had been
in libraries in which there seemed to be more concern with clutter and order
than with creating an atmosphere that encouraged active involvement of the
public (the patrons or “customers”) with the library. I have seen the negative effects of over-concern
with rules and under-appreciation for--admittedly more messy--active participatory
activities. I tend to have a more
democratic or active learning approach to things and I like people’s
fingerprints, handprints, and excited voices to touch and permeate the
environment. In my own teaching I attempted to institute more active
learning, community-based approaches.
In my previous blog, The
Poetry in Us, I supported the idea that poetry can operate as a “vector
creating social space.” I stated that I
had experienced this phenomenon in our local poetry group, Poetry in Progress, in which there
is a diversity of people and poetic forms and content. I also think that
the public library itself can do the same, it can create a social space that facilitates synergy
among many differing and perhaps even conflicting elements in the
community.
It appears that one of the concerns of leaders and
visionaries--like Bibliosapien--in public libraries is that they focus on the
needs of their patrons rather than making primary the interests of the
staff. Many educational and municipal
leaders who support libraries fear that they are in danger of going the way of
the dinosaurs if significant changes are not made soon.
My perception is that facilitating a creative synergistic
process is one of the goals of Bibliosapien. I believe that these efforts
have the chance to bring new energy, interest, and enthusiasm into the
library.
* For more than 20
years I taught sociology in community colleges, later in my career, switching
to conflict resolution and mediation training.
ENDNOTES
1. http://bibliosapien.com
The blog that inspired much of this essay is created by a thoughtful individual
who is a professional librarian in a public library in the Southwestern United
States.
2. Wikipedia article
on synergy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy May 13, 2014.
3. William Ury, The Third Side: Why we fight and how we can
stop, (Penguin Books; Rev Upd edition: September 1, 2000).
