Information Inspiration: Creativity Across the Disciplines in Academic Libraries

Abstract

Placing new emphasis on makerspaces, digital scholarship and publishing, and inventive ideation-centered instruction, academic libraries have in recent years turned their attention to inspiring and supporting creativity. In this paper, three librarians with backgrounds in makerspaces, visual arts, and literature and composition discuss specific examples of innovative practices that foster creativity. These three perspectives converge to consider how libraries might define and assess creativity, whether as an element of information literacy or fluency, or in connection with maker or visual literacies, or through an alternative information creativity approach. Keywords: creativity, information literacy, makerspaces, creative writing, zines, information creativity, primary sources