An article I read recently got me thinking more about deconstruction and it’s come up again in an interesting context.

Chefs frequently deconstruct familiar or classic dishes to find a new perspective and, in conversation with a colleague from the public library service the other day, she mentioned that she had been encouraged to ‘deconstruct’ the services they offer to see if she could discover new approaches to what they do and how they do it.

It struck me as an innovative (and timely) approach we could take to the problem endemic in many institutions – dare I say especially universities – in that we have a tendency to build up our offerings by constant incremental addition rather than by stopping and standing back occasionally and questioning exactly *why* we do things in a particular way.