This is another wonderful idea from Paula Popma, former AUL for Tech Services at Santa Clara and now in a similar role at Fresno State.
She came up with the idea of regular, but highly informal and casual “gatherings,” to which all library personnel would be invited and given the opportunity to tell others what they were working on (or had completed) what was coming up, etc. She made sure that these gatherings coincided with the availability of the University Librarian as she was the person most people wanted to hear from, and not in a formal staff meeting or electronic mail message.
Each person is limited to 1 minute to spin their story – ergo the title, Spin It In A Minute – and an egg timer would be used to enforce the limit.
And no one would be compelled to say anything!
At first these turned out to be what was expected – this is what I did, here’s what’s coming up, here’s some news I think you should be aware of, etc.
But soon people began to share more personal information: I am going on vacation, it’s been 10 years that I have been cancer-free; and more. And then there began to be shout-outs to people who had helped, assisted and otherwise given a hand to a colleague or colleagues for one reason or another.
To make sure that everyone in the library shared the fun – yes, it did turn out to be a lot of fun – Paula wrote up a summary of the Spin-It and distributed to the all-library email list.
This turned out to be multiple win program: An informal means of communication was developed and became a part of the library culture; and library personnel got to know one another better and got closer together than might otherwise have been the case; and to repeat, it turned out to be Fun :)
The only caution is that this is best suited for small to medium organizations (ca 30 people). After that it gets a little unwieldy and may have to be done at the department or divisional level.
