July 7, 2019

Today we packed up the Bicycle Hotel and moved to the Hotel de Emauspoort in Delft! Our time in Amsterdam went by in a flash--it's hard to believe that just two weeks ago I was turning 21 and the people who I now call some of my best friends were strangers. These past two weeks have been a whirlwind of museums and libraries, two things from which I was fairly far removed before traveling with this group. Although I avidly visited the library when I was younger, I got out of the habit as I grew older. In my college career, I have only ever checked out one book from a school library, and although it was an incredibly painless and easy experience, I had no desire to do it again. I think this is a really interesting place to be in coming into the program, because I have a strong sense of connection with my hometown library, yet I have no desire to seek out libraries or library services anymore. Through our visits to various libraries, I have definitely rekindled an old interest in library services and have been reminded of how much more a library can offer me than just a place to rent books. I have also enjoyed getting a glimpse into what it takes to offer these library spaces to the public. As a patron, I have always just taken it as a given that the library would be there for me, and that it functioned smoothly, with little interference from workers. Turns out, this is not the case! It takes a lot of planning and innovation to create a space that is welcoming, safe, and enticing to members of a community, and I now realize that I would be ill equipped to work at a library if I was asked to. One thing which had never occurred to me before was how public libraries are designed to be open to everyone, but that there are certain members in a community, such as the homeless population, who pose more challenges to libraries. As libraries are some of the few true community meeting places available, they are particularly attractive to people experiencing homelessness looking for a safe place to spend their time. While libraries should fulfill that function as a community space (a sentiment reiterated across the board at our site visits), it is also important that their services and space are attractive to other members of the community, so staff members are tasked with striking a balance between the needs of all their patrons and simultaneously going beyond their basic community function to innovate. Looking back on my own childhood, I can now identify many programs that they implemented throughout my life designed to better engage the community, and move beyond their basic responsibilities as a library. One example that comes to mind is from when I was in middle school, and the library started a book club for middle schoolers at the local Starbucks. If you were one of the first 15 to register for the program, they would give you a personal copy of the book to keep after reading, and everyone who attended the program was also given a free cup of Starbucks coffee. This obviously appealed to teenagers because we couldn't say no to free coffee, and also kept us coming to the library because you had to sign up for the program in person. I frequently went to sign up and then got distracted looking at other books. Looking back, programs like these were a big reason why I remained engaged with the library for so long, and without programs like these at UW I am much less likely to go to the libraries on campus.

I have also never been an avid museum-goer, often avoiding visits to museums or quickly browsing through the exhibits. Although there were times on this trip where I still found myself wanting to gloss over things, getting exposure to so many different museums has really helped me realize that there is a lot more to museums than I had originally thought. Speaking with employees at these museums has opened my eyes to what work goes into attracting patrons to the museum, and different ways to interact with museums to potentially heighten my experience. As we discussed in class, as museums work to innovate for specific populations in certain ways (i.e. Feeling Van Gogh) they also start to engage their more traditional patrons in new ways and attract unexpected populations through the innovations. Enriching the museum experience through untraditional means definitely interests me because I have had much better experiences at locations with more variety in terms of user involvement. Our readings for the course have also helped me to contextualize our site visits, and analyze how the initiatives that are in place during our visits may have come to be in the first place. Particularly readings from Ten Faces have helped me to grasp the process of innovation and the different roles that people can take on when organizing innovation.

Many of the roles that Kelley describes as critical to innovation are overlooked as valuable members of a group, so it's been interesting for me to consider the psychology behind why those roles may be downplayed in society, and how to reverse those priorities. Especially for the role of the collaborator, I see this role as downplayed in American society, expressly in the education system. From a young age I can remember being assigned group projects, and as early as elementary school teachers would have conversations on what an effective group dynamic looks like. Most often, they describe that there should be one leader, and many followers, and although they never explicitly say that the leader has the most important role, it is a natural leap for children to make given the information they are presented. I think a lot of this emphasis on leadership probably stems from larger cultural values, because American society favors independence and leadership in every aspect of life, but in other ways this emphasis on leadership probably stems from lack of awareness. After reading Ten Faces, I would argue that all of the faces of innovation are leaders in some aspect of the innovation project, and it is wrong to label one "leader" and the rest "followers". I wonder whether changing the presentation of this information from a younger age would cause a cultural shift in terms of value placed on individuals (especially in the workplace). It would also make sense to me that changing the presentation of group members might change group dynamics when working on projects, such that there is no longer one dominating voice, and innovative projects reflect more diverse perspectives and values. As I am minoring in education, this is an idea that I would like to explore more moving forward.