Islands and bridges: academic librarians towards Open Innovation and the Internet of Things

“Innovation” is a universal human value. In this digital age, we can confuse it with the concept of “technology” and forget that real change is not the technological device, but the use we make of it. Libraries have always been places of innovation and education, and academic librarians made an enormous contribution to the development of electronic technology. Today, however, the border between innovation and human needs has become more fragile. In this context, academic librarians must adapt again to a generation of people accustomed to moving without filters. Moving in a smart environment means shifting attention from the object to the connection between objects. Therefore, we will think of the library as a set of relationships. In this article, after a presentation of the University of Genoa (paragraph 1), we will talk about Open Innovation and IoT (paragraphs 2-3) and we will try to analyze the specific role of academic libraries in innovative processes, starting from the concept of "relationship" as an exchange prompter (paragraphs 4-5). Finally, we will draw two examples of relationship bridges built on Open Innovation topics at the libraries of the University of Genoa: • Future library • [e-mail]