Biz of Acq -- Learning @ Your Library [Conference]: Kolb's Experimental Learning Model and the Institutional Learning Process

Library conferences offer the chance for individuals from different institutions to share information. This paper explores how an institution can itself undergo the same learning process as its constituent individuals through the actions taken before, during and after a conference. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model provides an analytic framework for this exploration. How much do we learn at library conferences? To quote a phrase much beloved by librarians everywhere (and particularly by a certain professor from library school): well, it depends. As information professionals, we operate under an ideology that information should be shared. Conferences offer the opportunity for individuals from different institutions to share information on such topics as best practices, future trends, and methods of handling specific problems. Such an environment fosters learning at an individual level. By examining only the possibility for the individual to learn from library conferences, however, we ignore the opportunity for learning to take place within an institution itself. Actions taken by individuals within an institution before, during, and after a library conference provide support for this paper’s perspective — that institutions undergo the learning process through the actions of their constituent individuals. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (ELM) serves as an analytic framework for this exploration of the institutional learning process. This model was chosen because it is both processand individual-oriented, making it easily adaptable to the paper’s focus. It is important to acknowledge that the institution is comprised of individuals, and that individual learning drives institutional learning. However, this paper outlines how the process of individual learning is mirrored by the institution itself, through the actions of information dissemination among an institution’s constituents. While it is possible to explore this process in theory alone, this paper takes the form (if not methodology) of a qualitative case study of the author’s institution. This introduces the potential for biased observation; however, it is necessary to frame the analysis as a case study rather than simply as a theoretical exploration in order to provide valuable context for any reader wishing to apply this model to his or her own institution.