Awarded by the University of Guelph, 2006-2008.

Distinguished Librarian Award

Louis Vagianos Award

Awarded by The University of Western Ontario.

Gold Medal Recipient

Creative Education Foundation (CEF) : Member

Ontario Library Association (OLA) : Member

American Library Association (ALA) : Member

University of Guelph : Instructor of Entrepreneurship

The Startup Library: Pitch Competition

Innovation: the language of learning libraries

Housed with the University of Guelph's College of Business and Economics, The Centre for Business and Social Entrepreneurship (CBaSE) connects young leaders with opportunities for growth. We offer course credits, startup incubation and experiential learning opportunities. 

This page promotes the mentors for our incubator program, The Hub. Incubated businesses can arrange meetings with the mentors by clicking on the mentor of interest and clicking the connect button. At this time, mentors are only available to those in The Hub program.

Centre for Business and Social Entrepreneurship

M.J. D’Elia is the Head (Acting) of the Learning and Curriculum Support Team at the University of Guelph. He provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for the Learning Commons units: Learning and Writing Services, Information Literacy, Supported Learning Groups, and the Data Resource Centre. He is a co-conspirator in a number of interesting side projects, including Innovation Boot Camp, PIM Labs, and The Startup Library.

In addition to his library role, he also instructs the Entrepreneurship course for the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies. This course features a Dragon’s Den-like business pitch competition at the end of the semester. When time permits, M.J. doodles, plays with Lego and runs a small facilitation company that specializes in creative problem solving.

This half-day workshop covers the basic thinking behind launching a new product or service. It uses the Business Model Canvas as a starting point followed by an application of the Customer Development Framework. Helen Kula and M.J. D&rsquo;Elia presented this workshop at Internet Librarian 2014 in Monterey, California. The workbook (.doc) from the session has also been added to SlideShare.

Startup Thinking 101 for Libraries: Workshop

My slides for a short talk on creating a culture of innovation in Libraries delivered at the ARL Membership Meeting in Washington, DC (Oct 8, 2014). Observations fall into three categories: Platforms, People and Practice - with a dash of Persistence. Note: I&rsquo;m not sure if the slides will make sense on their own!

Creating a Culture of Innovation (in Libraries)

Libraries are NOT startups - we all know that; however, startups use approaches that might be worth emulating in more traditional organizations like libraries. This presentation provides a high-level summary of startup thinking, using nine key concepts with examples. Helen Kula &amp; M.J. D&rsquo;Elia delivered this talk at Internet Librarian 2014 in Monterey, California (October 27).

Startup Thinking and Libraries

The Startup Library is a crash course in entrepreneurial thinking for Library Land. It is about identifying opportunities, taking smart risks, and learning by doing. This one-day workshop will engage participants in a number of activities designed to inspire, energize, and challenge. Participants will work together to identify a problem worth solving, generate potential ideas to solve that problem, strengthen their solutions, and make a final “rocket pitch” to support their best idea.

Startup Library Full Day Workshop: OCULA Spring Conference 2013

A light-hearted look at my attempt to smush libraries and startup thinking together. Basically, I relate a number of stories and introduce a few experiments that I&rsquo;ve tried at the University of Guelph Library in the past few years. Presented at the Code Meet Print Toronto Meetup on September 18, 2014.

Libraries Meet Startups: An Unusual Love Story

Changing how we think AND how we do is the key to driving culture change in libraries. We can learn a lot from startup thinking.

Mindshifts: Computers in Libraries 2014

I delivered this presentation at the APLA 2009 conference in Halifax. Here&rsquo;s the description from the program:

Library notions of information literacy are almost always tied to written information, but an increasing amount of information that is created and consumed is in visual formats (photographs, illustration, video, animation, multimedia, etc.). As we help people negotiate the new media of the Information Age, what should our role as librarians be? Some industries regularly manipulate images to create an ideal reality (e.g. advertising), while others claim that images represent the truth (e.g. journalism). Are we as adept as w think at distinguishing truth from fiction?

Warning: some of the fonts didn&rsquo;t translate perfectly.

The slides might not make sense on their own, so here&rsquo;s my script (that I loosely followed): http://www.slideshare.net/mjdelia/information-literacy-in-the-age-of-youtube-script

Here&rsquo;s a handout of further resources: http://www.slideshare.net/mjdelia/information-literacy-in-the-age-of-youtube-further-reading

Information Literacy in the Age of YouTube

Information Literacy

Collection Development

Library Science

Virtual Reference Services

Curriculum Design

Educational Technology

Digital Libraries

Metadata

Library Research

M.J. D'Elia : Librarianship. Education. Experimentation.

Gryphon's Den 2014

Innovation Boot Camp: Learn Faster

Building a game layer on top of the library

Librarians are like detectives (and other generative analogies...)

Learning & Curriculum Support Team Librarian

Ignite Waterloo speaker, M.J. D'Elia discusses a workshop using LEGO blocks to explore and express oneself in the workplace through metaphors.

M.J. D'Elia: Hit the Bricks! Playing with LEGO at work

Erik Boekesteijn interviews MJ @ OLA LIVE!

Interview with MJ D'Elia - OLA Super Conference 2014

A short intro to the Entrepreneurship course (MCS*4100) at the University of Guelph (Fall 2012). Time-lapse video inspired by the RSA Animate series. To down...

MCS*4100: Entrepreneurship (in 5 minutes)

This is the digital poster about The Startup Library that I presented at the 2013 OCULA Spring Conference. For more info on the actual program visit: http://...

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