How to facilitate fruitful innovative partnerships: Lessons from a library-startup-collaboration

• Main Authors: Johansen, Jesper Solheim, Figenschou, Lars, Løkse, Mariann Cesilie
• Format: Lecture
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2022
• Subjects: Session 5: Fostering & building Open Communities; Lightning talk; Arctic; Norway; Arctic University of Norway; UiT The Arctic University of Norway
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6811486

In recent years, the impact of digitalization on the educational sector has been considerable. University libraries are no exception. Their patrons – including students and staff – rely more on digital resources and solutions than ever before. This paradigm shift offers new opportunities. Library-related technology has received increased commercial interest, leading to an emergence of early-stage entrepreneurial companies (start-ups) entering the stage. Both libraries and the technology providers have a shared interest in solving the needs of the current and future patrons by offering improved library services. Neither the university libraries nor the startups are likely to succeed in creating future library technologies on their own. Collaborations between startups and libraries will therefore become increasingly important, and hopefully more common in years to come. Creating and applying innovative technologies are often convoluted pro cesses. To develop great products and services, and to later implement them successfully, requires collaboration. It is necessary for developers to receive continuous feedback and guidance from those with domain-specific knowledge and expertise, in this case, the librarians. For most libraries, however, technology startups are unknown territory (and vice versa). Even though such partnerships have the potential to be immensely fruitful, they can also present collaborative challenges. We believe that some specific measures can make this cooperation easier and more fruitful. To shed light on this novel practice, our lightning talk brings up reflections and lessons from one such collaboration project between the university library at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the technology startup company Keenious. In our allotted minutes, we plan to briefly introduce the collaboration project and discuss three important takeaways: What a library should know about the nature of startups before going into a project. Why having a designated project facilitator within the library is ...