Moving the Needle: From Innovation to Impact

The digital library has been on a seemingly insatiable quest for “innovation” for decades. This focus permeates our field, usually in the guise of transforming digital library practices. The themes change over time (e.g., Federating library collections! Digital humanities! Digital preservation! Big data!), but dependably, digital library research projects on “innovation” topics are seeded in abundance each year. Researchers are rewarded (and funded) for their big, experimental ideas, not for successful applications of innovations in practice. Gearing resources toward “innovation” alone prizes the unique or novel approach above the cultivation of our field. Few innovations ever flower and thrive beyond their initial moments in the sun. What might happen if digital libraries shift their focus from the innovative solution to the process of using innovations within networks to actively facilitate system-wide change? Drawing from the disciplines of sociology and economics, Skinner will explore both established and emergent models for system-wide transformation, ultimately asking what digital libraries could accomplish as a field if we shifted our focus from “innovation” to “impact.”