you know what i’d like to see at a national conference someday? a poster session of failures. each poster in the session would have to demonstrate some aspect of a failure in a library, and what was learned from it. so much focus at conferences is given to successes, but i think our profession would gain as much from learning about each other’s failures.
I think knowing about “good” failures is very helpful. What I mean by good failures is something that was planned out and done well but it just didn’t fly for whatever reason. Sometimes I see so many projects fail because of poor planning or the prinicple person leaving. Those examples wouldn’t be as helpful.