Welcoming the Institute of Design

This summer we rearranged our library space on the 6th and 7th floors to make room for the IIT Institute of Design. We’ve been looking forward to learning more from ID as we welcome them to our campus, and learning how their discipline offers unique insights into a changing world.

Design thinking was also a major theme at this year’s national AALL Meeting in Chicago, from the keynote presentation by Will Evans to the Chicago Public Library sessions describing how they’ve applied this type of research and practice to create new services and initiatives.

ID Open House 2016

Last Tuesday, ID offered their first open house at the Graduate Campus, giving history of the school, an alum’s overview of his career path, and highlights from recent academic research and student projects. See more details in the photo album below by clicking on any photo.

Assistant Dean Hugh Musik described the beginnings of ID from the initial Bauhaus school in Germany from 1919-1933, when it was closed due to opposition from the Nazi party.  László Moholy-Nagy came to Chicago in 1937 to found the “New Bauhaus,” the original name of the Institute of Design. A new Art Institute of Chicago exhibit on Nagy will open on October 2: Moholy-Nagy: Future Present

Musick described the transitions through the years as the school looked for ways to prepare students to tackle increasingly complicated questions and work with a wide variety of corporations and organizations to identify strategies that meet needs successfully. You can also find an interactive timeline of leadership & curriculum foci on the Institute of Design website

Design Thinking for Law Librarians

Will Evans gave this keynote talk at AALL 2016 national meeting of law librarians, discussing how design thinking could be applied to law libraries and the legal industry:


New Models of Purpose-Driven Exploration in Knowledge Work

The Chicago Public Library then demonstrated how this type of model has been applied locally within their system as they evaluated existing programs and experimented with new services. We don’t have their slides online, but I did live-tweet their events:

The Chicago Public Library materials have been organized into a toolkit for other libraries in the website “Design Thinking for Libraries,” funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and created in collaboration with IDEO and the Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark.

About Emily Barney

Technology Training & Marketing Librarian
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