Poster Session Post

For a general overview of the benefits and principles of the Library as Visual Workplace, see our poster session documents from the 2014 PaLA Conference in Lancaster, PA.  Click the link below to view our poster, handout, and flip-book.  Enjoy!

https://dspace.fandm.edu/handle/11016/24056

"Go Visual: the library as visual workplace" Poster Session
2014 PaLA Conference, Lancaster, PA

"Visual Management for Libraries" article

As a follow-up to my 2013 article on the library as visual workplace, I recently expanded my thoughts into the related area of visual management.  To learn more about Visual Management (VM) and its application to modern libraries, please see my seven-page article titled, "Visual Management for Libraries", published in the online journal Library Leadership & Management (Vol. 28, no. 3), May 2014. 

http://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7067/6297  

"The Library As Visual Workplace" article

After three years of experimenting with visual workplace principles, I've pulled together my thoughts in a five page article titled, "The Library As Visual Workplace:  Visual solutions offer the simplicity library employees (and patrons) need."  Read the article online as part of The Journal of Creative Library Practice or access the full .pdf article at dspace.fandm.edu/handle/11016/23926 

Back to the Visual Basics

The visual workplace is based on the premise of communicating information in a clear, simple, and obvious manner. To do that, you obviously need good visibility. But would is good visibility? Is it bright colors, bold graphics, and large text.

Well, one good way to think about visibility is to go back to the basics. In her 2010 book, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, author Dona Wong begins her monograph with a valuable chapter on "The Basics." Now, it is important to note that Ms. Wong is primarily concerned with the proper presentation of business data, facts, and figures (hence the publisher), but many of her advices are extremely relevant to the visual workplace. In chapter one, she covers topics such as Numbers, Data Richness, Font Legibility, Typography, Color Basics, Color Charts, and Color for the Color Blind. She also covers the interesting notion of the Visual-Data Continuum, illustrating the best ways to combine rich data with high visual impact.

Chapter two contains great advices on how to best convey information using Pictograms/Icons and Maps/Shading. Check it out, a great book presented in a highly visual style!

The Answer is Right at Hand

One of the main purposes of the visual workplace is to build the details of work into the physical environment and improve adherence, allowing people to work precisely with increasing self-regualtion. Now if you work with a group of library student workers or volunteers, you are always looking for ways to improve adherence, precision, and self-regualtion. Many libraries rely heavily on students and volunteers. However, after initial training sessions, how often do we re-train and evaluate their work? With good visual workplace practices, we can alleviate some of that extra re-training and supervision.

For example - shelving books. We train students and volunteers to shelve books, but we send them off with a cart of books and no support information on hand. A book cart is essentially a portable work station. Why not include simple shelving instructions (hopefully reminders!) with each cart that goes out? They can be laminated, attached magnetically to the side, whatever works for your environment. In that case, if a student or volunteer has a question, the answer is right at hand.