New Editorial:
Interdisciplinary by Design: Envisioning Libraries in 2050
College & Research Library News, May 2025
What if libraries were designed to help solve the world’s biggest challenges? In this short piece, I imagine what academic libraries might look like in 2050… if they were intentionally built to support interdisciplinary work, tackle wicked problems, and turn knowledge into action.
It’s less about predicting the future and more about asking: What kind of library do we want to become?
Upcoming Talks
Generative AI In Libraries (GAIL) 2025 Conference (link)
AI Sandbox: Cultivating AI Fluencies Through Inclusive Exploration with Kelly Woessner. June 9, 2025
Library AI Infrastructure Residency: Integrating AI, Project Management, and Digital Infrastructure for Sustainable Innovation with Dom Jebbia & Ken Rose. June 12, 2025
Free Webinar: hosted by the Special Libraries Association and the ALA/ACRL Education Committee
Details coming soon — the talk will take place online in November or December 2025. The session will focus on designing programs, nurturing communities, and exploring adaptable strategies for academic librarians.
New Paper:
A Cambrian Moment for Libraries: Shaping Futures through Evolution and Leadership
portal: Libraries and the Academy, April 2025
Academic and research libraries are undergoing a profound transformation, shaped by technological advancements, shifting societal dynamics, and evolving institutional priorities. This essay examines how these forces are driving libraries to evolve into specialized and distinct models, shaping their future and drawing parallels to the Cambrian Explosion—a period of rapid diversification in natural history. Using the frameworks of evolutionary theory, ecosystem models, and systems thinking, it explores the interplay between external pressures and internal strategies. By fostering adaptability and embracing leadership attuned to complexity, libraries can redefine their roles to meet the unique and emergent needs of their communities, ensuring they remain vital forces of knowledge, culture, and well-being in an ever-changing world.
New Paper:
The Understory: A Thought Experiment in Reimagining the Library as an Intellectual Underground
The Understory is a thought experiment that reimagines the academic library as an intellectual underground—a space for the unstructured, the experimental, and the unpolished dimensions of creative and scholarly inquiry. Inspired by vanished cultural ecosystems like indie bookstores, underground music venues, and fringe galleries, this essay critiques the homogeneity of the modern learning commons and advocates for a layered library experience that includes curiosity-driven spaces not designed for productivity or metrics. It introduces The Understory as a metaphorical and physical counterbalance to the academic overstory: a space where thought is allowed to drift, mutate, and take root before it's ready for the surface. Part proposal, part provocation, this essay invites readers to consider how libraries might once again foster serendipity, intellectual risk-taking, and radical curiosity.
Recent Presentation:
Personal & Collaborative Knowledge Management Systems: Infrastructure for Idea Management & Research (link)
In the fast-paced and increasingly interdisciplinary research landscape, effective knowledge management has become critical to the success of teams. This talk explores the potential of personal and collaborative knowledge management systems designed to foster idea emergence, identify research gaps, and coordinate tasks across projects. By integrating foundational resources, glossaries, expert networks, and tracking future trends, these customized systems serve as essential knowledge infrastructure to support the exploration of complex, cross-disciplinary problems. Gain insights into how these tools can pragmatically accelerate research team collaboration.
Recent Article:
Thinking Around the Box: using complementary innovation for designing programs and nurturing community
In Practical Academic Librarianship
We’ve all heard the call to “think outside the box”—but what if true innovation in libraries isn’t about leaving the box behind, but rather thinking around it? In this essay, I introduce an approach called complementary innovation, which allows us to creatively combine services, resources, and expertise to build dynamic, interconnected experiences that are both practical and inspiring.
Imagine a library that creates vibrant ecosystems tailored for diverse groups—researchers managing complex data, undergrads immersed in coursework, creatives developing new projects, or sustainability activists driving change. By layering services in ways that connect and resonate, libraries can foster community, spark collaboration, and inspire a true sense of belonging, becoming essential spaces where ideas and people flourish together.
Archiving Robots 🤖
In the "Multimodal Archives Toolkit," our team tackled the complex challenge of archiving the wide array of materials produced in the field of robotics. This toolkit provides a thoughtful approach to preserving everything from physical artifacts like machines, prototypes, and sensors, to digital elements such as code, datasets, and design documentation. By embracing interdisciplinary methods, we devised strategies to collect and steward these intricate and interconnected materials. This project embodies a forward-thinking approach to archiving, aiming to create a living repository that adapts to the evolving nature of scientific research.