A talk by Stephen Abram is seriously difficult to blog! His talks are engaging, entertaining, and provocative, and apart from living in fear of not doing him justice, I also just can’t type that fast. Here are just a few of the nuggets I managed to jot down.

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Examples of innovative stuff going on in Canadian libraries:
- the Alberta Library Online
- OCUL’s Scholars Portal
- knowledge Ontario
- ASIN portal

A question we should be asking: what is the best future for libraries? Lots of big questions to think about:
- when we get ubiquitous broadband, how are we going to be able to deliver? To smart phones and other devices? Are we ready?
- they are connected but they don’t have info literacy. That’s what we’re all about and where we come in.
- be creative. Think transformation.
- what impact will the millenials have? What about the post-millenials?
- we need to sacrifice things to innovate
- library 2.0 – user-centric, not library-centric

librarian 2.0 is…
– the guru of the information age!
- doesn’t shy away from non-traditional cataloguing and classification – tagging, folksonomies, etc.
- understands the long-tail and serves it
- catalogues people more than content
- understands the user at a deep level

How do we get more innovative?
- stop being afraid of success!
- continue to be critical thinkers, butdon’t let that stop us from embracing change
- when someone is doing something well, we need to support them
- seek experiences, not necessarily inside the library
- challenge our assumptions
- try something new everyday
- lead and share. If you’re leading, tell people.
- stay positive
- learn. Information does not become knowledge without learning.
- unlearn.
- listen. Especially for what’s on the fringes.
- have a vision.
- no puny visions.
- work from the customer in, really put the customer first. Don’t try and create mini-librarians, create mini-learners, mini-citizens.

innovation attitudes:
- passion, preparation, intuition, play, flow, radiate, find the pattern, trust, look at the disparities and try and solve them, stand back and look what’s going on, believe in yourself, question everything, have a vision, be a good noticer, empathize, focus,

Are we innovatve enough? Not by a long shot. Can we be? Yes!

“A year from now you may wish you had started today” – Karen Lamb