At work in the phenomenal field: can there be a person centred

library?Nick’s research, beginning 2013

Our values define us and guide our decision-making behaviour

• We are;

• Student-centred:• maximising potential, nurturing

talent,• respecting individuality, holistic.

• Focused on specialist creative• communities:• collaborative, interactive,

multidisciplinary,• studio-focused,• externally engaged.

• Critical in our thinking:• aspirational, challenging, researching,• questioning, analytical, innovative,• independent thinking.

• Professional:• relevant, contemporary, ambitious,• achieving, international, employable,• entrepreneurial, networked with

industry.

• Progressive:• beautiful, unconventional, risk-taking,• experimental, radical, responsive.

Our values define us and guide our decision-making behaviour

• Are we?• maximising potential,

nurturing talent, respecting individuality, holistic.

• collaborative, interactive, multidisciplinary, studio-focused, externally engaged.

• aspirational, challenging, researching, questioning, analytical, innovative, independent thinking.

• Are we?• relevant, contemporary,

ambitious, achieving, international,

• employable, entrepreneurial, networked with industry.

• beautiful, unconventional, risk-taking,

• experimental, radical, responsive.

Networking...

• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at “Librarians as researchers”.

Networking...

• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at “Librarians as researchers”.

• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account in order to communicate about blog.

Networking...

• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at “Librarians as researchers”.

• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account in order to communicate about blog.

• Andy’s interest in “play” as means of exploring the library.

Networking...

• Emma Coonan & Andy Walsh – both met at “Librarians as researchers”.

• Emma challenged me to begin Twitter account in order to communicate about blog.

• Andy’s interest in “play” as means of exploring the library.

• Becky pointed out how my research idea fitted with the “Only connect” book proposition.

Networking...

• Submitted a proposal:

At work in the phenomenal field: can there be a person centred

library?

Networking...

• At work in the phenomenal field: can there be a person centred library?

• They asked me what this meant!• I gave a further break down of the structure &

content.• Chapter proposal accepted!

Networking worked!

• Now I only need to write it...• First draft by June• Publication Autumn 2013• So............................

“Only connect ...” discovery pathways, library explorations, and the information adventure.

A collection of information discovery journeys.

Free e-book distributed under Creative Commons licence

• The editors’ gave the following suggestions to consider:• The agency for the discovery pathway rests with the

learner both naturally and ethically - and we must recognise this

• The learner creates the connections as a means of achieving a narrative of his/her reality

• co-constructed or constructivist learning as opposed to transmission model; profound impact on our approaches to teaching and our understanding of learning as a negotiation of the info context, not an unquestioned acceptance of librarian diktats

Can there be a person centred library?

LCA values• Student-centred• maximising potential, nurturing talent,

respecting individuality, holistic • Focused on specialist creative communities• collaborative, interactive, multi-disciplinary,

studio-focused, externally engaged • Critical in our thinking• aspirational, challenging, researching,

questioning, analytical, innovative, independent- thinking

• Professional• relevant, contemporary, ambitious, achieving,

international, employable, entrepreneurial, networked with industry

• Progressive• beautiful, unconventional, risk-taking,

experimental, radical, responsive

My research• Person centred • Focused on the self activating

potential of every person – given the core conditions of: Congruence – being real, genuine. Empathy – trust sufficiently developed that one person can as it walk around in another’s world. Unconditional positive regard – to value the whole person in all circumstances.

Carl R. Rogers (1902 - 1987)

• Realness in the facilitator of learning. Perhaps the most basic of these essential attitudes is realness or genuineness. When the facilitator is a real person, being what she is, entering into a relationship with the learner without presenting a front or a façade, she is much more likely to be effective. This means that the feelings that she is experiencing are available to her, available to her awareness, that she is able to live these feelings, be them, and able to communicate if appropriate. It means coming into a direct personal encounter with the learner, meeting her on a person-to-person basis. It means that she is being herself, not denying herself.

• Prizing, acceptance, trust. There is another attitude that stands out in those who are successful in facilitating learning… I think of it as prizing the learner, prizing her feelings, her opinions, her person. It is a caring for the learner, but a non-possessive caring. It is an acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, having worth in her own right. It is a basic trust - a belief that this other person is somehow fundamentally trustworthy… What we are describing is a prizing of the learner as an imperfect human being with many feelings, many potentialities. The facilitator’s prizing or acceptance of the learner is an operational expression of her essential confidence and trust in the capacity of the human organism.

• Empathic understanding. A further element that establishes a climate for self-initiated experiential learning is emphatic understanding. When the teacher has the ability to understand the student’s reactions from the inside, has a sensitive awareness of the way the process of education and learning seems to the student, then again the likelihood of significant learning is increased…. [Students feel deeply appreciative] when they are simply understood – not evaluated, not judged, simply understood from their own point of view, not the teacher’s. (Rogers 1967 304-311)

Carl Rogers has provided educators with some fascinating and important questions with regard to their way of being with participants, and the processes they might employ. The danger in his work for informal educators lays in what has been a point of great attraction - his person-centredness. Informal education is not so much person-centred as dialogical. A focus on the other rather than on what lies between us could lead away from the relational into a rather selfish individualism. Indeed, this criticism could also be made of the general direction of his therapeutic endeavours.

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rogers.htm

The phenomenal field – where we are

Is this your sense of “self”?

Or this?

We select, find, or co-create a self-identity from the totality of events in our environment. The likeness (or not) of this identity to our true

self partially depends on where our locus of evaluation rests. Do we judge ourselves by the standards of someone (or something)

else, even as we imagine what this other is thinking/judging? The phenomenal field includes projected attitudes as well as the

people in the field reacting. How can we attempt to alleviate a sense of the judgemental while encouraging the people within the field to feel more confident and

valued in themselves?

Thoughts & processes

• This cannot be a purely theoretical text• Dialogic• Setting up conversations• Library Interventions – exhibition series – this

is the fruit of beginning a dialogue inspired by my blog; Adventure of Library

• http://nicknorton2.wordpress.com/

Library Interventions

• Beginning conversations. A series of artist led interventions into the library context: book, books, collection, searchable archive, facilitated learning, thinking space, discovery, mapped and yet still uncharted territory.

• 1st intervention: Garry Barker, Art and Fiction.

Suggestions

1. The best time for first intervention & series launch would be September – allowing inductees to view. Also this will become part of LCA gallery marketing programme & provide time for further organisation

2. Twitter: tweet “a bay a day” mirco-interventions (colour, title, sculpture, curriculum links), invite artists, course areas, any staff doing shelving to photograph a shelf and send as link + comment

3. This continually curated space to be a “viral campaign” aka a viral feed... Use #tags to gain audience

4. Cumulated posts could become a “zine” to be published at the launch

5. Turn weeding into an auction/performance? Other “Library games”? Reading groups?

Dialogue

• Questions and answers, yes• But

Dialogue

• yes• But• Listening facilitates movement between

question and answer

Dialogue

• Between territory and discovery

Dialogue

• Between persons

• The person centred approach began in a therapeutic context but proved useful in education & group dynamics. Carl Rogers was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize for his work in South African & N. Ireland peace processes...

• Can it have any value in a library context?

• Can it work in a library context?• More conversations – the college has two

qualified counsellors working in Student Services.

• It was pointed out that to value the person is not the same as being “merely” nice – it is a challenge.

Input

• To develop an ethos• To be congruent across the whole service• To set boundaries and establish an

understanding of how we want to work– With one another– With the library user– With the collection

• To work out the limits of what is possible (or desirable)

• I need to look at other institutions also• Ethical concerns – make institution and

contributing voices anonymous, right of review, bring no harm

• As the author I speak only as an author rather than a representative of LCA library

Questions?