Creativity: A Toolkit for Academic Libraries, by Nancy Falciani-White

Abstract

In Creativity: A Toolkit for Academic Libraries, author Nancy Falciani-White defines creativity as "the ability to produce a product or idea that is both new and appropriate in a given context" (145). Focusing on the creativity of academic libraries and those working in them, rather than the students, staff, and faculty we serve, this book brings together concepts from psychology, business, research, entrepreneurship, and design to better understand a term that is at once overused and hard to define, due in part to the broad range of assumptions and misconceptions that surround it. Falciani-White, currently Director of the McGraw-Page Library at Randolph Macon College, draws inspiration and examples from over 20 years of experience working at small liberal arts institutions and from completing her own graduate and doctoral research to make a case for embracing creativity in academic libraries.Falciani-White draws her definition of creativity from an article in Annual Review of Psychology, but it could as easily have been from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (2021), as those of us familiar with the criteria for a patentable invention as novel, useful, and inventive may recognize. This positions creativity in a productive realm as closely linked to entrepreneurship, innovation, and design as to fine artistic expression. This link is not new; creativity has been embraced by business and management schools in recent years, producing degrees and specializations in entrepreneurship, design thinking, and innovation, and reframing creativity as a tool to fashion solutions to problems. In Chapter 2, Falciani-White traces back through Drucker's 1985 description of innovation to Osborn's coinage of creative problem solving in 1953 and Rowe's contemporary design thinking approach all the way back to Edison's light bulb. While seeking to disambiguate terms often treated