The Tipping Point and Your School Library Program

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The Tipping Point and Your School
Library Program
- How Little Things can make a Big Difference
Bobbie Henley Jo-Anne LaForty
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Tipping Point Agenda

• Understanding the concept
• Viewing Library Stories
• Creating meaning
• Personalizing ideas and actions

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What is the Tipping Point?

• "The Tipping Point is that magic moment where an
  idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a
  threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire."
• where the unexpected
• becomes the
• expected.

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3 Characteristics

• 1. Contagiousness
• 2. Little causes have big effects
• 3. Change happens not gradually, but all at
  once

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Gladwell's central argument is that there are
three main factors or change agents that effect
every influential trend.

• Law of the Few
• Stickiness Factor
• Power of Context

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The Law of the Few

• Connectors
• Mavens
• Salesmen

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The Law of the Few

• Connectors
• wide social circles.
• "hubs" of the human social network.

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The Law of the Few

• Mavens
• knowledgeable people
• know details about a product that most of us
  wouldn't know

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The Law of the Few, contd

• Salesmen
• charismatic person with good negotiation skills
• source of influence is soft rather than forceful

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The Law of the Few

• Connectors
• Mavens
• Salesmen

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Stickiness

• Ideas or products found attractive or
  interesting by others will grow exponentially for
  some time.

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The Power of Context

• Human behaviour is strongly influenced by
  external variables of context.

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• "Why is it that some ideas or behaviours or
  products start epidemics and others don't?
• And what can we do to deliberately start and
  control positive epidemics of our own?" The
  Tipping Point

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Essential QuestionWhat have you done that
has tipped your library program from a
traditional, reactive, non-collaborative one to a
dynamic, vital, proactive program?
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What resonates with you?

• I already do . . .
• I think I will try . . .
• Wasnt that fascinating . . .

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• staff workshop defining research and literacy
• coordinated approach to library services
• physically changing and opening up library
• replace library exchange with partnering
• marketing buckets of fun
• facility improvements
• updated collection
• online databases
• advocacy for budget and staffing
• stop everything and partner
• centre of learning, not a book exchange
• boys literacy
• Forest of Reading program
• school library web page

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• The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that
  just a little input is enough to get it started,
  and it can spread very, very quickly. That makes
  it something of obvious and enormous interest to
  everyone from educators trying to reach students,
  to businesses trying to spread the word about
  their product, or for that matter to anyone
  who's trying to create a change with
  limited resources."

http//www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html