Telles Library’s professionals produced a chapter for a book that discusses the work of librarians in non-traditional fields
Insper librarians were invited by Professor Fabiano Couto, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) to participate in the production of the book “O perfil das novas competências na atuação bibliotecária” (“The profile of the new skills for librarian work,” in a free translation). It discusses different work formats for professionals in the field.
The book has 24 chapters and over 30 authors addressing what it is to be a librarian in contemporary times. It investigates how professionals can work outside traditional areas, such as in sports, innovation, and health research, exploring less usual spaces in librarianship.
For Telles Library’s manager Luciana Arjona, participating in the book with a chapter was an important exercise to discuss and think about the work within Insper. “We were invited to talk about ‘maker spaces,’ which is something that is still starting in Brazilian libraries. We tried to make an interpretation about the maker work focused on services, which is our differential. The Library is an important means to encourage innovation”.
A maker library
Besides Luciana, the chapter had as its authors Luana Alves Vieira and Ricardo Rodrigues Ramos, both librarians at Insper. The group was divided into areas to research the origins of the maker movement in other countries, conceptualize the application of these concepts to Telles Library’s practices, and, finally, describe real-world cases experienced in the area’s daily life, for example.
The biggest challenge was to contextualize the use of the concept by Insper’s library. After all, that is almost automatically associated with technology. Such is the case with a Fab Lab, in which the student builds things and has a locksmith shop, woodshop, computer equipment, among other instruments. “That is not our reality. We talked about actions aimed at service innovation, in which we introduced a more active than receptive stance. It is a process in which we build something with someone. Our interaction with students and professors allows all of us and those who use the service to expand our learning, to learn something along the way”, Luciana explains.
For Luana, an important point of view was to put professionals in the position of research mediators and not as “guardians of knowledge.” “We are mediators of all that we have of knowledge between the library and the users. It translates maker attitude to me more than sticking to the word and its original concept. It is about understanding how we evolve and transform ourselves from each interaction we have with the public and the needs the school presents.”
“Because we went to the source, to the movement’s origins, we had a little more background and comfort to talk about deconstructing some of the profession’s common concepts. The maker movement means ‘getting your hands dirty,’ translating it freely. We had realized that we practice this at the school via the services we offer,” Ricardo explains.
For him, Insper’s environment corroborates to put innovation into practice. “Here, we can do market research to find out what other centers are doing and bring it to our reality, which is different from what we see around Brazil. We have an immense privilege to work in an environment that corroborates our proposals and expands our abilities and competencies”.
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May you have any questions, the Telles Library’s Research Guidance team is available through the service channels below:
WhatsApp: +55(11) 97464-1087.
Email: orientacaoapesquisa@insper.edu.br
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