Building a culture of strategic risk-taking in a science library: Turning failure into learning opportunities

Abstract

Academic librarians and library managers are always exploring new ways to empower their team to provide the best services to the entire research community. This requires organizations to take innovative approaches to new ideas as well as existing services and initiatives. With innovation, a certain amount of strategic risk has to be involved, but how much is too much? More importantly, how do you create a culture where people feel free to take risks and, sometimes, fail? These columns explore those questions as a case study of the Dirac Science Library at Florida State University.