LIKE 24 The human library
If you were a book what would you be about? This metaphor became
reality at April's LIKE meeting. Inspired by what was previously known as the Living Library project
and very much routed in community outreach in public libraries Linda
Constable took us through a Human Library session from introducing
some of the history of the project to facilitating a session between
books and readers. The Human Library as a project started in 2000
http://humanlibrary.org/ at the Roskilde festival as a way of pushing
forward an anti violence message to Danish music fans. It reached
Britain in 2007 via an MLA funded project and Linda's got involved via
CILIP's Community Services group
http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/community-services/
and has engaged members of the public via the use of human books on
homelessness, world war II and knitting. Linda said it is award
winning community cohesion and she was certainly an inspiring speaker. Back at the LIKE meeting we could read books about comics for adults,
information literacy, Hackney, travel in Italy, gardening and online
gaming. Books wrote down the title of their book and a description to
lure us readers in. Readers could approach books and have
conversations one to one or in small groups. Borrowers and books had
rules of engagement about being open but also respectful and the
quirks of a human book mean that a human book can ask questions. So a
human library facilitates two way discussion and like a lot of LIKE
meetings it is about making connections, talking about different
experiences and having conversations: there are no stupid questions.
There was much amusement about how reservations and extension of loans
works with human books but once conversation flowed we had to issue
some more books so that there were enough to go around. The Human Library is still very much being explored by new countries
and organisations. LIKE members asked whether it was irrelevant to our
largely middle class and not particularly marginalised group of
people: of course not Linda said, can not everyone learn? In a
workplace context of course it links very much into the knowledge
management agenda, how can we know people in our organisations who
have the specific and specialised knowledge that we need to tap into
to do our jobs more effectively? How can we capture tacit knowledge?
Human resources departments could use it as a tool in promoting
diversity awareness in a fun and relaxed way but like the Gurteen
knowledge cafe it could be used much more widely to get people
talking.
reality at April's LIKE meeting. Inspired by what was previously known as the Living Library project
and very much routed in community outreach in public libraries Linda
Constable took us through a Human Library session from introducing
some of the history of the project to facilitating a session between
books and readers. The Human Library as a project started in 2000
http://humanlibrary.org/ at the Roskilde festival as a way of pushing
forward an anti violence message to Danish music fans. It reached
Britain in 2007 via an MLA funded project and Linda's got involved via
CILIP's Community Services group
http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/community-services/
and has engaged members of the public via the use of human books on
homelessness, world war II and knitting. Linda said it is award
winning community cohesion and she was certainly an inspiring speaker. Back at the LIKE meeting we could read books about comics for adults,
information literacy, Hackney, travel in Italy, gardening and online
gaming. Books wrote down the title of their book and a description to
lure us readers in. Readers could approach books and have
conversations one to one or in small groups. Borrowers and books had
rules of engagement about being open but also respectful and the
quirks of a human book mean that a human book can ask questions. So a
human library facilitates two way discussion and like a lot of LIKE
meetings it is about making connections, talking about different
experiences and having conversations: there are no stupid questions.
There was much amusement about how reservations and extension of loans
works with human books but once conversation flowed we had to issue
some more books so that there were enough to go around. The Human Library is still very much being explored by new countries
and organisations. LIKE members asked whether it was irrelevant to our
largely middle class and not particularly marginalised group of
people: of course not Linda said, can not everyone learn? In a
workplace context of course it links very much into the knowledge
management agenda, how can we know people in our organisations who
have the specific and specialised knowledge that we need to tap into
to do our jobs more effectively? How can we capture tacit knowledge?
Human resources departments could use it as a tool in promoting
diversity awareness in a fun and relaxed way but like the Gurteen
knowledge cafe it could be used much more widely to get people
talking.
