By its nature design thinking combines creative and critical thinking that is imperative to organizing ideas and improving situations. Design thinking allows libraries to take an iterative approach to exploring a complex problem-space, and generate consensus around a potential solution, all while providing artifacts and documentation of the process. In libraries, design thinking is most commonly employed in the design of spaces or services. However, inspired by Open Access Week, we engaged these strategies to collaboratively deconstruct Western Libraries’ current policies related to open access.

We invited staff and librarians from Western Libraries and our affiliates to explore how we define open access, and why and how our libraries support it. Using a collaborative concept-mapping approach, all members of the group individually answered each question, and then collaboratively mapped the answers. These concept maps have informed Western Libraries’ new statement on open access practices and policies.

Our poster outlines this process and displays the resulting concept maps, offering a framework for integrating design-thinking into the process of policy development.