Recently I read Steven Johnson’s Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation.  It’s a fascinating book, full of anecdotes about Charles Darwin and MIT’s Building 20.  Johnson uses Darwin’s life and work to highlight his main themes and uses coral reefs as an metaphor for “ideas ecosystems”, but of course I couldn’t help thinking about how libraries can use his ideas in the way we build and run libraries.

Throughout history libraries have been highly effective as what we might call idea storehouses.  Universities and schools have been highly effective as idea communicators.  But, particularly at a time when many are questioning the relevance of libraries (thinking in terms of the ‘storehouse’ model), might we develop libraries further as idea factories?  The place you go to generate ideas in the first place?

Johnson highlights what he considers to be the essential ingredients of an idea-generating environment: liquid networks, slow hunches, serendipity, error, exaptation & recycling and platforms.  Let’s explore what these mean in practice, and how libraries can encourage them to become idea generation spaces.

Liquid Networks

The concept of liquid networks is what in other contexts is called cosmopolitanism or multiculturalism.  Someone with liquid networks mixes with lots of different types of people,  picking up ideas and practices they would not encounter in a mono-cultural, small network.  The concept of ‘liquidity’ is important, because it comes with a related idea of ‘idea spillage’.  When the physics department and the School of History share a tea-room, ideas will ‘spill’ from one to the other, potentially leading to completely new concepts or discoveries.

In public libraries at least, we like to think we naturally encourage ‘liquid networks’ and ‘spillage’ because we are open to anyone.  But is this really true?  Is your library open at times that are convenient to a range of people?  If you are only open 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday, your library is ensuring that full time workers will rarely mix with retirees, the unemployed or students.  Is your library really welcoming to all, or is it always full of middle-class educated people looking for the latest Booker prize winner?

Citizens, no less than guests at a party, need 'hosts' to show them how to come together. - Alain de Botton

If you want to ensure your library encourages liquid networks, you need to go out of your way to ensure spontaneous (and planned) encounters between different types of people occur.  Should you be running programs where students teach computer skills to retirees and learn in turn about gardening, or crochet, or small engine repair?  Could you run a hotrod-themed poetry slam night and attract two different interest groups?  Do you simply need to extend your opening hours?  Could you run an ‘investor club’ where local business-people meet young people with ideas for start-ups?  Even something as simple as ensuring your library is easily available as a place for clubs and hobby groups to meet will help make your community a place where ideas can happen - Johnson tells us that inventors are more likely than others to have a large number and wide range of hobbies.

One of the things that intrigued me about Johnson’s descriptions of effective ‘liquidity’ is that if networks are too open it actually detracts from successful idea-generation.  Anyone who works in an open-plan office knows what he means.  He cites MIT’s Building 20 as the perfect balance.  Buliding 20 is famous for being the home of an abnormally high number of successful new concepts, ideas and discoveries.  Johnson argues that this is because it was always considered a ‘temporary’ structure and thus when researchers and students felt the need to internally reconfigure their working space (eg by knocking out or buliding a wall, or running a cable from one office to another) they simply did it, often without worrying about asking permission or having to get professional workmen in to do it.  This meant that although researchers still had their own offices to develop their ideas and work in some quiet, they could easily adjust the workspace as needed.

For libraries, this gives us something to think about during major renovations or new builds.  Many libraries, particularly those built since the 1960s, are an open-plan design.  This is great for showing of airy and light-filled architectural masterpieces, but is also the genesis of the daily struggle librarians have trying to reconcile the differing needs of mature-age students and self-directed learners in study areas with boisterous storytimes.  A mix of shared and fit-for-purpose spaces may be best for generating ideas.

In my own library service, as in many