Head Tale

I recently gave kudos to the book “Crowdsourcing” which I'd just finished reading.  You know a book's a good one when you're still thinking about it a few days later and you know it's a great one when you keep thinking of ways its lessons might apply in your everyday life beyond that. 

Very briefly, the central premise of the book (which has many similarities to another good one, “The Wisdom of Crowds“) is that given a large, varied and sufficiently independent enough crowd – the decisions, the achievements, the products – reached by such a group will always outshine a similar result from a single or small group of experts, no matter how esteemed they may be. 

How does that relate to libraries?  Well, like the vast majority of organizations, libraries tend to have a hierarchical structure with a Director (and usually a Deputy Director) at the top then a variety of managers below that then supervisors then on down through the ranks. 

Which makes me wonder?  What if somebody tried to implement a completely crowd-sourced library?  This would be a *major* shift for anyone used to working in hierarchies but it could produce some very interesting results.  Tapping into a typical library's staff, you'd definitely have a large and varied crew and it's not hard to imagine how the advantages could manifest themselves. 

Let's take a really simple example.  Let's say you were trying to set-up a new adult program of some kind.  In the traditional model, the decision might be made by someone like a Head of Programming in consultation with a Branch Manager and maybe (or maybe not) the actual staff who'd be delivering the program might have some input as well.  Some libraries might do this via a committee structure, some might do it with a series of meetings.  

Now, imagine the crowd-sourced library program.  Suddenly, everyone on staff anywhere in the library could weigh in with their thoughts, likely via some web-based mechanism.  Suddenly, the Pages might throw in some ideas about an upcoming but still underneath-the-radar new author that the Branch Manager wasn't aware of but the page knows because they're re-shelving those books constantly.  Someone in another branch might be on the board of a community organization that connects to the theme of the program.  The maintenance crew could share ideas from a perspective that the rest of the staff rarely consider (or at least consider to the same depth that the physical plant folks would.) 

Or if you wanted to be truly crowd-sourced, you could open it up to the general public as well!  After all, what are libraries at their core but a reflection of the communities in which they operate?  And what better way to truly embody this (no, the occasional focus group doesn't cut it.) 

I know there are all kinds of problems connected with crowdsourcing as well.  But it's an interesting idea to contemplate.

[Edit:  I did some further searching around after posting this and saw that the author of the crowdsourcing book is championing a “One Book, One Twitter” campaign based on the popular “One Book, One City” initiatives that have happened in various cities.  Tomorrow's the last day so why not go vote?]