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Small libraries need innovation just like larger libraries, but typically staffing is small enough that nobody has scheduled time away from the service desks to do focused brainstorming. While there is a lot of creative planning happening in off-hours or while working the floor, has anyone gotten management/board approval for a staffing plan with scheduled innovation time?

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What's your definition of "small", and what kind of library setting are you talking about? – anarchivist May 25 '12 at 21:41
Small is 10 or less for me. I'd prefer to hear about a public library setting, but I'd be happy to work with ideas from special or academic libraries with less than 10 staff and a varied audience. – MariBar May 26 '12 at 2:04

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We had something like this at one of the academic libraries I worked at. It was a larger institution than you're talking about, though. Part of the way we got it to happen was that several staff members already had side projects that we worked on in our spare time. Once these got a bit of attention, it was a fairly easy sell to convince supervisors that staff should have time to work on those projects at work, too.

In my experience, staff who want to innovate will innovate whether or not they have special innovation time set aside at work. Unfortunately, I've also seen that staff who are not inclined in this direction will resent the implication that they should be doing their regular jobs plus feeling burdened with the task of "innovating" something -- difficult to do on command.

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Thanks Bess. I was hoping that a formalized program would help spur innovation while avoiding the implied demand for working in off hours, but it looks like that isn't happening in practice. – MariBar May 26 '12 at 19:11
This assumes staff members and innovations have a 1:1 (or 1:M, in the best case) relationship. When this happens, it's fantastic, but it's not always the case. When several staff are needed to work on one innovation -- especially if those staff cross reporting lines -- it's more complicated. Perhaps in a staff of 10 this doesn't happen? – dsalo May 26 '12 at 19:40
In my experience, reporting/department lines are pretty lightly drawn in small libraries. The question of how high a percentage of staff can work on a single innovation project is a good one though. The higher the number, presumably, the stricter the guidelines for proposal acceptance and a greater expectation of success. That could be an early deal-breaker. Thanks for the insight. – MariBar May 26 '12 at 20:13
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When someone at our library (23 employees) has an idea, she writes up a proposal describing the idea and delineating the goals and the costs (including time). It is presented to the applicable staff at a regular meeting, and together we decide if we are going forward with the idea, and what we might give up (cost and time-wise) to be able to afford the idea. We have also done this at an annual meeting where multiple ideas were proposed, and everyone was asked to suggest a service or program that we could eliminate. We voted on what to add and what to get rid of, and that became our plan.

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Thank you Mary Jo. Your program sounds like it achieves what I'm looking for. Do you give the process a formal name, or is it just part of how your library works? – MariBar May 29 '12 at 17:34
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Unimaginatively, the annual meeting was called Librarians' Brainstorming Meeting. I am inspired by your question to come up with a better name! In the normal course of things, whenever someone suggests something that others seem to think might be a good addition, the person is asked to write up a proposal. Proposals get passed if we can fund them (usually by dropping or reducing something else, and sometimes by pushing it to the next budget cycle where there might be more money). A proposal can't be considered until it is complete. – Mary Jo Finch May 30 '12 at 0:48

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