I was preparing a Pechua Kucha presentation for our library recently as part of a fun event before the start of a new semester that also was intended to remind us of why we do what we do. I ended up doing mine on the idea of openness, tieing it to Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science and ALA’s statement of Core Values of Librarianship. I ended up talking about Open Source, Open Access, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources. But the consistent theme that kept coming through – and I hadn’t set out with this in mind – was how openness in all these senses is the foundation for increased productivity and increased creativity. Librarians like openness because we like to have more stuff. More stuff for our communities to take and build on it to create even more stuff.
This idea is probably obvious to those who believe in the value of intellectual freedom, but it’s nice to have a reminder.
- Dan Lee
This is totally tangential, but were all the presentations Pechua Kuchas? Was that presentation format mandated by the library? Did you get any training on creating such presentations? I’ve never seen one, and I’m curious about it.
Everyone who participated did a Pechua Kucha. There were 6 or 7 of us. We didn’t get any training per se, but were given examples. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun too.